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RE: [Air-l] Late adolescents and dating on the Internet
by cecilie mortensen 04 Dec '03

04 Dec '03

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computer games and uzbekistan
by david silver 04 Dec '03

04 Dec '03

Uzbekistan and computer games, via the BBC and beth kolko: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3246092.stm david

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Grad Seat Monthly Report
by Nancy Baym 03 Dec '03

03 Dec '03

Here is the monthly report from the graduate representative Leslie Tkach Kawasaki. My email has been flaky this week, so I apologize to Leslie for not including it in the monthly report: This past month, in addition to giving opinions at times on various AoIR executive matters, I have mainly been (a) discussing AoIR with colleagues here and strategies for promoting AoIR here in Japan (translations are necessary!); and (b) considering potential activities for graduate students in Sussex next year. -- Nancy Baym http://www.ku.edu/home/nbaym Communication Studies, University of Kansas Bailey Hall, 1440 Jayhawk Blvd., Room 102, Lawrence, KS 66045-7574, USA Association of Internet Researchers: http://aoir.org

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RE: [Air-l] how to measure participation rates
by Kylie Veale 03 Dec '03

03 Dec '03

Katerina, If youre looking at USENET newsgroups, you might want to take a look at the social accounting search engine NetScan at http://netscan.research.microsoft.com. I successfully used the muscle of their automated newsgroup participation statistics for a recent study I performed; Discussing Our Family Trees: Finding Community-Based Communication in Genealogical Newsgroups. I used the Common Ground Model of Whittaker, Terveen, Hill, and Cherny (1998), and the Online Community (OC) Model of Scoberth, Preece, and Heinzl (2003), to test for online community the NetScan database statistics worked fabulously well (though I did also use some manually collated stats for some specific OC tests). I studied four years of data for the newsgroup in my study, which had over 123,000 posts during that period. Regards Kylie Veale | Brisbane, Australia GradDipInvEnv, MInetStds [2003] email: kylie(a)veale.com.au www: http://casa.de.veale.com.au www: http://www.veale.com.au/kylie -----Original Message----- From: air-l-admin(a)aoir.org [mailto:air-l-admin@aoir.org] On Behalf Of Katerina Sent: Wednesday, 3 December 2003 1:42 AM To: air-l(a)aoir.org Subject: [Air-l] how to measure participation rates As part of my study of an online community I have to measure the participation rates among participants, in a way similar to Nancy Baym's in her classic study of the r.a.t.s online community. From my participation and observation of this particular community so far, it is obvious to me that most of the messages are contributed by a small group of heavy users. However, I need to quantify it, measure it and present it as a table containing percentages of posters and posts contributed. My question is how can I do it? What is the method of measuring these rates? Does it simply consist in noting down how many messages each member writes? Prima facie that may look like an easy procedure but once starting to do it it turns out to be extremely difficult since this online community is made up of more than 20 conferences each one comprising more than 50 different topical discussions. Overall the number of messages written every week is enormous. Any ideas on how I can measure overall participatio rates of such an environment? Thank you, K. Diamantaki

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Late adolescents and dating on the Internet
by Michele White 03 Dec '03

03 Dec '03

Hello, My article, "On the Internet, Everybody Worries that You're a Dog: The Gender Expectations and Beauty Ideals of Online Personals and Text-Based Chat" presents a general consideration of Internet dating sites that is targeted at the undergraduate reader. I do a close analysis, indicate how Yahoo's dating/personals site and other Internet settings encourage traditional conceptions of the body, and introduce feminist methods that can be used to analyze these problems. I have more recent research on the issue of Internet representations but this article may be of interest to you because it specifically addresses Internet dating sites. The anthology was just released and the full citation is: White, Michele. "On the Internet, Everybody Worries that You're a Dog: The Gender Expectations and Beauty Ideals of Online Personals and Text-Based Chat." Readings in Gender Communication, eds. Mary Rose Williams and Phil Backlund, Wadsworth, 2003. All my best, Michele air-l(a)aoir.org writes: >Hi - >A colleague of mine is searching for any literature focusing on Internet >dating among late adolescents (approximately ages 18-25). Can anyone >pass on citations/resources? Thank you in advance for your help!

