Develope and describe a
preliminary interview strategy designed to gather
data about the social function of some section of
discourse found surrounding one (only 1) of the
four sites below.
You should have an initial
research question that is specific enough to be
answered based on the particular characteristics of
the chosen site and that you could collect data
about through a series of interviews over the
course of several months to several years but not
more. You should relate how that question speaks to
larger issues of social aggregation online. You
should describe, in your view, the "field-site"
that you are delineating as your study object. You
should justify that field site based on the feature
and in reference to texts read for the course. You
should then develop initial interview questions and
describe how potential answers would yield evidence
about your research question.
Specifically, choose one of the
four links below. Explore the linked Web page and
the Web pages linked to those pages until you feel
you have explored enough Web pages to constitute a
specific research data set. Imagine that you were
about to archive those Web pages and interview the
people involved in their construction. Citing
(putting stuff in quotes) actual elements of
discourse (textual and/or otherwise), locate at
least 3 examples of discourse that share some
importan feature. Devise at least one question and
one follow-up to ask the producers of that
discourse in a future face-to-face interview about
that shared feature. Based on the feature, describe
how those questions would serve as evidence about
what kind of "social aggregate" the discourse on
the Web pages represents for the people involved in
that discourse.