Combine 300 million active members, 40 million daily status updates, 2 billion photos and 3 million events created each month, and you get the world’s largest social network: Facebook.com.
Social networking websites such as Facebook, MySpace.com and Twitter.com have inevitably become the mainstream, now hosting everyone from students, to parents, to world leaders, to even university professors.
Richard Sigurdson, dean of the faculty of arts and professor of political studies, is a blogger, and also admits to being on Twitter, but is not an active user.
Sigurdson said he began using Facebook to reconnect with high school classmates and as a means of communicating with his kids.
“My Facebook site has limited utility for me professionally, except as a means to keep in contact with some colleagues,” he said. Nevertheless, Sigurdson recognizes that for some, social networking sites provide effective means of communicating about professional matters.
“Some academics have used their Facebook accounts to interact with colleagues across the globe. Others create closed Facebook groups for students, encouraging them to use the platform to get to know one another in a ‘safe’ online environment,” he said.
According to Dr. Michael Geist, a Law Professor at the University of Ottawa, as well as an internationally known columnist on technology law issues, Facebook has potential. “It can be a tool for advocacy and education as well as a mechanism for student groups to connect,” he said.
Ben Kolisnyk, a political studies Master’s student and teaching assistant at U of M agrees. He also sees the value of using Facebook as an online forum for communication with students.
By creating groups and sharing information related to a specific course, the site could prove useful. But when it comes to his personal expenditures, Kolisnyk feels that he spends enough time on his email, “I feel that if I were to use a social network, it would become a huge time consumer,” he said.
While there continues to be mounting interest in Facebook and social networking software in general among university professors, there are still some who are skeptical of the trend.
David Martin, professor of psychology at U of M, mentions significant concerns about the privacy of such sites, “With so much personal information online, and much or most of it archived virtually forever, the potential for misuse is enormous.”
Martin continues, “I choose to avoid such sites because I can get my needs met through other channels.” However, Martin acknowledges the fact that social network sites can be great tools, as long as users are aware of privacy features.
In September 2008, Concordia University in Montreal took the step of blocking campus access to Facebook for students and faculty, declaring concerns about spam and the disclosure of confidential information via Facebook. The universities logic was criticized, leading to media coverage by the CBC, the Gazette, the McGill Daily and other news outlets. In May of this year, Concordia officially unblocked Facebook.
Geist is firm in his belief that it is wrong for universities to ban access to legal websites. Sigurdson holds similar views, “When the telephone was first introduced, many workplaces banned the device [ . . . ] Of course that didn’t work out too well. I feel that banning social networking sites would be equally futile today.”
He continues, “Prohibition has never proved to be a useful policy when you’re dealing with something so ubiquitous.”
It is true that for some, a site such as Facebook still has a long way to prove itself. However, while the merits of such sites are open to deliberation, there is no debating the fact that many professionals, including professors, continue to infiltrate the realm of social utilities at high speeds.
Dr. James Joyner, a political science professor mentions in his blog, “[Facebook] provides profs with a previously unavailable intelligence avenue, which can both help provide useful insights for counseling students but also, make it harder for students to get away with lies about dead grandparents.”
