Not accepted

Well last night I got word our panel discussion did not get approved. We (GM, KS and I) had all submitted for a panel at the NCA conference. The topic was about facebook and african americans. We would be doing some primary research across 3 areas with 3 separate study groups. i haven’t seen the email, so I don’t understand the rationale for the rejection. Also, since it was primary research with human subjects I had to get approval from IRB, which is pending. What a dilemma! I guess I let the research stay in the approval queue and then write a paper. Which is fine. I assume lots of Comm journals would be interested in such findings as Facebook technology adoption by AA.

But the blow is a bit disappointing. Perhaps it’s preparing me for a rejection at UIC as well. Beth did not get accepted to their English dept. She already got her rejection letter. I haven’t seen anything from them, yet. And then what do I do if I get accepted. I will have a challenge on my hands of decisions.

Well the next conference proposal is due end of March. I will see if I can submit to that one. But it is a visual conference. I am not sure how even to fit into that one. But its in Chi, so easy to attend. I guess its time to brush up on visual theories and semiotics.

Actually, I had done a study not so long ago about the semiotics of yahoo messenger avatars. I could revisit that in facebook. Taking a look at just how many of a certain network, displays photos of themselves, or other things. To some degree I already have the IRB proposal in place. I could add a blurb to widen the base of examination. Right now I am only looking at some facebook users in specific groups. I could broaden that to be a study in comparison to other groups. Or just across networks. Yesterday we were wrapping up the presentation for NSBE convention next Saturday and I made this chart:

Perhaps, this bears some investigation. Be interesting to report on the reality of these suggestions. At least to the broad network.

The proposal might read something like:
Privacy a well known issue in social networking and web2.0 media systems. What is not known is just how many in a given network share broadly their images. One might expect that some constraints might exist in larger networks, but the data is not available to articulate. This study proposes 2 things, to ascertain just how many facebook members of a network display “representative” or other photos of themselves. Subsequently, how many tagged photos are available for the person, even when they have declined to show a representative photo. We’d have to say choose only the IIT network, and maybe broaden it later.

This entry was posted on March 17, 2009 at March 17, 2009 and is filed under Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.