Facebook is Academic

I recently subscribed to Twitter, and I'm a bit addicted. I enjoy the fast-paced news updates and snarky remarks NPR commentators post. However, I've realized that some take Twitter very seriously, and continuously update their daily activities. "How self-absorbed!" I initially thought. But then, I considered the ways in which the internet, social networking sites in particular, have become a hub for self-expression. Yet, this self expression is often confined to a strict, unofficial set of parameters, so is this method of self expression enough of a release for us?

The modernists are known for tweaking old forms or calling those forms into question. Sometimes they even created entirely new ways of writing (i.e. Stream of Consciousness). They also were groundbreaking crusaders of the notion that everyday people mattered, and their identities were important. In the digital age, we sometimes feel like each of us has a venue for expressing her identity, but the most popular methods of this expression are constraining and at times anti-individualism.

Ergo...

I have this brilliant idea for a research paper:

Online social networks and Identity formation. I'm thinking of tying it to Ulysses and maybe some other modernist stuff. I have a neat list of connections, etc. that I wrote during class, but it's in the other room in my backpack.

In the interest of Curriculum Vitae-building I need to submit stuff to conferences soon. There's a strong composition/rhetoric trend in the field lately, as well as discussions on integrating new technology in the classroom, so this idea is fitting for those things. Although, I'd rather act like an old codger and only read literature and criticism, boring my students with novels they will never see as relevant to their daily lives.

I may use some of the research Dr. Michael Wesch is doing via his Digital Ethnography course at Kansas State U. That particular project both gathers important research from the field and itself is one of Wesch's pedagogical experiments in integrating digital technology into the classroom.