Session Information
06 SES 14, Leadership and Evaluation
Paper Session
Contribution
Social networking sites (SNSs) have attracted millions of users, many of whom have integrated these sites into their daily practices since their introduction (Boyd&Ellison, 2007). The use of an SNS can allow an individual to find others with similar interests and the other major use of them is to maintain pre-existing social connections (Ross et.al. 2009). As Boyd (2007) claims, SNSs have dramatically changed the underlying architecture of social interaction and information distribution due to the multiple communication channels and complex networks. In support of this view, Lewis et al (2008) confirmed the potential of SNSs as a natural research tool in social sciences regarding the rich material they provide about society and social interaction.
Facebook is one of the most trafficked and the top ranked social networking sites on the Internet with 550 million users as of 2011(Rambe, 2012). It accomodates groups of different professional communities as it is a highly interactive social media platform, which allows users to share their thoughts, ideas, news and any remark that they wish to post. Park et.al (2009) asserts that Facebook Groups is a particularly popular and useful module that allows discussion forums and threads based on common interests and activities and they further enable messages to be easily spread through social networking, diverse political, social, and other special-interest. There is a bulk of research in various areas and previous studies state that a rapidly growing body of research has accompanied the meteoric rise of Facebook as social scientists assess the impact of Facebook on social life (Wilson et.al, 2012). Naturally, practitioners and academics of the educational management and leadership field are also actively engaged in this interactional environment. Hence, there exists a number of groups/pages on Facebook related with and working in the field of educational management and leadership. The members consist of practitioners and academics of the field. It is thought-provoking to read and unravel the postings from these groups, which brings up crucial questions about the nature of the field in both academic and practical terms and its interconnection to politics and other social processes. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to analyze Facebook postings in educational management and leadership related groups in the network of Turkey to explore the motives of the individuals related with and working in the field of educational management and leadership. Subsequently, it aims to unfold the problems, concerns and the current state of the field as they are represented in Facebook interactions and postings. In this respect, the research questions are posed as follows:
- What are the discursive tendencies and motives used in Facebook groups related with the field of educational management and leadership?
- How are practitioners and academics represented in Facebook groups related with the field of educational management and leadership?
- What inferences can be made about the current state of the field through discourses?
- What inferences can be made about the interconnections of the field with other social processes?
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Boyd, D. (2007). Social network sites: Public, private, or what? The Knowledge Tree, 13, 1-7. Boyd, D. & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), 210-230. doi: 10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00393.x Lewis, K., Kaufman, J., Gonzalez, M., Wimmer, A., & Christakis, N. (2008). Tastes, ties, and time: A new social network dataset using Facebook.com. Social Networks, 30(4), 330-342. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socnet.2008.07.002 Park,N., Kee, K.F.& Valenzuela.(2009). Being Immersed in Social Networking Environment: Facebook Groups, Uses and Gratifications, and Social Outcomes .CyberPsychology & Behavior, 12(6), 729-733. doi:10.1089/cpb.2009.0003 Ross, C., Orr, E. S., Sisic, M., Arseneault, J. M., Simmering, M. G., & Orr, R. R. (2009). Personality and motivations associated with Facebook use. Computers in Human Behavior, 25(2), 578-586. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2008.12.024 Van Dijk, T. A. (2003). Critical discourse analysis. In D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen & H. E. Hamilton (Eds.), The Handbook of discourse analysis (Ch. 18). Wiley-Blackwell. http://au.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0631205969.html Wilson, R. E., Gosling, S. D., & Graham, L. T. (2012). A review of Facebook research in the social sciences. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 203-220.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.