About Us
This project is no longer active. This page is an overview of what it used to entail.
The Facebook Project is a collaborative research effort dedicated to documenting, understanding, and utilizing the social networking service Facebook.com. Our group is made up of several individuals who come from a variety of backgrounds and interests. At this time the scope of the endeavor is broad, encompassing studies of many of the intricacies and facets of Facebook using a multi-method and multi-disciplinary approach. Students will find the website to be a helpful resource as well as a potential place to post their work and connect to others interested in studying Facebook.
Still have questions? Wondering why Facebook? Not interesting in reading the whole page? Check the FAQ's!
The Project Overview
The Facebook Project is a bit of a hodge-podge effort between various academics and other interested parties. It acts as a nexus, linking to various resources, research projects, and perspectives and at the same time seeks to unite everything under one roof.
As stated, our intention is to assist interested parties in several ways. The site serves as a place of much writing and research about Facebook. In a sense it is an archive of studies, varying greatly in scope and quality. At the same time it goes beyond simple collection of information to discussion and analysis, sometimes in limited form by one researcher on their own topic, and other times with the involvement of several individuals. Finally, we wish to be a place where enthusiasts can learn to really employ Facebook - in teaching, research, in libraries, or perhaps just for fun.
This site is designed, at root, to be a resource. We invite you to exploit it to its fullest extent, and if the desire strikes you, by all means get involved. Together we can make this place truly effective and meaningful. To this end - happy hunting!
History
The Facebook Project actually has its roots set in Jeff Ginger's career as an undergraduate student at the University of Illinois, back in 2006. He had a chance to take a senior seminar graduate course with Andy Pickering, a well recognized professor in Science and Technology studies. The first revision of the project contained a rather simple but effective explanation of Facebook.com, snowball sample and survey, quasi-ethnographic analysis, and groundwork for future research. Jeff then later ressurected the project in graduate school and created a new, larger survey which was sent out to a random sampling from the school. Over the couse of a few semesters the project outgrew its simple website and dataset and was updated and expanded to encompass research related to a number of studies, papers, and classes. Upon completion of his Masters work in Sociology Jeff decided to switch the site over to a collaborative open format and connect to the greater community.