WHOSE SPACE IS IT ANYWAY? AN EXPLORATORY STUDY OF STUDENTS’ USE OF MYSPACE.COM FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES

M O Thirunarayanan
College of Education
Florida International University
USA

Pamela Moore
student
Florida International University
USA

The immense popularity and voluminous usage of social networking tools and sites such as MySpace.com have not gone unnoticed by educators who wish to use such spaces for purposes of education. But it is not known if these networking sites are currently being used for educational purposes. Data for the study consisted of five 505 comments posted in the public or unprotected areas of 50 college-age users of MySpace.com. The study found that students rarely used the comment space for educational interactions. Only 4.75% or 1 out of every 20 of the messages was related to education.

return to Session 7
return to main page