Facebook

Our BSc Information Management first year students presented their project posters yesterday, the results of small-scale studies. A couple of the groups were looking at Facebook. One group asked other information management students about their use of Facebook. Interestingly, 40% were not concerned about who could access their profile, and a similar number were not concerned about employers accessing their profiles (looking at comments from respondents it seems like a few people were thinking about the issues more after doing the questionnaire!). However it seemed some were restricting access to profiles or putting in minimal information.

Another group was investigating whether sports groups at Sheffield University used Facebook. Basically the small one (tennis) didn't, and of the larger groups (rugby and football) one didn't think Facebook was useful and had created its own website and the other did use a Facebook group: it would be interesting to investigate "why" a bit more closely. I have put up the posters on the sky platform on our Second Life island (Infolit iSchool) so you can look at them inworld if you have an avatar - that's what's in the picture. There are also posters about e.g. students' use of library resources.