Using Social Network Sites in community profiling?

On the community profiling @ infed org page Mark Smith writes:

The best and easiest starting point with regard to data about the community you are interested in profiling is the web.

The focus of Mark's article is on using formal data sources like the statistics on UpMyStreet.com. But with the growth of the social web - it seems reasonable to imagine that it might be possible to not only profile facts about a community using the web - but to also find out what a community is talking about, what the local issues are, and where the networks are which could be crucial in bringing about local change.

I'm thinking about the role of community profiling on Social Network Sites in two senses:

1) Profiling a physical-world community by looking at the online media, conversations and ephemera related to that community.

For example - you could find out what was being said about the 'Jade' dance nights held in Kiveton Park by using the following search:

You can see the results I got when I tried it below. A stack of links to people talking about the dance nights and their links to them.

You could try a similar search for your community by adding this onto the end of a key-word search on Google.

You will need to experiment with key words to get the best results (and you may want to add other sites to the search if there are local forums of places which issue get talked above - to do that, just add them in the format 'OR site:sitename.com' within the brackets) - but once you've found a search that gives you information about the area you could even set up a Google Alert (read more - PDF) so you get an e-mail when the search engine finds new content.

Of course, this online profiling of a physical world community isn't comprehensive. It doesn't search what's not picked up by Google (which includes most content shared in Facebook) - and only some people in the community turn to the web. But the number of young people sharing content on the web is growing - and the information and insights to be gained there are to.

Most importantly, including the social web in your community profile of a local area should help you to break down the boundaries between online and offline worlds in your own perceptions - helping you to get closer to understanding the experience of many young people for whom the online/offline divide is pretty much invisible and insignificant.

2) Profiling online communities
Profiling a local community using the social web may support you in having greater insights and information to base your face-to-face interventions and community developing work upon. However, as we explore the idea of youth work and community development that takes place primarily online - mapping the online community that you are looking to work with becomes important also.

The search tricks above might help you find a route into the communities - but once you've found your route in - it is likely to be far more a link-hopping and online networking activity that you need to engage with in order to build up a sense of the communities.

So, having explored these possibilities for using Social Network Sites in community profiling, my question is: can it work?

What happens if you try to profile your local area using the techniques in (1)? What techniques would you add?

Have you tried profiling an online community? Is it the right approach?

Feedback very much invited, either in the comments here or over in the forums of UK Youth Online.

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P.S: For more topics related to the Youth Work and Social Networking project be sure to check out UK Youth Online and Tim's Blog

Tags: communityprofiling, youthwork2.0, 2gether08, detached youth work, infed