- Saville-Troike, Muriel. 1982. The Ethnography of Communication.
2nd Edition. New York, NY: Basil Blackwell. chapters 2& 5
- Whittaker, S., Terveen, L., Hill, W., and Cherny, L. 1998. The dynamics of mass communication. In The Proceedings of CSCW '98.
1. Please read all the papers.
2. Write a short (~2 page) analysis of the interactions in a newsgroup. Some questions to think about include:
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What constitutes a "conversation"? How do threads emerge, mutate, disappear?
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What is the social structure of the group: do the participants seem to
know each other? are there distinct subgroups? are there problematic participants?If
so, how do the other members deal with them?
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How is identity established by a writer - and how do participants indicate
the impression they have of each other?
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How do the participants use the medium to convey social information (e.g.
turn-taking, agreement/disagreement,etc.)? Are there discernable gradations
of communicative competence within the group?
3. What does this conversation "looks" like? Illustrate your analysis
with sketches of its structure, of the participants, etc.
Please submit the URL of your critique and sketch
online by Monday evening. Copies of the readings are available
outside of E15-449.
If you have any problem with the online submission, send email to Kelly Dobson monster@media.mit.edu