MAS
963 The Social Data in Conversations
readings:
Donath, Judith; Karahalios, Karrie; and Viegas, Fernanda.
1999.
Visualizing
conversations. In
Proceedings of HICSS-32 January 5-8, 1999, Maui,
Hawaii. (or in
.pdf)
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
Whittaker, S., Terveen, L., Hill, W., and Cherny, L. 1998. The dynamics of mass communication. In The Proceedings of CSCW '98.
assignment:
1. 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 is identity 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?
Tie your analysis in with the readings. Is there a notion of footing? What
are the backchannels in these conversations?
2. What does this conversation "looks" like? Illustrate your analysis
with sketches of its structure, of the participants, etc.
This assignment is due Tuesday Sept 14 Please submit your work online. If you have any problems with doing so, send email to Dana Spiegel danas@mit.edu