I’ve never heard of one, but I know many have been written about Facebook and the larger social networking sites. It would be interesting to see if you could get it through your committee. And anyway, if you are seriously considering this, you would surely already have done a serious search for existing work on fluther. But I doubt such exists.
I mean I would consider using it in my thesis as well, but not it exclusively… Comparing this place to the WELL would be fantastic, not to mention to compare it to Jenkin’s Forums in Convergence Culture