Some of the questions you raise can be addresed through the use of the Netscan system (htttp://netscan.research.microsoft.com) which reports social accounting metadata about Usenet newsgroups, authors and threads on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearaly basis since September of 1999. The tool is offered explicitly for academic research into the sociological organization of conversational social cyberspaces. Regards, Marc Smith ________________________________ From: air-l-admin@aoir.org on behalf of jespert Sent: Tue 12/9/2003 3:24 AM To: air-l@aoir.org Subject: [Air-l] newsgroups Dear All, I have been studding newsgroups for some years, but only in Danish, now I am going into the English Usenet and wow it is big. I am doing some kind of discourse analysis that I have developed and it is fine but when analysing I use so much time looking and thinking on a single string in a single group - so yes what I want to ask about is a form of a description on the structure of news saying e.g. how many groups are moderated, where and how do I find there instrument of foundation and FAQ if they have any, how dose them there is not moderated doing, how many are subscript to the different groups, is there any differences between e.g. the alt. and res. domains when talking topics, culture, history etc. I would like this information so I can navigate when finding my groups for empirical study and make a qualified selection. I hope that you will answer both by pointing to literature (hopefully online papers) and by commenting on my questions. Thanks -- Jesper Tække - MA. Ph.D.-Student - IT University of Copenhagen - Dept. of Digital Aesthetics & Communication - Glentevej 67 - DK-2400 NV Copenhagen NW - Phone +45 3816 8888 - Direct +45 3816 8881 - Fax +45 3816 8899 - http://home16.inet.tele.dk/jesper_t/ - e-mail: jespert@it-c.dk _______________________________________________ Air-l mailing list Air-l@aoir.org http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l