Actual title: First Year Students in a Foreign Fabric: A Triangulation Study on Facebook as a Method of Coping/Adjustment
Abstract:
As American high school seniors graduate and prepare to attend college, these students must change in order to adapt to the new rituals that higher education presents. Teens, for the most part, leave their family structure and their normal everyday routines to pursue a degree and a chance for a good paying job. However, these students can be unsure about their new collegiate environment. They can feel scared about moving away from their family, friends and their local community. More teens are looking at online social networks, primarily Facebook, to gain awareness of the surroundings that they are moving into. Since the advent of online social networks, there has been little research regarding how students are using this new channel of communication to adapt to the collegiate culture. This dissertation will document my triangulation study of American first-year college students’ use of Facebook as a mode of adapting to college life and how their participation on Facebook relates to their “real world” interactions.
The focus of this research will explain three of the core functions of Facebook as they relate to the development of a first year college student; (1) Facebook as a “stream of awareness” for the student, (2) Facebook as a point of engagement between the student and the collegiate environment and (3) Facebook as a “real world” community builder. These functions will be explored through the use of three methods: a survey exploring how Facebook is helping first year college students adapt and cope to their new lives on campus; a series of interviews addressing the issues that first year students are facing on campus, and the relationship between those issues and the students’ online presentation, and a guided ethnography study of students’ Facebook profiles with a focus on how students’ online presentation impacts their everyday lives on campus.
The dissertation concludes with an analysis of the functionality of Facebook and places that analysis within the context of the disciplines and theoretical framework introduced in the beginning of the dissertation.
Subjects: Communication; Design; Higher Education; Information Science; Mass Media; Sociology; Web Studies
Keywords: online social network; higher education; guided ethnography; design theory; Midwestern United States; collegiate culture
scandiwhovian liked this
silnan reblogged this from clickbaitphd
shanetilton liked this
convenientinternetdiary liked this
lizabeckerman liked this
marcelladuchamp liked this
Shane Tilton submitted this to clickbaitphd