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Zizi Papacharissi is a professor and head of the communications department at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has written a lot of really interesting stuff on social media and internet culture that she links to on the "research" page of her website. I've come across her stuff before and I think she's pretty cool!

It seems to be that Indiana University is a top school for social informatics research. Any others out there that we should be looking at in particular?

I went on Social-informatics.org which gives a list of study programs around the country and world.

Hmmm...Interesting thought. With the popularity of twitter and facebook, perhaps this is a reality.

I studied mass communication in college and several of my classmates are now "Community Managers" at nonprofits, consulting firms and corporations alike. Essentially they are the social media marketers, but have roles that also include public relations and community building. I think considering our own MLIS program's recent (last year?) addition of a social media concentration, KeithK's comment on the blog entry comes to life: "There are several important concepts to consider in the participatory culture of social media that extend far beyond marketing. The potential for community engagement, for developing an active learning community through the use of social media is one good reason. Understanding the dynamics of social capital with respect to creating community is another. These are things that need to be analyzed through research and reflection, not just use." Social media as a source to recontextualize our information resources through collaboration, folksonomies and other community-building and -based activities is pretty exciting. I don't know that a social media librarian is specifically needed, but it is something that could be incorporated into an instructional or educational technology librarian's role in academia.

You know, our library has a Facebook account, but I don't think we ever really do anything with it. There's a lot of potential there, as this article points out.