A journal article I recently wrote with Sonia Livingstone appeared early this month on “early view”. It’s in Children and Society (which is not, alas, an open access journal) but here’s the address and abstract to give you a flavour of it:

On the Rapid Rise of Social Networking Sites: New Findings and Policy Implications

Social networking sites have been rapidly adopted by children and, especially, teenagers and young people worldwide, enabling new opportunities for the presentation of the self, learning, construction of a wide circle of relationships, and the management of privacy and intimacy. On the other hand, there are also concerns that social networking increases the likelihood of new risks to the self, these centring on loss of privacy, bullying, harmful contacts and more. This article reviews recent findings regarding children and teenagers’ social networking practices in order to identify implications for future research and public policy. These focus on the interdependencies between opportunities and risks, the need for digital or media literacy education, the importance of building safety considerations into the design and management of social networking sites, the imperative for greater attention to ‘at risk’ children in particular, and the importance of a children’s rights framework in developing evidence-based policy in this area.

We encourage comment and queries…

I would have loved to have shared more about my thesis findings here (and even make sample chapters available online as others have done, but was afraid of two things: first that a potential external examiner would read one or more chapters and then be ineligible for invitation to my viva and second that when I started to pitch a book based loosely on my thesis research the publishers would say “you’ve already given away the best bits online so we won’t take it”.

It turns out, however that I needn’t have worried, at least about the second point. I attended a “how to get your book published” workshop where about 8 publishers were on a panel and when I asked about this issue all of those who replied said they would be happy to publish a book where the thesis was available free electronically. Several went further and said that they felt that authors having a blog or a site about the book ahead of launch - even one that gave away some of the content pre-publication - would probably be a net benefit.

So once my thesis is complete (I hope as early as Monday if my viva committee don’t recommend corrections) I will let you all know where to download it and hope to engage in a conversation around its contents here and elsewhere. While you wait, I have linked to the abstract for my thesis, ‘As if nobody’s reading’: The imagined audience and socio-technical biases in personal blogging practice in the UK - I will link to the full text there as well when it is available. Enjoy!