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RE: [Air-l] how to measure participation rates
by Charlie Breindahl 03 Dec '03

03 Dec '03

Katerina, If you're looking at USENET newsgroups, you might want to take a look at the social accounting search engine "NetScan" at http://netscan.research.microsoft.com. I successfully used the muscle of their automated newsgroup participation statistics for a recent study I performed; "Discussing Our Family Trees: Finding Community-Based Communication in Genealogical Newsgroups". I used the Common Ground Model of Whittaker, Terveen, Hill, and Cherny (1998), and the Online Community (OC) Model of Scoberth, Preece, and Heinzl (2003), to test for online community - the NetScan database statistics worked fabulously well (though I did also use some manually collated stats for some specific OC tests). I studied four years of data for the newsgroup in my study, which had over 123,000 posts during that period. Regards Kylie Veale | Brisbane, Australia GradDipInvEnv, MInetStds [2003] email: kylie(a)veale.com.au www: http://casa.de.veale.com.au www: http://www.veale.com.au/kylie -----Original Message----- From: air-l-admin(a)aoir.org [mailto:air-l-admin@aoir.org] On Behalf Of Katerina Sent: Wednesday, 3 December 2003 1:42 AM To: air-l(a)aoir.org Subject: [Air-l] how to measure participation rates As part of my study of an online community I have to measure the participation rates among participants, in a way similar to Nancy Baym's in her classic study of the r.a.t.s online community. From my participation and observation of this particular community so far, it is obvious to me that most of the messages are contributed by a small group of heavy users. However, I need to quantify it, measure it and present it as a table containing percentages of posters and posts contributed. My question is how can I do it? What is the method of measuring these rates? Does it simply consist in noting down how many messages each member writes? Prima facie that may look like an easy procedure but once starting to do it it turns out to be extremely difficult since this online community is made up of more than 20 conferences each one comprising more than 50 different topical discussions. Overall the number of messages written every week is enormous. Any ideas on how I can measure overall participatio rates of such an environment? Thank you, K. Diamantaki

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The Multilingual Internet
by herring＠slis.indiana.edu 02 Dec '03

02 Dec '03

We are pleased to announce the publication of: Brenda Danet and Susan C. Herring, Eds. (2003, November). The Multilingual Internet: Language, Culture and Communication in Instant Messaging, Email and Chat. Special issue, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, volume 9, issue 1. Table of Contents: Brenda Danet and Susan C. Herring `"Introduction: The Multilingual Internet" David Palfreyman and Muhamed Al-Khalil "'A Funky Language for Teenzz to Use:' Representing Gulf Arabic in Instant Messaging" Yukiko Nishimura "Linguistic Innovations and Interactional Features of Casual Online Communication in Japanese" Hsi-Yao Su "The Multilingual and Multi-orthographic Taiwan-based Internet: Creative Uses of Writing Systems on College- affiliated BBSs" Dimitris Koutsogiannis and Bessie Mitsikopoulou "Greeklish and Greekness: Trends and Discourses of 'Glocalness'" Mercedes Durham "Language Choice on a Swiss Mailing List" Salvador Climent, Joaquim More, Antoni Oliver, Miriam Salvatierra, Imma Sanchez, Mariona Taule and Lluisa Vallmanya "Bilingual Newsgroups in Catalonia: A Challenge for Machine Translation" Sandi Michele de Oliveira "Breaking Conversational Norms on a Portuguese Users Network: Men as Adjudicators of Politeness?" Siriporn Panyametheekul and Susan C. Herring "Gender and Turn Allocation in a Thai Chat Room" ------------- The issue can be accessed at no cost at: http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol9/issue1/ ============================================ Susan C. Herring Professor of Information Science Adjunct Professor of Linguistics Indiana University Bloomington Email: herring(a)indiana.edu http://www.slis.indiana.edu/faculty/herring/ ============================================

