Internet Research 2.0 Preconference Workshop:
 
 *Critical Choices in Web Research Design*
 
 Wednesday, October 10, 2001
9am - 5pm
The Gateway Center, University of Minnesota
 
Workshop Overview
This workshop will address the critical methodological concerns and choices
which researchers face during each of the key phases of studying what's on the
Web. The workshop will consist of five thematically-focused and moderated
discussions, led by facilitators with Web research experience. The facilitators
for each session will provide a brief overview of the theoretical, ethical,
and/or operational issues that pertain to the phase of Web research that is the
focus of their session, and questions for discussion. Topics to be discussed
include:
 
·        Situating Web research approaches in social theory: Implications of
macro-theory for methodological choices.
·        Units & levels of analysis in Web research (e.g. html features, pages,
links, sites, web events, web ecologies, web phenomena)
·        Capturing and archiving Web data
·        Processing Web data (e.g. identification of indicators, sorting,
annotating, coding)
·        Displaying and publishing Web data and analyses
 
Workshop Registration
Funding for the workshop is being provided by the Association of Internet
Researchers, but participants will need to pay for their own lunch. Anyone
registered for the Internet Research 2.0 conference is eligible to submit a
registration request for the workshop. See http://aoir.org/2001/workshop.htm for registration request instructions.

 

Participation in the workshop will be limited to the first 30 people who submit registration requests.  Notification  of registration or waitlist status will be sent in response to every  registration request. Participants will be encouraged to bring 1-2 posters that  provide an overview of their Web research project(s) to display during the workshop.
 
Workshop Organizers
Kirsten Foot (PhD, Communication, University of California, San Diego), is an
Assistant Professor of Communications at the University of Washington, and a
co-editor of the Acting With Technology series at MIT Press. As a Research
Fellow at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania, she
co-managed a large research project studying the development and impact of the
political Web in the US 2000 elections. Her research interests focus on the dual
relationship between new technologies and sociopolitical processes.
 
K. Ann Renninger (PhD, Education and Human Development) is a Professor of
Education at Swarthmore College.  She conducts research and evaluation for The
Math Forum (www. mathforum.com).  She and Wesley Shumar are editors of the
forthcoming volume in the Learning and Doing Series of Cambridge University
Press, Building Virtual Communities: Learning and Change in Cyberspace.  She is
generally interested in (a) the role of individual interest in cognition, (b)
change in learning and development, and (c) links between theory, research, and
practice as they pertain to changed understanding.
 
Steven M. Schneider (PhD, Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology), is an Associate Professor of Political Science, SUNY Institute of
Technology at Utica/Rome.  He co-managed a large research project studying the
development and impact of the political Web in the US 2000 elections while a
Research Fellow at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of
Pennsylvania.  His research examines the role of the Internet and other
communication technologies on American political development.
 
David Silver (PhD, American Studies, University of Maryland, 2000) is an
Assistant Professor of Communications at the University of Washington, and the
founder/director of the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies. Silver's work
on cyberculture has appeared in a number of books and journals and he is
currently working on a book, Critical Cyberculture Studies: Essays and
Annotations on an Emerging Field of Study, to be published by Sage in 2001. For
the last four years, Silver has been building the Resource Center for
Cyberculture Studies (http://otal.umd.edu/~rccs), an online, not-for-profit
organization whose purpose is to research, study, teach, support, and create
diverse and dynamic elements of cyberculture.
 
Jennifer Stromer-Galley (M.A. University of Minnesota, 1997) is a doctoral
student at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of
Pennsylvania. Her doctoral research seeks to understand how people perceive and
use the internet for political engagement and the implications such perceptions
and use might have for the public sphere. Stromer-Galley's prior research has
focused on identifying the social and structural forces that guide how political
campaigns utilize the web.
 
Leslie M. Tkach (M.A., International Political Economy, University of Tsukuba),
is currently working towards her doctorate in the same field. She wrote her M.A.
thesis on how Japanese political actors used the Internet during the 2000
General Election in Japan by focusing on political party web-site analysis,
questionnaires, and interviews. Leslie is currently expanding upon this theme
for her Ph.D. dissertation to include cross-national comparisons involving
domestic policy, telecommunications regulations, and sociopolitical issues in
the use of the Internet in Southeast Asian countries.