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Facebook for self-empowerment?  A study of Facebook adoption in urban India

Describe: The article is based on an ethnographic study conducted on socioeconomically disadvantaged communities in India among their youth.  India, which is the second largest user of Facebook, is a developing countries that has used this platform in a unique way. The purpose of this study is to help fill a gap in the current research on, the emerging practices of new technology adapters.  Easier access through mobile phones, youth around the world have more access to the internet.  Especially in countries like India, where owning your own computer in a luxury, the use of mobile access has increased access to platforms like Facebook.  Due to the lack of employment in India many youth have large amount of waiting time, with this time they have engaged in three stage which the author calls: aspiration, avenues and agency.  As the authors states, “aspiration gets created first, frequently driven by peer pressure and the thirst for leisure. Next avenues are cleared to achieve these aspirations.  Finally, the agency of these youth leads them to pursue he avenues relentlessly until their aspiration are indeed archived.”  The main finding of this research was that, regardless of their disadvantaged situation, the youth in India were using Facebook as an outlet of fulfilling their aspirations. Facebook was a tool for self-empowerment due to the access to the worldwide network

In the article, "Sorting Places Out? Towards a Social Politics of Neighbourhood Informatization", Roger Burrows and Nick Ellison discuss how urban policy and planning have been virtually absent in modern day times. They also examine the consequences and after math of online Geographical Information System (GIS) for the social policies. Burrows and Ellison not only argue how not only social citizenship and is understood in terms of proactive and reactive engagement, but also how virtual decisions can effect the overall public sphere and the shaping of these communities. 

The authors pointed out how the Internet plays an important role to the adult immigrant. They listed out the impacts and benefit of the Internet in the elder immigrant’s life in a different country. It helps immigrant people, especially old people, in managing health, nurturing their professional interests, maintaining and extending their social networks in current countries and in their hometown, and enjoying leisure on the Internet. Obviously, people usually have an extremely stressful life and hard time at the very first with everything whenever they move to a different place to live. They have a hard time to adapt to the new environment because of the differences in languages, culture, people, and many other perspectives.

However, the Internet helps the immigrant a lot in connection and assist immigrant with languages and social networks. The authors mentioned how Internet helps immigrant, especially old immigrant in managing their health. They have a very hard time to understand what the doctor said and they barely get the full meaning of what the doctor told them; so they ask doctor to write down for them and they use the Internet as a translator for them so they could fully understand of the instruction. Also, the Internet helps the to extend their socialization with new people through networking sites and also keep in touch with people in their home country. The new immigrant can go online and do research about their new places so that they can easily get to know about the background and the culture of their new environment. Especially with old people, who cannot really go out and seek to know new places, they can stay home and keep in touch with their families or they can enjoy their leisure through the Internet. The habit of enjoying leisure on the Internet helps the old people to expand existing interest and explore new ones, which facilitating self-expansion and self-reinvention. It also helps old people feel less isolation and loneliness to the real world by enable them to keep in touch with their relatives and make new friends online.

In the article, CouchSurfing: Belonging and Trust in a Globally Cooperative Online Social Network,b Rosen, Lafontaine and Henderson discuss a study in which the popular social media website CouchSurfing.com is the topic of investigation. The three main components of their study include looking at the sense of belonging, connectedness and trust these users have to build in their online relationships with each other. 

For those of you that do not know, CouchSurfing is a popular site that members use when looking for hospitality accommodations when traveling world-wide. They are able to be connected with other members that are willing to let them into their home for a period of time. Although this might seem a little odd to some, many members of the site find a sense of belonging through using this method. If you have not met this person face-to-face a sense of trust must be made between the two parties. This is build through one's online profile and identity - how they portray themselves to be online.

- The authors are trying to give an argument about how social media, specifically Facebook, affects students' relationship with friends and families. The research is focusing solely on international students. During significant changes such as moving to another school, learning a new language, moving to a new country, what kind of effects do Facebook have on students' new and old relationships. 

- The author did try to make an argument. However, there seems to be many faults inside the research method itself. The most important on those is the fact that different country has different social network site. For example: China uses QQ while America uses Facebook. The research was based solely on Facebook. They did not take in account for the fact that students do not necessarily have to use facebook to communicate with people. Additionally, there was such a small amount of reply to the survey (8.6%). The results that came out were almost insignificant. It was not big enough for the research to talk about the whole international student community.