Cambridge Festival of Ideas: "Facebook: Friendship and Social Interaction"

Just received the programme for the inaugural Festival of Ideas in Cambridge, the "arts/humanities/soc-scis" response to the successful Science Festival. One event that looks potentially interesting is an evening panel discussion on social networking, scheduled for 25 October. Titled "Facebook: Friendship and Social Interaction", the panel brings together the Guardian newspaper's UX guru, Meg Pickard, Chris Locke of AOL Europe, Sue Hessey from BT and Cambridge academics David Good and Kathleen Richardson. Soporific? I hope not! Obviously, Facebook is not a fresh subject; yet, as far as I know, this is the first public event focusing on Facebook at Cambridge. I'm curious as to what the panel's take will be on social networks and the creation of social relationships online.

I find it frustrating sometimes that HE seems to be so far behind the curve with SNS -- FE, youth workers, and youth agencies / quangos are just so much more advanced, compared to us. For example, the recently-launched Final Report from the Youth Work and Social Networking Project (which I plan to blog separately) developed a fantastic matrix of youth worker engagement with social networking which could readily be adopted for HE staff development and training. (See p.36 of the Final Report). Higher Education Academy, SEDA, are you listening?

Cambridge students were -- famously -- early adopters of Facebook's social networking technology in the UK. Both the demographics of the student intake at Cambridge (relatively homogeneous in terms of age, educational background, and ethnicity) and institutional culture (especially, the collegiate system) played roles in the site's rapid rise and eventual dominance of the local 'social networking' landscape. A year or two ago, Cambridge was largely an SNS "monoculture", with the possible exception of the international student body - roughly 10% of undergraduate students, more like 50% of postgraduates, who were (and are?) more diverse. At the same time, and basing the following statement on pilot research I conducted with academic staff and students, as well as on personal experience, my sense is that most lecturing staff at Cambridge have limited engagement with social networking sites, and are potentially most likely to encounter them in relation to their own children, not their students. In my initial research, this limited engagement with SNS was particularly evident in the case of "mid-career" academics.

As an institution, we could certainly do more in terms of educating students and staff about the opportunities and risks posed by SNS. I'll look forward to the panel, and to participating in a discussion that I hope will help to engage and motivate people.