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April 08, 2005

Research On The TWiki

I've put some stuff about my research on the twiki at long last, including the list of blogs on the left. The list is longer than it used to be and I've taken out a few blogs that haven't been updated for a while. The criteria I used to select these 20 blogs out of the hundreds out there is also listed on the twiki. I figure that even if I get only a 50% response rate, that will be plenty to work off (after all, Annette Markham only wrote about her experiences in one chatroom). One thing that worries me a bit, though, is the demographic bias in my sample. About 75% of the blogs are written by white Americans and I think only about 10-15% of the blogs have a female author. I'll start with these first and keep looking for other blogs written by non-American-white-males.

I'm also thinking of splitting the blogs into two categories: those that have primarily political/news content, and those that are more social/cultural/personal. I'm not sure if this will be a significant divide or not, though, so we'll see as the project progresses.

Next up: a finalized list of questions I'll be asking my interviewees over email. So far I've contacted a few of them to see if they'd be interested in being interviewed in the first place (with all the requisite disclaimers and warnings as stated in the Human Subjects Approval). Haven't heard back yet... but hopefully there'll be some responses over the weekend.

Posted by chan at April 8, 2005 04:26 PM