First-generation students and college: The role of Facebook networks as information sources

GYJ Jeon, NB Ellison, B Hogan… - Proceedings of the 19th …, 2016 - dl.acm.org
Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative …, 2016dl.acm.org
Social network site (SNS) platforms have the potential to be effective information-seeking
channels due to their technical and social affordances, such as the ability to broadcast
content to a large group and to aggregate one's contacts. This study tests the impact of a
Facebook app that allows users to visualize their network of Facebook Friends to see how it
influences who adolescents identify as good sources of information about college.
Comparing Friends selected by 24 high school seniors before and after viewing Facebook …
Social network site (SNS) platforms have the potential to be effective information-seeking channels due to their technical and social affordances, such as the ability to broadcast content to a large group and to aggregate one's contacts. This study tests the impact of a Facebook app that allows users to visualize their network of Facebook Friends to see how it influences who adolescents identify as good sources of information about college. Comparing Friends selected by 24 high school seniors before and after viewing Facebook network visualizations reveals that first-generation students were more likely to select higher quality information sources among their Facebook Friends after exposure to the visualization. Our results suggest that social media can help users identify good human information sources by making hidden resources in one's network more visible.
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