Kentucky Convergence Conference 2010

Why I deleted my Facebook friends

Earlier this week I exercised what I call the "nuclear option" on my friends' list on Facebook.  I have not completely stopped using Facebook, but as of this date I have one friend on Facebook: my wife Susan.

This is something I have thought about doing for quite some time.  I suppose the final decision came as a result of the consideration of trust, friendship, and connection that I had, thought I had, and/or that I never really had.

I wanted to write this blog post sooner, much like a lot of blog posts/writings that never get made.  My friend Kevin Brown asked me why I deleted all of my Facebook friends, and he was one of a few that I felt needed further explanation.  Of the 211 friends I deleted, six days after he has been the only one to ask why.

While the intent here is certainly not to be dramatic, you must understand that I've been a believer in the potential of Facebook.  In my sphere of influence I've come to be known as someone at least knowledgeable and perhaps thoughtful about Facebook and social networking in general.  I've done a number of trainings on social networking, and I've recently been asked to organize a panel at a national Sociology conference on teaching and social media.  My approach to Facebook has been both a personal and professional approach.

I've just completed covering the chapter in my Introduction to Sociology class on groups and organizations.  This is a very important chapter in the field and an area of consideration that I always enjoy teaching about and exchanging with students.  In such a short period of time our society has moved from online interaction as being anonymous and almost fantasy like to now a complex interplay of social networks in the physical and online world.

Now I'll cut to the chase.  I've tried to be careful with my nurturing of my Facebook experience.  It became apparent over time though that far too many of my Facebook friends viewed Facebook more as a tool for entertainment than as a tool for nurturing personal connections.  I wanted more from friends than very casual interaction obtained through commenting and liking on status updates.  I like to think that most of my life I've sought deeper connections with others.  I was hopeful that Facebook could support my personal efforts of connecting more meaningful with others.  It just didn't turn out that way.

In the process of deleting my Facebook friends I came to realize there were only about 25 that I had any type of semi regular interaction.  I can see in the not too distant future going back to Facebook and narrowing my experience to those that truly want to connect, interact, and nurture one another.

What I have found in this short time since I've pretty much left Facebook is that I'm more at ease, and frankly I find myself being nicer to others.  I've come to realize my daily use of Facebook came to be a crutch for my need for social interaction.  Now that Facebook is not there, I believe I'm gravitating more to interaction in the physical world.  And I like that.

Thoughts?  Opinions?  Comment below.

Sociology Chat

UPDATE 4/6/20: This projected has ended

Happy to introduce a new little project/endeavor:  it's the Sociology Chat.  This will be a live twitter chat occurring twice on Wednesdays, twice a month.

The first scheduled live chat will occur February 22nd at 9:30am CST and again at 7pm CST.

Spring 2012 is here!

Minor updates: November 2019

It's funny.  I looked at my last post here at The Sociology Blog (see directly below).  It mentioned my intent to grow the blog.  The fact of the matter is that the Fall 2011 was nothing short of beastly for me.

What I've also realized is that not everything I do or like to do has to flow only through this blog space.  I have many services I maintain, and most all of that can be accessed now through my homepage.  Click here or visit the "My Website" link above.

Just as in the past, I'm using the following quite a bit.  I'm including these as links directly to content that I've made available to everyone.

In short, as the revised introduction at the top of this page says, I'm going to use this blog for the meantime as historical record.  With my family life (married with three young children), school work and other interests, I just don't find the time and perhaps not the interest to regularly maintain this blog; at least for now.

Again, I curate and am very active with the following services.  You'll see some things when you click them.  Feel free to engage with me.  I'm a regular Twitter user.

Google Reader

Twitter

The Sociology Interest Links

YouTube

Presentations and other resources

Owensboro Christmas Parade

The following originally was a post developed in conjunction with a project from my Sociology course, "The Community."

View photos from the parade below (the following is no longer available)

Watch the archived live coverage of the event by clicking below. (the following is no longer available)

We the People, Social Media, and Qualitative Research

Today a small group of folks pulled together our existing resources and took on the innovative task of tweeting and blogging a local civic engagement event.  Using our laptops and cellphones, we live tweeted/blogged a local civic engagement event sponsored by AmericaSpeaks and the Public Life Foundation of Owensboro.

The event brought together nearly 300 locals to discuss local issues centered around Education and the Economy. (A participant guide from the event can be found here.)  This was the second We the People event held in my hometown of Owensboro, KY, the first one being in 2007.

Our local group consisted of four folks (me, Steve Metzger, Jessie Schartung, and Michelle Montalvo).  I set up an event of Cover it Live at the Owensboro Blog.  The interface was free, very easy to use.  After talking with Mary Lauran Hall with AmericaSpeaks the day before, we set everything up and organized ourselves to pull this off late in the afternoon the day before the event.  This came upon us quite spontaneously.

I'd like to devote the remainder of this blog post to addressing some insights from the process, with its implications on citizen journalism and qualitative research.

