When Facebook first created a Wesleyan network in 2004, Jenny Ryan ’08 was hesitant to join. Now, she is completing a master’s thesis in Anthropology about this same social networking site.

“I’ve always liked to pretend I’m a really tech-savvy chick who turns her nose up at the latest ’Internet fad,’” she said. “But it was actually a fun, slick, cool site, so I caved pretty quickly.”

Ryan’s master’s thesis is an ethnography of Facebook, MySpace, and Tribe.net“a lesser-known social networking site often visited by artists. The thesis explores these sites’ histories and broader social effects, as well as their ability to serve as “online shrines” of the dead. Additionally, Ryan delves into her personal relationship with the Internet for the last decade.

“Back in the beginning, I used it mostly to find out who else was in my classes, which had both practical and not-so-practical uses, and to get pleasure out of watching my friend count rise and my wall grow littered with inside jokes,” she said. “These days, I use Facebook mainly to keep in touch with my friends, who by now have mostly graduated and dispersed across the world.”

Ryan initially intended to pursue a more traditional Anthropology path, hoping to travel to Zanzibar and conduct fieldwork there; however, she soon learned that writing ethnography of the “other” felt condescending to her.

Her interest in Facebook was born after writing a paper on it in the spring of 2006, and since then it has spiraled into eight research projects, not including her thesis.

“When I wrote my first paper on Facebook, I was struck by the way in which my own experiences resonated in my writing, and how the words of others challenged and complicated my perspective with layers of meaning,” she said. “I realized the ethnographic authority in my own position as a ’native’ of an emergent ’other.’”

Although Facebook may be a new and interesting “other,” Ryan explained that the site hasn’t actually changed social interactions as much as some might claim.

“We’re not really communicating about anything novel”we are still primarily concerned with image management, romance, popularity and maintaining social bonds,” she said. “Facebook, like the mobile phone, extends our ability to communicate with our social networks.”

Gitanjali Prasad ’08, who uses Facebook primarily to keep in touch with her friends from her hometown of New Delhi, India, similarly looks to Facebook for increased communication.

“I don’t think it has decreased human interaction in any way,” she said. “It has only affected social interactions in that we can communicate with more people.”

Prasad explained that Facebook has actually enabled her to call or Skype with her overseas friends more often, as it allows them a forum with which to plan these more personal interactions.

“E-mail is more personal, even though it’s not personal at all,” she said. “But Facebook is more practical for people who are far away from each other.”

Ryan agreed, explaining that perhaps the only big change Facebook brings is a change in medium.

“To invoke that famous McLuhanism, ’The medium is the message,’ that is, the only things that have really changed are the tools themselves,” she said. “Most of the advantages Facebook affords us can just as easily be seen as disadvantages: it’s sweet that you can scope out new crushes and enjoy their publicly available photos, but it’s equally common to find people using the site to make quick and often negative judgments about others.”

Similarly, Alexandra Provo ’10 also referenced philosopher Herbert Marshall McLuhan’s concept, “The medium is the message,” in her understanding of Facebook. Provo“who uses Facebook to connect with friends as well as create events for volunteer projects such as the “Teens for Jeans” campaign”explained that writing on walls is often done more for the sake of the message than for the message’s actual meaning.

“It isn’t always what someone has commented, but the fact that they have commented,” she said. “It’s about the fact that someone has written on your wall and therefore has noticed you.”

Additionally, Provo points out another peculiarity of communicating on Facebook“its ability to extend a conversation over days. This allows users time to formulate thought-out responses to each other, eliminating the awkward pauses that often come with instantaneous, real-life conversation.

“Facebook manipulates time in conversations,” she said. “Facebook interactions are still real interactions, but you’re extending yourself into a different medium, so you act in a different way.”

Although these different interactions can be new and exciting, Ryan admits that they can also potentially be worrisome.

“There are a lot of stories that express fears and anxieties that people have toward this medium: privacy, addiction, stalking, Big Brother,” she said. “But there are also stories that express pleasures and utopic visions of information liberated.”

Moreover, Ryan sees Facebook as having the potential to increase global interaction and knowledge of other cultures.

“[In browsing Facebook] I’ve learned that there’s a big debate amongst young Indian people about whether arranged marriages or ’love marriages’ are better,” she said. “I love that Facebook provides a snippet of the world.”

The ability to use Facebook to communicate across continents is especially useful to Prasad.

“It’s nice to be able to look at pictures of friends who are halfway across the world,” she said. “Then you don’t miss stuff. For me, it has become most useful in the last few months when it was expanded to everyone.”

Although Prasad has enjoyed Facebook’s addition of various national networks as well as the “no network” network, other users contend that such an expansion could be problematic.

“I like the idea of Facebook just for the school network, in order to limit the age thing,” Provo said. “It’s weird and creepy when 12-year-olds are on Facebook.”

Prasad, however, feels that in order for Facebook to exist as a social networking site, it must be inclusive.

“Social networking implies that anybody can use it as a function of being able to interact with people,” she said. “It shouldn’t be restricted to people from just colleges. Shutting off access is flawed and doesn’t serve the purpose it was designed for.”

As the site’s membership grows, it seems it has become “un-cool” to use or talk about Facebook too much, Provo explained.

“Now that Facebook isn’t quite as new anymore, it’s like a thing to not be too into it,” she said. “You want to exercise restraint.”

After much research, Ryan has now almost completed her master’s thesis. She does admit, however, that she was initially concerned about getting this very same negative reaction.

“I thought people might judge me as silly or shallow for studying online social networking, because people love to talk about how little they care,” she said. “But I’ve found that pretty much everyone I talk to about my research has something to say, a story to share, a question to ask, or are just generally interested. That’s all the proof I need that these phenomena are worthy of investigation.”