考研阅读精选：如何通过Facebook研究人们
『研究者可以通过Facebook对人们的健康以及社会潮流等问题进行研究，但是也有研究者质疑其数据的真实性。』Walls Have Eyes: How Researchers Are Studying You on Facebook
隔墙有眼：研究人员如何通过Facebook研究人们
Nov 14th 2011 | from Time
Before he became the new face of right-wing extremism in Europe, AndersBehring Breivik was just another guy airing his anti-immigration viewsonline. On Monday, Breivik, who admitted to a killing spree in Norwaywhich left 77 people dead, faced his first public-court hearing. WhileBreivik may have acted alone, he was far from alone in cyberspace: hehad spent much of the time leading up to his attack at his computer,chatting with some of the millions of nationalists who supportright-wing groups on social-networking sites. After this summer"stragedy, researchers wanted to find out more about these people. But howto find them? Easy — just log on to Facebook.
"We realizedthat it wasn't that difficult to get to them at all," says JamieBartlett, the lead author of a recently published report on Europeandigital populism. Facebook's stash of personal information is soencyclopedic, says Bartlett, that the researchers could simply use thesite's advertising tool to pinpoint their desired demographic withscientific accuracy — the way marketers have been doing for years.Bartlett's team found half a million fans of right-wing groups acrossEurope and then targeted them with ads, but instead of linking to a newband or diet product, the ads invited users to complete a survey thatasked questions about their education level, attitudes toward violenceand optimism about their own future.
By reaching out throughFacebook, Bartlett and his colleagues were able to survey over 10,000followers of 14 far-right parties in 11 European countries — all withoutever leaving the office. "It's quite a new way of doing research,"Bartlett says.
Bartlett' s work is just one example of howFacebook is becoming a hot new tool in the hands of scientists. Thinktanks, medical researchers and political scientists are using the siteto study everything from health issues to social trends
Forsome researchers, the beauty of Facebook is that it lets you studypeople you couldn't approach with a clipboard on the street. "Before,when you tried to survey people from the British National Party, itwould be very difficult to identify them. You'd have to go through theparty, and they would never allow you access," says Bartlett. "Facebookcuts all that out — you go to them directly."
Others say thesite could offer a way to identify and tackle social-health problems. Arecent study by Dr. Megan Moreno and her colleagues found thatundergraduates who discussed their drunken exploits on Facebook weresignificantly more at risk for problem drinking than students who weresilent on the topic.
Moreno suggests that students' peerscould monitor the site and intervene to help a student who posts one toomany boozy Status Updates.
There's no guarantee that aresearch subject is being completely honest even off-line. On Facebook,it's impossible to know how much of a user's profile information andWall posts are true. "What you say on Facebook and what you do outsideof Facebook are two completely different things," says Neil Selwyn, asociologist. Which is why, despite his years as a technology researcher,Selwyn thinks a clipboard and a pen are still the best research toolsanyone can use. "There's no substitute for going into the real world andspeaking to real people," he says. "Social research is supposed to beabout the social — and a hell of a lot of the social still takes placeoffline." (639 words)
文章地址：http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2099409,00.html
页:
[1]