Qualitative insights

Social media and social networking tools are disruptive tools in the media-sphere.  Particularly in our local community, social media and social networking tools are still largely viewed as new and for entertainment purposes.  Social media and social networking tools are primarily open, accessible, and can be implemented by anyone with the initiative to learn how to do so.  Pulling together these tools to document and regard an event of this type is not entirely difficult, but it does take some thinking and planning.  I have been working in this fashion in various ways for several years.  We like to think that as a result of our process that we not only documented the event live, but we were able to give lasting insight into the minute-to-minute, stage to stage process of dialogue and deliberation of participants during this event.

Usually during We the People events the first draft of information received is the draft final report handed out at the end of the day.  During our project, we were able to document quotes, feelings, raw ideas and beliefs of participants as they shared those in the moment, in dialogue and discussion with other members at their particular tables.  While this information served as a social media component because it was live, the real benefit is that this information is also archived, giving organizers, staff, researchers of the process particular insight into the emotional give and take often experienced as participants delve deeply into local issues.

The AmericaSpeaks were nothing but extremely supportive of our work during the event.  We obtained a .pdf copy of the initial final reports immediately after they were distributed to participants.  We shared that online and made it publicly available to anyone.  Part one of the document can be found here, part two can be found here.

This is significant as it relates to qualitative assessment and analysis.  We live in a culture (societal and in the academic community) that largely focuses on quantitative information: giving us the overarching view with little attention to detail and the quality of feeling of individuals and small groups.  By organizing qualitative research as we did with this event, we now also have the added dimension that gives depth of context to the results from the day long town meeting.  Therefore, this process can be used not just for documenting a live event for those unable to be physically present, but this process should also been seen as adding another layer of context to the overall town meeting and the results derived by the participants.

In our particular effort we worked to provide rich media, including photos, audio, and video accounts of activities occurring in the moment.  There are variations of intensity that can be conducted in documenting an event live.  Given our very quick turnaround on organizing for this event, we were unable to strategically plan how we would do the live tweeting/blogging.  In future instances, this would be an aspect to have better control.  Some particular options are having members of the team focus on specific activities.  For example, one person document via photos, others via text, others recording and uploading video.  The beauty of the Cover it Live interface is that those moderating the interface can include content from the outside.  In our case we did pull in this rich media as we were able to, including tweets from not just our small staff, but tweets from the AmericaSpeaks and tweets from the few participants that were tweeting from time to time.  We also brought in other content on the web, relevant to the event.  So for example we posted the participant guide so online participants could follow what was being covered in the physical setting.

Reach
The Cover it Live web based software does include stats.  Given our limited time for marketing, we did not expect that our live event would garner a whole lot of outside participation.  But keep in mind we also approached this as an effort of documenting the day, so it will be hard to tell how often the event (which is archived on the Owensboro Blog) will be viewed later.  In fact we do expect that qualitative insight into the day can be had by viewing both the archived Cover it Live instance and the backed up tweets from the day (found here).

During the event it appears we had around 20 people actively engaged in commenting and viewing via the Cover it Live interface.  During this particular event there was not much effort of online participation in the event via our interface.  We were unable to design the interface in such a way this time around, but options are available where such an effort could gain more traction and significance for online participants if established and communicated well in advance of the day of the event.  AmericaSpeaks does have experience in linking several physical locations at the same time, incorporating a collaborative web component to do so (or like service).

Below is the archived event on Cover it Live


In our effort each of the team members tweeted to their followers and posted links to our information on Facebook.  In total we theoretically have a reach of at least 1500 followers; people from all over the world, national, statewide, and not just locally.  So there is some consideration that needs to occur about the impact of such a reach, the impact of the process as it ripples through social media.  How many folks will research this process?  How many will read recommendations on live tweeting/blogging an event and using the data for further qualitative analysis via this particular blog post?  These are very relevant in the face of the reach and impact of social media and its content, and the utilization of data for for research and ultimately procedural and policy implications.

Notes on process
We were mobile with our approach.  We established our "base of operations" on a back table, essentially sitting down and connecting with our laptops.  Although I haven't mentioned, it's hopefully obvious we had a local wifi network established via the technical capacity of the AmericaSpeaks folks.  This was a must for us to do our work.

Jessie, myself, and my mother as volunteer

Because we were pulling in tweets with a certain hashtag, we were able to take our mobile phones out amongst the tables and mobile blog/tweet.  I found it intimate to listen to quotes from tables and directly tweet those; these ended up in the Cover it Live interface and were backed up as previously mentioned.  It still is rewarding to go back and view the quotes that we pulled in from participants in the moment.  This data is from participants in deep conversation with others, considering ideas and sharing those perhaps in a very rare safe and inviting environment.

These are some initial thoughts that seem to be bubbling up as I continue to reflect on this process.  Below was the initial debrief that our local tweet/blog team shared.

Live Coverage of We the People-Owensboro

Updated:
See this link for a sociological look at the event, the process our team to took, and considerations for qualitative research.  Found here

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First off a huge thanks goes to Mary Lauran Hall with the AmericaSpeaks project, Steve Metzger, Jessie Schartung, Michelle Montalvo, the Public Life Foundation and the local We the People project.

The archived coverage of the We the People event Oct. 23rd event is below. Click "replay" to thumb through all the work we did for the day.

An initial draft of the days events has been released, and can be accessed here and here.

Concluding thoughts by our local team can be found here.