Projects

1) A collaborative book project looking at social media through the experiences of those involved in its use

2) Research paper addressing challenges brought on by the public availability and knowledge of relationships as made possible through social technologies.  Working title:  “Add or Ignore?  Managing Social Connectedness in the Era of Persistent Presence”

3) A collaborative paper about authenticity, celebrities, and companies on Twitter

4) Codename Eternity Project: Using death as a lens for exploring the relationship of social technologies and social presence

5) An educational consulting partnership focused on pedagogical intervention and reconfiguration though social media

6) A Start-Up!? (an idea, but it’s here at the bottom of the list)

Contributing To:

- Core member of #ecosysEDU- an online collaborative project looking at educational ecosystem change

- #smchat a weekly online engagement about social media.  See http://smchat.ning.com/

- Project focused on influencer marketing & trust communities

Dissertation:

Persistently Present: College Students, Social-Mobile Technologies, and the Transformation of Social Life.

Persistently Present argues that we need to more fully reassess our thinking about the relationship(s) between social connectedness and technologically mediated forms of communication (particularly social-mobile technologies). Noting that contemporary social life is marked by connections that are more flexible, accessible, negotiable, and persistent because communication opportunities are nearly constant, I argue that social-mobile technologies are shifting and reconfiguring the ways that students build and maintain their social relationships. Within this environment social-mobile technologies are effectively serving as tools of social extensibility, allowing individuals to expand, enhance, and extend their social presence. As a result, these technologies are altering the when, where, and how (contexts) of contemporary connectedness and interactions.  The concept of social extensibility is investigated across four important and interdependent
areas that emerged in my data and the related literature: connectivity, virtual spaces, non-spaces, and expressiveness.