WEEK 10 BLOG POST – WHEN COUPLES FIGHT ON FACEBOOK, EVERYONE KNOWS THE SCORE

Hey guys, here's my blog post for week 10.

I found this article on the New York Times website and thought it was relevant to the endless discussions about facebook in (and out of) class that I’m sure we all have. It basically appealed to me because I hate it when people publicise every little part of their lives on facebook, especially when they fight with their boyfriend/girlfriend where all their friends can see. So yeah, that’s why I chose this article.

RELEVANCE:

I feel this article is extremely relevant to the unit as from week one, every discussion in tutorials always finds a way of coming back to facebook (well most of the time anyways) and this shows how big a part of our lives facebook actually is, wether we have our own profile or not. This article isn’t entirely ripe with new, or even very useful information, but it does contribute another opinion and discussion topic to the unit. It also supports many of the ideas about social interactions and practices in contemporary society that we have come up with in class.

One point that this article raises, which is particularly relevant to this unit, is the issue of privacy, especially on facebook. This article claims that online privacy is a fickle thing, and some people value it more than others and I agree with this point. It is evident, when some people post status updates of what they are doing every second, while you barely see any updates from others.

Im not sure if I would use this article when forming an argument, but I think it would be a good source to refer back to, or even use as a real life example to offer support to an argument.

CRITICAL EVALUATION:

1. Character

The source I’ve chosen, titled I Need to Vent. Hello, Facebook, is a secondary, online news article published on the New York Times website.

2. Currency

The article was published on the 17^th march 2010 in New York, which makes it current and relevant for research.

3. Intention

The author of the article is a man named Douglas Quenqua, a writer for the New York Times. The article is generally aimed at facebook users, but it could be narrowed down to those users who are married/in a reletionship.

4. Author

The author, Douglas Quenqua, is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn, New York.

The article was published in the New York Times by editor Bill Keller and publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr. it is circulated to approximately one million people daily, thus this article would have been widely read.

Quenqua, Douglas. 2010. 'I Need To Vent, Hello Facebook', The New York Times, 17th March, viewed on 06/10/2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/18/fashion/18facebook.html?scp=29&sq=facebook&st=cse>