Cross-Cultural Blog

I like the way that you have turned to the Facebook groups as part of your analysis of drinking culture and its link to social responsibility. This provides much support for your thesis.

I think a good complement to this line of research would be examining the College Phenomenon -- perhaps pairing your argument about the use of alcohol on campus with an examination of college culture (i.e. for many students being away from home for the first time, having to manage their own lives fully, balancing heavy social pressures with academic stress -- all of which tie in to issues of responsibility)would be a useful way to further bolster your claims.

Also, I'm glad that you have narrowed your focus somewhat -- though keep clear about the difference between alcoholism and alcohol abuse as you continue with your writing and research.

Nice job,
Christine

Hey Lleyana,

So I think your topic is rather interesting. I find it cool that you attribute drinking to deflection of responsibility and it sort of says something about students here on campus. This may be due to a huge underlying issue of students' need to be perfect that drinking is a mean by which to escape this reality and the expectancies that it brings along. I think it may be helpful to ask students who drink without telling them your hypothesis so that they wont be able to attribute any biases to you and it allows people to give their own reasoning; perhaps you may find other reasons for drinking that at a first glance may not be so obvious. I guess you could use that information as a counterargument and see how that works out :0) It seems like you are going along well and that Facebook is a great resource for information since most college students seem to like sharing their drinking excursions, lol. Also think about those students who do drink, but don't broadcast it, perhaps it says something about them and describes a different purpose they may have for drinking. Good luck and hope your research goes well, I look forward to reading your paper...lol :0)

Hey Lleyana,

So I think your topic is rather interesting. I find it cool that you attribute drinking to deflection of responsibility and it sort of says something about students here on campus. This may be due to a huge underlying issue of students' need to be perfect that drinking is a mean by which to escape this reality and the expectancies that it brings along. I think it may be helpful to ask students who drink without telling them your hypothesis so that they wont be able to attribute any biases to you and it allows people to give their own reasoning; perhaps you may find other reasons for drinking that at a first glance may not be so obvious. I guess you could use that information as a counterargument and see how that works out :0) It seems like you are going along well and that Facebook is a great resource for information since most college students seem to like sharing their drinking excursions, lol. Also think about those students who do drink, but don't broadcast it, perhaps it says something about them and describes a different purpose they may have for drinking. Good luck and hope your research goes well, I look forward to reading your paper...lol :0)

Lleyana,
You have chosen an interesting and difficult subject.
Interesting because it has the potential to awaken many thoughts among your fellow students' and difficult because Facebook is a problematic source. Make sure you describe the complexity of using the Facebook Webb-site as
empiric material. I will follow the progress of your paper with great interest.
Best of Luck!
Nicole Borg

Lleyana,
Upon first presenting your topic I thought it'd be difficult for you to find a lot of research to support your claim- so I'm really glad this is working out for you. Like Christine said, great idea to use a social networking site as an exhibit of alcoholism throughout college. I'm sure you can find tons of ridiculous pictures with captions that suggest alcohol involvement- that might be a great visual if you can find it (some facial blurring may be necessary!). It must be difficult to get honest answers from those pro-alcohol, have you tried creating a survey and sending it out to friends & groups- that way people can feel more comfortable about their responses. One question though-- if your claim is that college students only drink for the sake of using it as a 'scapegoat,' what do you attribute adult-drinking to? Are you completely anti-alcohol in this paper? I guess this sort of goes along the lines of alcoholism/alcohol abuse that Christine describes...

Hi Lleyana,

As someone who drinks alcohol (though not in copious amounts; I've heard too many of other people's drunken stories to sufficiently put me off it) I think your project sounds really quite interesting. Instead of creating a strictly either/or situation, where people who consume alcohol use it to shirk blame and responsibility, perhaps you might like to look at other reasons behind why people drink instead? Because from my experience I don't think people drink so they can get drunk, behave badly and then blame it on the alcohol. This relationship is a bit too direct for me to be believable, since usually the terrible behavior is an unfortunate side-effect of overindulging in a 'fun' social activity (drinking). Of course, this is coming from a Singaporean point of view and so I'm not too sure if your culture deals with alcohol differently, but I'm definitely looking forward to your project!

Hi Lleyana! This topic sounds really interesting. Yea it's definitely a paper I'd like to read :)

Using Facebook as a 'source' to support your hypothesis is certainly novel (which is what draws people to your paper!) It's justified too because Facebook’s an extremely vast online (an international!) social networking portal, being very popular with youths and young adults--the exact people concerned in your paper. It’s a great (and fast!) way of gaining access to opinions and learning about current trends with just the click of a mouse.

