The Different Roles of Social Networks
People’s views on the roles social networks can fulfill show the open mindedness they keep towards them, and it can have an influence on how they use them and what they share, which is an element on their behavioral pattern. For the participants of this study, there was a complete agreement on that even when primarily seen and intended for entertainment and communication, social networks can indeed fulfill many roles. Roles are platform dependent and most of the social networks are designed for entertainment and communication, because more or less that’s what they do: you collect friends and then entertain them and yourself by communicating what are you doing and reading what are they doing. Entertainment is one thing we need, with all our daily activities. The time we spend in social networks, if we don’t abuse it, can serve as that moment we need of catharsis or relax, away from daily issues. Communication, in the other hand, is one of the main and most common human activities and the role or purpose we use this communication for is on the “eye of the beholder.” Our purposes in social networks are determined in the measure we see that they are versatile enough to fulfill different roles. As Buckley (2009) stated (see section 2.2.1), the personal and work roles can be blurred, social networks can be used for both of them and it’s not clear where the limits of each role are. One student and one professor raised the issue that the possible potential social networks’ have to fulfill other roles have not fully developed. They have mostly been used for entertainment, communication and probably shallow chitchat. Some different uses have been explored by social network tools, from a more professional side with LinkedIn. In the library and information science field also, there have been some instances where they have tried to do marketing of library services by making Facebook sites for libraries. It seems that only time will tell if social networks can be an effective marketing tool and if they can be successfully applied in educational and working environments.
Finally, there was an anecdote that is worth mentioning here related by the 7th participant about social networks taking other roles, in this case is about a national encyclopedia being discontinued and some discussions for Wikipedia to take its place.
In […] there is a big discussion because the […] national encyclopedia has been discontinued and there is a question of should the state take over the database of the encyclopedia and keep it alive. For instance, based on contributions of the universities, or should we say now we have Wikipedia so we don’t really have any more need for the National Encyclopedia. There are two legitimate voices: the voice of the university professor who writes the encyclopedia article and this is what has been the basis for the National Encyclopedia for some 50 years and it is the voice of the interested public who has their opinion on what is important of a bird or a person. I think any kind of institution will be wise to allow these two kinds of voices to be heard. [Int. 7]
It can be a good decision to put similar efforts which were traditionally used in the edition of the national encyclopedia into the Wikipedia site of that country. It can also represent some way to save resources as no paper would be involved and no other costs related to traditional publishing either. I think it can be a good experiment if the people traditionally involved with a national encyclopedia contribute their know-how in building it again into a model like the one Wikipedia has. Also as the professor states, it can allow different voices to be heard, voices that can be as valid as the traditional ones. They could contribute in a special way for example in the works of literature of the country, its oral tradition and history, which are very valuable assets of a nation’s culture.