Dr Melissa Gregg, Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies

Dr Melissa Gregg

Dr Melissa Gregg has won $55,000 to investigate just how much the internet and mobile technologies are blurring our public and private lives and creating real benefits.

Dr Gregg, from UQ’s Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, will follow the technology habits at work and home of 30 white-collar workers in Brisbane during the next three years.

She said people were increasingly being more intimate online by sharing their identities and personal information through social networking sites such as MySpace, Flickr, and blogs.

“In online communities, relationships become part of the CV for which you are judged and the testimonials of contacts are central to maintaining status,” she said.

“If I look attractive and interesting enough to enough people, then I will get a wider group of friends or contacts that I can then draw upon for further developments in my life.”

She said her goal was to inform online policy and provide material for a book about online communities. She also wants to show employers how their employees are using technologies and how often online networking translates into real benefits such as friendships, job offers or other business.

“People are constantly updating their online profiles, which is a new form of labour, because they’re investing in themselves for future, unknown benefits,” she said.

“It’s too early to know yet whether the amount of time people are spending doing this is really going to translate into traditional outcomes for labour – that is, secure employment or a reputation that you can trade for a good salary,” she said.

Dr Gregg, an Australian Research Council Discovery Postdoctoral Fellow, said it wasn’t just young people using these networking sites.

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