Why is this story here, again? Here you go... A generation ago a rash of 'Media Studies' degrees started to infect British universities. People joked about how

Why is this story here, again? Here you go... A generation ago a rash of 'Media Studies' degrees started to infect British universities. People joked about how students would be sitting around watching TV all day. Moving on we now have: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/social-networking http://www.ucl.ac.uk/social-networking See where this is going? You can now do what is effectively a degree in 'Social Media Studies', or at least be a researcher paid for by funding from the ERC funding body somewhere in nebulous Europe. I suspect that this 'academic' work is for the purposes of getting more money. Publish a paper, get it cited by every news outlet in the planet, show the likes of the ERC how often it was cited, get more money for more 'research'. They are the only source for this one new story, even though it appears otherwise, like a consensus of opinion is out there claiming Facebook is doomed (which it is). We then go off scurrying around with our own anecdotes, arguments and counter arguments, UCL then profit from the 'controversy' to get more money.