But here’s some food for thought...

Facebook tends to be rather Eurocentric (or ‘Westernised’ for that matter). What’s your definition of ‘college’? Do you just mean colleges in the US (or UK) or Universities around the world too? Are you being specific to a country or are you referring to colleges world-wide? It’s because irresponsible alcohol consumption (although existent all over) is probably a lot less common in places like Asia (the cultural context matters a lot here). You don’t exactly hear of ‘pub-crawls’ as part of orientation fun at Asian Universities, but it’s certainly the norm in Universities in the UK (or at least I hear about it all the time from friends studying in the UK. I hear Law firms even willingly sponsor drinks at such Law pub parties annually for freshmen). As such, it’s probably easier to limit your scope to US colleges because Facebook is oriented as such anyway 

Not everyone uses Facebook. What about those who don’t use Facebook? This crucial group will be missing from your hypothesis considerations. This will provide for an especially strong contestable factor of your hypothesis because birds of a feather flock together and those networked in Facebook tend to belong to the same category of people—the ‘popular bunch’, etc. In this case, your hypothesis may be slightly biased towards your thesis because of the exclusion of this group of non-Facebookers who might very well be nerds who aren’t part of the wild bunch and who will help to iron out the extremes of certain values/ data assumed. (sorry about the sensitive nerdy topic, it’s just an extreme example).

Also, Facebook may be seen as an ego thing and even in such ‘alcohol’ groups, there would probably be varying degrees of responsibility in its members. Not everyone who joins a group takes their ‘membership’ in such a group seriously. It isn’t safe to assume that all who join the “Alcohol was involved...therefore it was not my fault!” group are truly irresponsible alcohol consumers. Anyone can just join a group for the fun of it. It could even be a result of subconscious peer pressure or to be seen as having the ‘hip factor’ having joined such groups?

Maybe you could lend more credibility to your paper by including evidence/ opinions from other sources regarding college alcohol consumption? It’s always good to get your evidence from multiple sources especially if the credibility of your primary source (Facebook in your case)may be reduced because of its distinctively non-academic nature.

But nonetheless, I think your paper sounds really fascinating. All the best with it! :)

Hi Vanessa!

Your title really caught my attention, so i decided to give you my 2 cents worth :)

Using the idea of Facebook to substantiate your thesis is quite a novel idea, but the problem is the credibility of it. Facebook IS a social networking site and wel,l people would not take it seriously, and thus by just taking what people write there directly as evidence, it would be rather shaky. After all, the site is not exactly monitored, and people may just be joking or kidding when they claim that "..."ALCOHOL WAS INVOLVED, IT IS NOT MY FAULT!". Although it is interesting, it may not be that feasible to use facebook as your main source.

Here is an alternative way of finding evidence to substantiate your claims. I've thought of a way to circumvent your problem of having people doubt your credibility when doing your surveys. It is more convention (and perhaps more boring), you could utilize the concept of "Blind experiments", where you engineer your survey in such a way that the motive of it isn't clear, but yet you could extract information that is relevant. First hand information in the form of surveys definitely has more credibility.

Yups, so I hope this helps. Your original idea is definitely interesting. Perhaps you could think of some way that still incorporates it into your project, but it definitely has to have something else to give your project more substantiation.

Gdluck on your project!

Zixu

I hope that it isn't strange to comment on my own blog...

I just want to start by saying that I am really appreciative of all the feedback in the blogs. ( It has been rather helpful). At first I was hesitant about how people would receive my ideas because I do agree that they are a some-what controversial. I just wanted to address a few points, ones that seem to have come up more than once in the comments. 1) Though this blog is about my use of facebook as a source, facebook is not my only source of information. It is just that I decided to focus on one source that i found interesting for this blog. 2) To those who made comments about college (drinking) culture in other countries and continents, there is a part in my research paper that addresses this. 3) Lastly, I have done some surveying.

I guess what I am trying to say is that though my blog focuses on facebook as a source, my paper includes information from many sources. It's just too much information to fit into one blog! lol

This is an interesting topic but I think you should look at the credibility of your sources. I understand that you are making an argument about alcohol being used as an scapegoat which is a good point, however you should also take into account that facebook.com is a networking/entertainment site. You may want to conduct your own research in addition to what you find on facebook, such as interviewing students on your campus.

Good luck with your paper!

We have found it interesting that the public in general clearly understands the dangers of drunk driving, but are so open to excessive drinking. There are quite a few profiles on social networks like Facebook that showcase over consumption.

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