It was and is a strange feeling – I’m happy that I got this far in the process, but at the same time I sort of miss the bubble-like self-centeredness and immersion of especially the last six months. Writing the thing was actually a good experience and I hope to be able to find that kind of focus again amidst all the other responsibilities of life in academia (well… life in general).

Thanks to everyone who helped celebrate me (colleagues, students, friends and family) – I had an amazing day.

The entire defence was videotaped and will be available at Aalborg University’s web page at some point. I will add a link when it’s online!

For the time being, I will focus on my next big project – the birth of my future daughter (I am 38 weeks pregnant). This also means that I am now officially on maternity leave and will probably not be bogging that much.

Thanks to all the readers of My PhD Blog who have followed my academic efforts the past 3,5 years.

During the defence I will be giving a 45 minute presentation of my work where after each member of the assessment committee will have 30 minutes to ask me questions.

The assessment committee consists of:

• Associate professor Mikael Vetner, Department of Communication, Aalborg University (head of committee)
• Associate professor Elza Dunkels, Umeå University, Sweden
• Dr Leena Kuure, University of Oulu, Finland

After the defence the Department of Communication will host a reception. Read more about the defence here (in Danish) and sign up for the event on Facebook.

Download the full dissertation here (in Danish).

During my time off, I have been pondering about my own place in the research landscape – which field should I primarily speak and refer to, what do I take with me from my background in literary studies, what does it mean to me to be a humanist scholar in an emergent, cross-disciplinary research environment? These are questions that I want to write about and hopefully discuss in the coming months.

Lee, M. and McCoughlin, C. (2010) Web 2.0 Based e-Learning: Applying Social Informatics for Tertiary Learning Hershey PA: IGI Global, 415 pp, US$180 hardback

It is edited by Mark Lee and Catherine McCoughlin and I think it is a really interesting collection with a lot of promising chapters. I was actually going to write up a short description etc. but luckily Tony Bates has beaten me to it – so for more information about the book and the individual chapters I kindly refer to his excellent post.

I have been allowed to share a link to the chapter we have written – so if you’re interested in reading our chapter here’s your chance – the title is: “Catering to the Needs of the “Digital Natives” or Educating the “Net Generation”?“

For several practical reasons, the thesis is (regretfully) written in Danish, but here is a short English summary:

The present PhD thesis investigates Danish children and young people’s use of a relatively recent web-phenomenon: Online social networking. The so-called social network sites (SNSs) are internet based social spaces where users via personalised profiles can list each other as friends and communicate and socialise across time and space. The main purpose of the thesis is to gain an understanding of the meanings SNSs, such as Arto and Facebook, have for young people’s individual and social lives and how they use them as part of everyday life. In order to investigate this, the thesis takes its analytic departure in an extensive amount of various empirical data. The primary data consist of five years of ethnographic engagement (including participatory observation within the field) and a large-scale qualitative questionnaire aimed at investigating the experiences that 12-18 years old Danes have on social network sites. In this way, the thesis encompasses both the level of social actors and the level of discourse. It explores and analyses the central actions young people carry out across social network sites, as well as the ways in which they discursively construct and articulate their concrete use and experiences.

Theoretically, the thesis is situated within the field of discourse studies with Nexus Analysis as its primary theoretical and methodological approach. Nexus analysis distinguishes itself from other discourse analytic approaches by focusing on central mediated actions carried out by social actors within a loosely tied ‘nexus of practice’ (rather than focusing solely on discourse). The term nexus of practice refers to the social field where humans, discourses and cultural artefacts intersect and result in social action. In the thesis, young people’s use of social network sites are analysed as a nexus of practice with the purpose of identifying the most prominent and central mediated actions and cycles of discourses. A nexus analysis is carried out through three phases: engaging, navigating and changing the nexus of practice. The primary activities in the engagement phase consist of ethnographic engagement, collection of a wide variety of data and the researcher’s establishment of a ‘zone of identification’. The main activities of the navigation phase are to organise, document and analyse the various data collected, whereas the changing phase consists of reflections on how the results of the nexus analysis affect or contribute to changes within the overall nexus of practice.

Grounded in the detailed engagement in the first phase of the nexus analysis, the thesis’ navigation phase has been structured around three analytic themes which represent the most central cycles of discourses within the nexus of practice. Practising friendship is an essential part of Danish young people’s use of social network sites. In the first analytic theme, the central (and often completely routinised) mediated actions the users carry out to create or maintain social relations are analysed. In relation to this, it is discussed what characterises a friendship online and how young people’s use of SNSs are contributing to a transformation of the traditional notion of friendship. In the second theme of the analysis, a quite specific mode of communication is examined. This mode of communication is characterised by a particular love discourse that exists among best friends on SNSs, where statements such as ‘I love you’ appear frequently in their interactions. The different functions of this emotional communication are discussed, as are the meanings of why these statements are often publically available, or even strategically, intentionally placed on the young people’s profiles. In relation to this, it is argued that the users – through these emotional communicative actions – become co-constructors of each other’s identities, which reflects or can be characterised as an ‘open source’ networked identity. In the final analytic theme, it is analysed and discussed how young people cope with and handle unpleasant experiences which arise from time to time when they use social network sites. This discussion is grounded in how the young users themselves experience, articulate and account for risks related to their use of SNSs and it examines their strategies to navigate and handle the unpleasant experiences. The analysis shows how young people experience a tension or contradiction between their own concrete, local experiences and the public discourses which surround their use of new media. Following from this, it is argued that young people have a need for their local (and most often positive) experiences to be acknowledged and taken serious. This need has been particularly clear in a period of time where social network sites were a new phenomenon (mostly used among young people), and where the public debate primarily focused on dangers and risks.

