Online Social Networking on Campus: Understanding What Matters in Student Culture

In the era of such online spaces as Facebook, Instant Messenger, Live Journal, Blogger, Web Shots, and campus blogs, college students are using these resources and other online sites as a social medium. Inevitably, this medium presents students with ethical decisions about social propriety, self disclosure and acceptable behaviour. Because online social networking sites have proven problematic for college students and for college administrators, this book aims to offer professional guidance to Higher Education administrators and policy makers. Online Social Networking on Campus: Understanding what matters in student culture is a professional guide for Higher Education faculty and Student Affairs administrators, which rigorously examines college students’ use of online social networking sites and how they use these to develop relationships both on and off campus. Most importantly, Online Social Networking on Campus investigates how college students use online sites to explore and makes sense of their identities. Providing information taken from interviews, surveys and focus group data, the book presents an ethnographic view of social networking that will help Student Affairs administrators, Information Technology administrators, and faculty better understand and provide guidance to the "neomillennials" on their campuses.

Ana M. Martínez Alemán is Associate Professor of Education and Chair of the Department of Educational Administration and Higher Education at the Lynch School of Education, Boston College. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Higher Education, the Review of Higher Education, Educational Theory, and Teachers College Record, and other scholarly journals. She has contributed to Women in Academe: The Unfinished Agenda (2008), Gendered Futures in Higher Education: Critical Perspectives for Change (2003) and Feminist Interpretations of John Dewey (2002). She is the co-author (with Kristen A. Renn) of Women in Higher Education: An Encyclopedia (2002).

Katherine Lynk Wartman is a PhD candidate at Boston College where her research interests include college student culture, the first-year experience, college access, and the parent-student relationship. She is also a resident director at Simmons College in Boston, MA and has served as Parent and Family Relations and Special Projects Administrator at Colby-Sawyer College. She is the co-author (with Marjorie B. Savage) of Parental Involvement in Higher Education; Understanding the Relationship among Students, Parents, and the Institution (2008), a volume in the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) Higher Education Report Series.

Preface

Chapter 1 Introduction: Campus Life Online
Chapter 2 Emergence and Acceleration: Computer-Mediated Communication and the College Student


The rise of the technological generation and the construction of individual identity and college culture


Internet history and use


Development of online social networking sites


Social networking sites as cultural phenomenon: Generally and on campus


College Student Identity: Issues and research on online social networking sites


Chapter 3 Students Speak: Campus Culture, Identity and Facebook


Facebook Primer


What Students Report about Their Facebook Use



Student Portraits



Kris


Jordan


Teresa


Matthew


Our Observations


Chapter 4 The New Campus Reality: Facebook and Student Affairs Practice


Do Administrators Belong on Facebook?


Student Leaders as Cultural Translators


Orienting Students to Campus Culture, both Real and Online


Supporting Student Development in the Expanding Campus Community


Chapter 5 The Future of the Campus Social Graph


What is the future of online social networking on campus?


Changing demographic of Facebook and Online Social Networks


Global Growth


New Niche Users


Post Script


References
Glossary
Index
Author Biographies