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CFP extended - Media Ecology Association @ RIT, Rochester, June 10-13, 2004
by J Sternberg 02 Dec '03

02 Dec '03

Call for Papers - Deadline Extended The Fifth Annual Convention of the Media Ecology Association RIT Campus, Rochester, New York June 10-13, 2004 Media Environments and the Liberal Arts Sponsored by The Department of Communication and The William A. Kern Professor in Communications College of Liberal Arts Rochester Institute of Technology How do changing media environments influence the ways in which people express themselves, communicate with each other, and pass on knowledge to future generations? From cities to cyberspace, and ancient writing systems to digital communication technologies, media help shape human interaction, understanding, and organization. This conference explores the various ways in which past, present, and emerging media environments influence human life in general, and its self-examination via the liberal arts disciplines. These include the subjects of inquiry and the way research is conducted, changesin human and mass communication, policy-making, and evaluation, individual expression and representation, formation and change in cultural attitudes, media representations of natural environments, emerging digital expression (hyperfiction, digital poetry, electronic music), and the social impact of media. What is Media Ecology? "It is the study of media environments, the idea that technology and techniques, modes of information and codes of communication play a leading role in human affairs." -Lance Strate You are invited to submit papers, panels, workshop proposals, and short film and video works related to the conference theme. Complete papers may be entered for the Top Paper Award or the Linda Elson Scholarship Award (Top Student Paper). Please indicate entry on submissions. Submission deadline extended to December 15, 2003. Send submission to Dr. Sue Barnes Department of Communication College of Liberal Arts Rochester Institute of Technology 92 Lomb Memorial Drive Rochester, NY 14623-5604 (585) 475-4695 or (585) 475-6649 Email: sbbgpt(a)rit.edu Convention Web log We have set up a Web log for the convention at http://www.rit.edu/~sbbgpt/mea-rit/. -------------------------------- Media Ecology Association http://www.media-ecology.org

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transcription tools?
by Karen Lunsford 02 Dec '03

02 Dec '03

Hello AoIR members, I'm hoping to hear that ethnographic transcription tools have advanced miraculously since I last was transcribing tapes. Does anyone know whether it is now possible to have voice recognition (or other) software transcribe interview tapes directly? For example, if I have a digital or analog recording, is there anything out there that can provide even a rough transcription of it automatically? perhaps like closed captioning? In the past, I've used Dragon Naturally Speaking to help me transcribe analog audio cassette tapes. To do this, I listened to the tape using a regular foot- pedal transcription machine and then repeated everything that I heard into the microphone attached to the computer. That way, it didn't matter that I had multiple voices on the tape and that I didn't have each speaker train the software to recognize his/her voice (not a possibility). Dragon was trained to recognize my voice, and my re-voicing of everything could produce acceptable first passes of the transcript. Then, I could go back to edit. Saved some time, but more important, it saved some of the repetitive motions of typing. Does anyone know of a better technique now? And/or are there tools other than voice recognition available? Thanks, Karen -- Karen Lunsford, Assistant Professor of Writing Writing Program University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3010 klunsford(a)writing.ucsb.edu 805-893-8556

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how to measure participation rates
by Katerina 02 Dec '03

02 Dec '03

As part of my study of an online community I have to measure the participation rates among participants, in a way similar to Nancy Baym's in her classic study of the r.a.t.s online community. From my participation and observation of this particular community so far, it is obvious to me that most of the messages are contributed by a small group of heavy users. However, I need to quantify it, measure it and present it as a table containing percentages of posters and posts contributed. My question is how can I do it? What is the method of measuring these rates? Does it simply consist in noting down how many messages each member writes? Prima facie that may look like an easy procedure but once starting to do it it turns out to be extremely difficult since this online community is made up of more than 20 conferences each one comprising more than 50 different topical discussions. Overall the number of messages written every week is enormous. Any ideas on how I can measure overall participatio rates of such an environment? Thank you, K. Diamantaki

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