Seminar Series - 'Connected networks, wellbeing and the power of representation: Qualitative and quantitative evidence from Facebook and social network data'

Different representations of a person's online personal network can make a difference to a person's perception of that network. In two studies, youth were presented with visualizations of their Facebook networks and had to make use of this data in meaningful ways. The first is an intervention study of low-SES high school students who were shown their network using software called 'College Connect' to help seek out advice from weak ties (i.e. acquaintances, extended family). The second was a mixed methods study of queer youth that discussed the relationship between outness and social connectivity. We cover these studies as well as a discussion of data access, which is often considered tedious and technical, but it in fact can have serious consequences for epistemology. Without third parties having programmatic access to Facebook data, then Facebook Inc., does not merely control the look and feel of the webpage, but the representational possibilities for the data. The consequences for this sort of control of representations can be very considerable for researchers and users alike. Some of the wider social and political consequences of this shift in representational power will be considered.