MAS 963 The Social Data in Conversations

Completed assignments

readings:

Donath, Judith; Karahalios, Karrie; and Viegas, Fernanda. (draft). Visualizing conversations. To appear in Proceedings of HICSS-32 January 5-8, 1999, Maui, Hawaii. (online only)

Goffman, Erving. 1981. Footing. In Forms of Talk.

Saville-Troike, Muriel. 1982. The Ethnography of Communication. 2nd Edition. New York, NY: Basil Blackwell.
chapter 2

Sproull, Lee. and Kiesler, Sara. 1991. Connections: New Ways of Working in the Networked Organization. Cambridge: MIT Press.
chapter 4

assignment:

Write a short (2 - 4 page) analysis of the interactions in a newsgroup. Some of the questions you should think about include:

• What constitutes a "conversation"? How do threads emerge, mutate, disappear?
• 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?
• How identity is established by a writer - and how do participants indicate the impression they have of each other?
• 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?

What does this conversation "looks" like. Illustrate your analysis with sketches of its structure, of the participants, etc.

This assignment is due Tuesday Sept 15 by 5:00p.m. Please email the URL of your essay to fviegas@media.mit.edu