User:Drdoj/sandbox

Mark Michael Clements
Mark was awarded his Doctorate in Education by the University of Greenwich in 2018 for his thesis "Exploring computer mediated communications in Facebook for an insight into enhancing uptake and usage in Higher Education for social, educational and institutional benefit". His research, based on ethnomethodology and inspired by the works of Erving Goffman  and Thomas J. Scheff , collected live network data to examine social interaction and sharing behaviour on Facebook. The results answered some of the questions surrounding why we share what we share with whom online.

Background
Mark was born in Camberwell, London in 1961. He lived in Sidcup between the ages of 3 and 19 and was educated at Goodrich Primary School, Dulwich Hamlet Junior School and Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School. He was heavily influenced in his teenage years by the music of Hawkwind and their negative portrayal of the impact of technology upon the human race which influenced his choice of doctoral research.

Education
After graduating from the University of Kent in 1990 in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Mark became interested in online social interaction on the early Internet. He joined the University of Greenwich in 1997 and was awarded his Postgraduate Certificate in Education in 2001. He studied computer networking with Cisco and was awarded his CCNA and CCAI status in 2003. He began formally researching online social interaction in 2007 using Wireshark to collect the (then) unencrypted data travelling between users whilst online. It was the patterns of social media usage that he observed between his Facebook "friends" that prompted him to begin his research to test out his hypotheses.

Thesis outcomes
The major outcome of Mark's thesis concluded that users who became embarrassed easily in daily life shared less content on Facebook. The use of live network data rather then self-reported data strengthens the validity of this result.

Secondary findings taxonomised the items that can be shared on Facebook with personal online networks. Sharing behaviour Four of the frequently shared items on Facebook are pictures, text, video and music. These objects can be shared with other users who form our personal social network.

The sharing behaviour, as applied to Facebook items, appears to be dominated by disclosure boundaries that are regulated by both the nature of the item shared and also the audience, or personal network member, with whom the item would be shared.

Results showed little variation in trust for sharing music between the most and least trusted personal network members. This may indicate that musical taste is neither particularly controversial nor likely to provoke an adverse or embarrassing reaction amongst those with whom it is shared and explains why most people are happy to share their musical tastes. Embarrassment avoidance Mark created a taxonomy, based on Goffman's work on given and given-off signals during human interaction, of the least and most embarrassing items that could be shared between personal networks on Facebook. The results are presented with the least embarrassing first. 1. Music 2. Text 3. Pictures or photos 4. Videos Social network members The results showed that participants felt greatest trust when sharing items with partners and friends and the least trust when sharing the same item with work colleagues, university staff or on Facebook. The trust was also taxonomised and showed that more controversial topics could be shared according to the list below, with the most trusted network member appearing first. 1. Partners & friends from home 2. Peers at university 3. Work colleagues 4. University staff 5. Facebook

Mark's outcomes agreed with Altman's social penetration theory and also media richness theory.

Conclusion Whilst online social networking may be in its infancy, the work of Goffman and his contemporaries plus Altman's social penetration theory and Daft & Lengel's established works should not be overlooked.

Publications
2017 Exploring computer mediated communications in Facebook for an insight into enhancing uptake and usage in Higher Education for social, educational and institutional benefit Mark's thesis added more evidence to the link between analogue human behaviour and human digital behaviour when using social media. 2013 How foolish Dubby and scheming Toto learned their lesson This tongue-in-cheek short story takes a satirical view of the war between the West and Iraq in the early 2000s and depicts the antagonists, George W Bush, Anthony Blair and Ṣaddām Ḥusayn as fairytale characters battling for underground riches.

2012 Facebook: The birth of the digital shaman? This paper explored some of the reasons that social media occupies a central part of many people's lives. It draws parallels between Facebook and Harry Alpert's four major functions of religion:

1.	Disciplinarian – to provide a specific function for the group; 2.	Social cohesivity – to supply a general strengthening function to the group; 3.	Social heritage vitalisation – to emphasize the group’s uniqueness; 4.	Euphoric – a function for the individual and by extension, the group.

It also draws parallels between time spent online with the ideas of shamanism. According to Christina Pratt, “What distinguishes someone as a shaman is whether the individual can do anything with the trance state and, more important, whether or not he or she can do anything for others”. Analogously, the Facebook user now becomes a 21st century shaman and uses the trance state, or time logged in, to socialise, post content and participate in their social group. 2012 Developing student employability: a recruitment initiative for student enhancement This conference paper was presented at SHIFT 2012 to present a method of improving graduate employment using interview rehearsal in front of local and national employers as part of undergraduate degree programmes. The recruitment initiative for student enhancement (RISE) ran successfully for four years, attracting employers from national UK banks and retailers as interview panellists. 2006 Student submissions & plagiarism detection This conference paper, presented at the International Conference on Plagiarism, Cheltenham, explored reasons for plagiarism by students and methods of detection by academic staff before electronic means had become available. It proposed caveats on the usage of tools such as Turnitin in Higher Education which were adopted by the publishers subsequently.