Seeking Advice…

As part of preparations for our upcoming midterm presentations on Monday March 8, we were instructed to speak to three people who were knowledgeable in our subject area.  I had already spoken to Clay a few weeks ago in detail to discuss the outline of the project.  Last weekend I ran Tom Glaiyser at the Digital Media and Policy conference at Columbia’s School of Public Policy.  Tom is a Knight Media Policy Fellow at the New America Foundation with expertise in media policy reform.  We met when I first presented Noisy Idiots at NYU’s Participation Camp at ITP last summer.

I asked him about:

a) people/papers on analysis of group conversations; and

b) possible research methodologies I should be implementing to investigate Noisy Idiot behavior on the 10 websites I am studying.

Tom came back with a raft of great resources to look at including:

• Marc Smith (newsgroup analysis) – specifically, I’m getting hold of his Communities in Cyberspace book.
• Warren Sack (known for his work on the analysis of very large scale conversations (VLCS), I’m going to begin with his paper on discussions in an Open Source Software community)
• Martin Wattenberg (Visual Communication Lab at IBM Research) and Fernanda Viegas’ work on Wikipedia

In addition Tom gave some helpful suggestions on how to analyze behavior in online conversations, he also mentioned already existing tools such as DISQUS and INTENSE DEBATE, and that the slashdot/DailyKos style of moderation is more widely available.

Thanks Tom!

Places to look for discussion

Thank you thesis class for the suggestions today in class for where to look for lively discussion.  This week I’ll be looking at:

• DMCworld.com – discussions around DJ-ing and the World DJ Championships
• World of Warcraft forums – worldofwarcraft.com
• Additionally – World of Warcraft wikis: wowwiki.com – information on WoW
• Urban Baby and Park Slope Parents
• 4Chan – does anonymity result in Noisy Idiot behavior or lead to trolling?
• Chowhound.com for foodie discussion
• Stuy Town/Peter Cooper Village/Atlantic Yards – sites discussing proposed real estate development issues/residents committees
• Streetsblog.org
• Victims of Bernie Madoff groups
• Wall Street bonuses discussion groups.

There’s a lot to be looking at there, and am now confident the 10 groups I’ll be studying will be suitably diverse in their subject matter.  The main issue I had last week was finding groups with lively discussions that were not just groups about political issues.  In addition there is enough variety in the level of moderation of these site for my studies.  Final list coming and a research plan coming soon….