A University of Queensland researcher is investigating just how much the internet and mobile technologies are blurring our public and private lives and creating real benefits.
Dr Melissa 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.
“The idea is for them to describe what technologies they use in each location and what kinds of activities they do on a regular basis,” Dr Gregg said.
She said people were increasingly being more intimate online by sharing their identities and personal information through social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Radar 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 a wider network of contacts that I can then draw upon for further developments in my life.”
Dr Gregg 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 ventures and social activities.
People are constantly updating their online profiles, which is a new form of labour, because they’re investing in themselves for future, unknown benefits.
“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 in 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 as people of all ages and backgrounds were involved.
She said moral panic over youth being at risk at these sites was misplaced.
Dr Gregg is a finalist in the 2007 UQ Foundation Research Excellence Awards and Research Supervision Awards, to be announced at Brisbane Customs House on September 18.
Now in their ninth year, the UQ Foundation Research Excellence Awards, worth $505,000 in 2007, recognise outstanding performance and leadership potential, and form part of UQ Research Week (September 17–21).
Media inquiries: Miguel Holland at UQ Communications on 07 3365 2619.
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