Finally, the relations between mediated actions and public discourses are treated at a more overarching and general level. As part of the changing phase within the nexus analysis it is discussed how the thesis and public dissemination of empirically grounded research contribute to the public debate and can create a better and more nuanced understanding of Danish youngsters’ use of social network sites.

The thesis was handed in just in time (since I am seven months pregnant) and I look forward to not spending every day, night and weekend at the university. Thanks for support and encouragement through My PhD Blog during the past years :-)

I will get back with more info when I have news about the future defence.

Here are some of my latest PhD tweets that nicely illustrate this last phase of dissertation writing:

• Writing a PhD is filled with many ups and downs. Yesterday I was down – today I’m up. Please remind me of this tomorrow! #PhD #dissertation

• Note to self! #PhD RT @TDDissertation #Dissertation Writing Tip # 20: You made it this far for a reason. Have confidence in your writing!

• A must RT from @phdcomics: #worldcup vs. #PhD: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1329

• Trying to sum up this part of my analysis on “Youthful emotions in public space” – seems like a never-ending task :-) #PhD

• Best #PhD tip of the day: RT @TDDissertation Reward yourself for small writing accomplishments by doing something you enjoy. #dissertation

• Which font should I use for my #PhD thesis? #procrastination

• Yellow post-its overload in office! #PhD

• :-) RT @phdcomics ‘A story in file names’ http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1323

• Just fell asleep in a Fatboy in my office… #Sundayafternoon #PhD

• Revisiting my motive analysis #PhD #Sundaymorning

• #Fridaynight #PhD

• Have ran out of yellow post its #PhD

• Ahh – the joy of copy/pasting from things you’ve already written #PhD

And here are two ‘must-follow’ accounts on Twitter for PhD students:

@phdcomics: http://twitter.com/phdcomics

@TDDissertation: http://twitter.com/TDDissertation

Happy #PhD tweeting! :-)

“When Avatars Go On Facebook”

In this paper, I explore what happens when virtual communities expand their avatar-based internal relations to the context of the online social networking of Facebook. This is based on an empirical study of two different online communities in which members have expanded, or in some cases, moved their relationships from being relatively anonymous in the context of the community to presenting more of their offline lives in the context of Facebook.

I focus specifically on the communicative strategies which members of these communities employ in order to distinguish between both online and offline selves and between their avatar/alter ego in the community and the offline person they present themselves as on Facebook. How does the communication between members as well as the communication of personal identity differ in these two contexts, and how are the boundaries of informativity managed?

The broader discussion that this study leads to involve questions such as: What does “private identity” mean in the context of the various possibilities of self-representation on the web? And what consequences does this have for the researcher as a participant observer who must respect the anonymity of her object of study?

I am really looking forward to participating in my fourth Internet Research conference. It is usually a vibrant, relaxed and inspiring experience, and I learn something new every time.

Annette is working with blogging in an organisational context and gave an interesting presentation on her case, data and how she is planning to use Clarke’s situational maps when coding, mapping and categorising her data. You can learn more from her PhD blog.

The situational maps are exactly the parts of Clarke’s framework I have integrated in my PhD project. Here, I am using Scollon & Scollon’s (2004) Nexus Analysis as a methodological and theoretical framework. As a first step in a Nexus Analysis the Scollons suggest that you make broad-stroke maps of your field and the many discourse cycles that are circulating through the moment of social action you are studying. I think Clarke’s maps are useful tools when engaging in such a task, since the point is to map out “the complex situations of inquiry broadly conceived” (Clarke & Friese, 2007, p. 366). Both Clarke and the Scollons believe that ‘context’ should be understood and treated as something that exists within the siuation of inquiry (and not as mere background). Therefore, I think the two frameworks go well together and the combination has worked for me when trying to sketch out maps of young people’s use of social network sites in Denmark.

You can learn more and see the slides from my presentation here (at the last slide I have included a list of references.):

We are eight PhD students with very different academic backgrounds competing to be ‘Research Communicator of the Year’. We each have three minutes to present our research in a vivid and enthralling manner whereupon the audience and a panel of judges will vote two of us in the final. The three judges will provide us with comments and rate us after each performance. In this way, the competition very much resembles a talent show and even though I am used to giving talks and presenting my research I think it will be a huge challenge presenting under these conditions.

Read more about the competition here (in Danish).

I have prepared two presentations on ‘The Digital Youth Culture’ and ‘Youthful Emotions in Public Space’. I will let you know how it turns out :-)

Update: I came in on a shared third place. See press coverage of the event here, here and here.

I think the videos are great for fostering discussions at home or in school. Check out other videos from Cyberhus’ YouTube page or become a fan on Facebook.

Follow the hashtag #SID10 on Twitter.

DR is inspired by for instance BBC’s The Open University or Ted.com and has created a website where all lectures can be viewed and discussed.

I have been involved in filming two 20-25 minutes lectures which were broadcast a couple of days ago. In both of the lectures I talk about social network sites and my own research on youth and new media. In the first lecture I focus mainly on defining SNS and in the second I highlight central concepts and research results explaining the popularity of the phenomenon. Both lectures can be viewed here (they are in Danish, though).

I like the idea of communicating research results in this manner (it’s nice with more than 20 seconds of airtime) and I plan to record more talks when I have handed in the dissertation.

For us it’s important to have privacy online to protect ourselves from people we don’t know. […] We want it to be easy and simple for us to change our personal settings when it is needed. In general it is hard to find out how to protect ourselves the best. We want to be the boss of who can see our profile.”

I think that privacy is going to be a big issue among youth – especially, now that they have to “share” social network sites such as Facebook with their parents.

Read more on the youth panel’s blog or read the full letter here.