Plan B... and that's final!

Well, it's been quite a while since my last post! I've been pretty active with my research since I last wrote here, but am completely guilty of not keeping you, my fellow Soci/Anth 498'ers, up to date with my research, insights, and findings. I promise to make it up to you all in the next few days. I've kept physical notes (pen & paper–yup, they still exist!!) throughout the process of my research and hope to post them here in the next few days either by transcribing them or simply scanning the notes, uploading them to my server, and posting the links.

After I last wrote, I kept spinning my wheels unsuccessfully trying to figure out a topic for my research. As noted earlier, I knew the research would be conducted in Facebook, it was just a matter of establishing an area of focus and determining the research question I chose to pursue. I had a real hard time narrowing down the topic and also formulating a plan to conduct my research.

It became apparent to me that the issues I was facing were founded in the nature of the research itself rather than the subject matter. I was not familiar enough with the process of conducting an ethnography to feel completely comfortable with pursuing that avenue. Perhaps it is because of my sociology background, or perhaps because, simply through chance or bad luck, I have never really covered the process and methodologies practiced in ethnographical research throughout my undergraduate studies. We touched on this type of qualitative research briefly during the Soci 310 research methods course, but really did not go into very much detail about the proper methods of conducting an ethnography. I've watched Tiger Woods win the Masters on television, it doesn't mean I'm ready to pack my golf back and head to Augusta for a round of 18! Instead I decided to explore the second option of research available for this course–reviewing a published ethnography in the field of cyberspace research.

The more I thought about this option, the obvious benefits became more and more clear to me. The advantages were two-fold. First I can gain insight into ethnographic research and the methodology employed to conduct the research. By keeping a keen eye open for the procedure employed by the author, I could learn more about the process as well as become aware of the advantages and, conversely, shortcomings of this research method and its' application by the author. The second advantage of reviewing an already published ethnography is that I can learn more about the subject matter of the ethnography, cyberspace sociology, without having to worry if the methods employed in my own research are being conducted properly. 

After speaking with Dr. Forte last month, and receiving the green-light on reviewing an ethnography, I narrowed the four choices available down to the ethnography Inuit in Cyberspace: Embedding Offline Identities by Neil Blair Christensen. Various factors came into play that led me to choose this ethnography over the others. I will get into the selection process during my next blog post, as well as share some of the intial thoughts, questions, and comments as I read through this thoroughly entertaing and inciteful ethnography.

Spinning my wheels

Just wanted to leave a short note updating the status of my research. 

I'm having a hard time getting this project started. I still haven't decided the locale of my research. I thought it might be a good idea to explore a social networking domain that I had never previously visited for the purpose of my research. I figured the fact that I had no previous knowledge of the environment would allow me to form clearer ideas and assumptions about my observations without any (or as much) pre-conceived biases or judgements. 

Earlier this afternoon, I decided to give Twitter a shot. I've been hearing a lot about Twitter recently in the media after being initially made aware of it during the American presidential election campaigns last fall.  I registered a new account and did a little exploring and site-seeing. Right away, it became clear to me that there were various research question that can be considered from observing that community. Why are members  so involved? Why do members find it important to 'Tweet' their thoughts with the rest of the community? How do members choose what thoughts to 'Tweet' and what thoughts to filter out? Is the short length of the Tweets detrimental or helpful to parlaying a message? Are the interactions 'deep' or are they kept on a more superficial level because of the brevity of the Tweets? Are the Tweets intertwined interactions or simply discreet packets of information/knowledge/facts that can either be added to or left to float out there? Actually, Twitter got me thinking a lot about how our society (on and off-line) treats information in the 21st century; We need our info in real-time, short, and to the point.

Having said all that about Twitter and having mentioned some of the interesting questions that arise from the social networking taking place within that community, I think the fact that I had never used the site before might pose too great an obstacle for this course research. There's a learning curve using Twitter that might take too long to master for this course. I'm afraid too much time and energy will have to be spent learning how to navigate this site and becoming completely comfortable within the environment. 

Since this course only runs until April, I think it will be wiser to focus my attention within an environment that I am already comfortable with without having to worry about mastering the technology/terminology/practices of the observed online community. I have held a Facebook account for nearly two years and am completely comfortable with that environment, so perhaps I will be well served to conduct my research within that social networking site. As I stated earlier in this post, it would be ideal to observe a community I am not acquainted with in order to be able to view it with a fresh perspective, but unfortunately in this case, the technological impediments would be too cumbersome to overcome within the alloted time frame of my research.

I'll be back with some thoughts on Facebook in a bit!

Lift Off!

Alright, so I finally got this Blog up and running. That was easy enough!

To all my classmates visiting this blog over the next couple of months, I look forward to sharing my thoughts and insights with you as I conduct my research into the online community. I think this course will be quite challenging because I come from a sociology background and this course seems more geared to anthropology students.

I'll check back in soon to let you all know how my initial research is coming along!