Before I blog about Wednesday's reading, I thought I'd put this up - a political cartoon I saw get linked to on (funnily enough) Facebook. Reminded me of some of what we've read in Turkle and Baym. I don't really find it funny myself, but it's definitely relevant to the subject!
You're right, it's only funny in a dark sort of way. But it does capture well one of the fears some critics have of SNS--that we only think we have close relationships there, but when the chips are down, we find that those relationships aren't as meaningful as we thought. Not sure if the PEW study can dispel that or not--it suggests people who use FB more, report more close friends, but are we fooling ourselves? Combined with how many new users there are on FB, maybe we should be cautious--do the positive effects in the study reflect new user enthusiasm? In another five years, will we still feel the same way?
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