Emoticons and IM Status: Fashionable, Functional or Just Fun?
With Instant Messaging, Myspace, and Facebook having features that encourage the use of emoticons and status, I am interested in finding out why most people use them. To be clear, the status is an area where one can leave their current whereabouts for condition for others to read. So, are they merely for fashion (i.e. is it cool to do it?), is it functional to really express your current state, or is it just for fun? I also am interested in finding out if there is a variance between genders in how often one changes their status or what kind of status one uses. This can also go for the use of emoticons between genders.
To include an enthrographic component I would study the status of my friends on facebook, myspace, and Insant messenger to see what they write and how functional/fun/fashionable they may be. I also might interview a few people and ask them about their use of emoticons and status on these various social networking devices. Texting may also be included in emoticon usage. When I say functional I mean that they are using it to seriously convey their current emotional or physical state. Fun would be including videos or random things like jokes. Fashionable might be anything that is used often, like cliché quotes or things that seem done along with a majority.
The status option and use of emoticons definitely fits into our class because it shows the expression of emotion and physical state in a disconnected way. This is one method of communicating personality with, what I feel is interaction, that is not physical. Why would people want other people to know what they were doing, thinking, or feeling? Is it our way of connecting further to others via online social networks?
Gender Issues and IM ---Naomi Baron
http://jls.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/23/4/397
Kinetic Typography-based Instant Messaging---Bodine and Pignol
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=765891.766067&type=series
Information Revelation and Privacy in Online Social Networks---Acquisti and Gross
http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/~acquisti/papers/privacy-facebook-gross-acquisti.pdf
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