New Media Research Tool

TheirSpace : a Social Network Profile Generator

 

TheirSpace, a social network profile generator, would be a tool for users to track the emergence of their informational bodies/identities, as well as for researchers to track how users respond to the many issues that are exposed through engagement with the tool. By tracking a user’s cookies and online interactions over the course of a period of time, the tool would then generate a social profile for the user, of the same general design as those created for online social networks. Information would be gathered the same way online marketers gather information – through tracking and data mining. In addition to information gathered from its tracking properties, the tool would have a web crawler function which would give it the ability to appropriate any other public information about the user that existed on the Internet, and display this in their profile. For instance, if the user had a public Flickr account, the tool could use a random image from their Flickr account to place as their profile image.

The tool would be programmed to generate the social profile in the personal vernacular of social network profiles, so that it would seem as realistic as possible, and not just a mechanic categorization/listing of informational attributes; this is to aide engagement with and impact of the tool. The profile would then be aggregated into a faux-social network of informational bodies – all users would be given access to this network to view their profiles. The faux-social network would simulate the operation of real online social networks. On each user’s page, they would automatically have a social and corporate network generated for them, based on their profiles. That is, they would automatically be “friends” with other users who had similar informational bodies as well as to artificial corporate entities (the corporations will be real corporations, but have no actual affiliation with the network). To preserve sensitive information, a user’s social network would not automatically be able to view their profile; the user would have the option to grant access to their profile information after reviewing and revising it to exclude extremely sensitive information. The user would be asked to leave as much information in their profile as possible without causing personal detriment, for the purposes of the project.

The user’s corporate network would be comprised of those businesses that would target them in real life based on their informational profiles. Users would be able to visit the profiles of their corporate network, where the profiles, again, would follow the general vernacular of social network profiles, and indeed corporate branded identities, so that the corporate entities would be treated as if they were individuals (just like in real life). However, the corporate representations would not just be a regurgitation of their brand image, but would also reveal in-depth, real information on the target demographics and marketing techniques of that particular corporation. A newsfeed function, similar to that of Facebook, would feed in real-time fluctuations in the current financial status (market summary) of those corporations in their network. Feedback and discussion would be generated within the faux-social network, through comment and group discussion functions, similar to those on extant social networks. Users will be encouraged to compare their artificial profile with their profiles on real social networks, discuss their reactions with others in the network, and to give their own narrative accounts of their experiences with the tool. For researchers, the tool will also track the user’s interaction within the network – what functions the user engages with, what actions the user takes, how long users spend on corporate profiles, etc.

Perhaps the project would rely on user-engagement, but possible incentives for users to engage further and provide feedback could be access to the full informational log acquired by the tool – the substantial backend to their generated profiles. There will also be a feature that allows users to invite others to engage with the tool.

The tool should externalize the operations of social networks as well as raise a multitude of issues related to online media engagement/production/consumption for the user, including but not limited to: surveillance and privacy issues, the relationship between market forces and social networks, their own informational bodies/informational bodies in general, constructed identities, pervasive marketing, the structural elements and dynamics of networks, etc. The user should come away with a better awareness of their own interaction with online media technologies, and in general, their role as consumer-producer in the “network society.” The tool functions then as both an educational device as well as a research tool – if they are not already one and the same. The researcher will be able to gather both qualitative (user narrative/descriptive accounts of reactions, experiences, thoughts, discussions with other users, etc.) and quantitative (the mapping of user interaction with the faux-social network) data.

This research tool doesn’t actually correlate with my final project. For my final project I thought of a very simple tool that would aid my research (the best one I could think of) – a technology that would allow me to locate virtual crimes in real-time as well as record them, not to mention engage with the “criminals” themselves. The scope of actually designing this tool would be large, but the concept behind it is rather simple, in other words, not something I felt was interesting enough for this particular project