Gerd, If you haven't already, you may want to look at a publication by Brenda Danet, who discusses the use of emoticons and other visual 'slang' as online communicative expressions. Danet, B. (2001). Cyberpl@y: Communicating Online. Berg Pub Ltd. Regards Kylie -------------------------------------- Kylie J. Veale | Brisbane, Australia GradDipInvEnv, MInetStds(Design) PhD student (Internet Studies) email: kylie@veale.com.au www: http://www.veale.com.au/kylie icq: 27938257 msn: kyliej@hotmail.com yahoo: kylie_veale -----Original Message----- From: air-l-admin@aoir.org [mailto:air-l-admin@aoir.org] On Behalf Of Gerd Stodiek Sent: Saturday, 15 May 2004 8:19 PM To: air-l@aoir.org Subject: [Air-l] Emotional Content in Weblogs and News Sites Online I am in the process of writing my Master thesis on a comparative study of weblogs and online news sites. One of my measures is emotional content. I want to find out whether weblogs offer more emotional content than online news sites based in print, broadcasting, and the web. I looked at an email and information richness study by Panteli (2000) and there I discovered that emoticons, capital letters or abbreviations were replacements for shortcomings with respect to face-2-face emotions. I am not sure if these measures suffice to make inferences from text in weblogs or online news sites? Does anyone know of measuring tools in online text communication that would make sense in light of this study? Kind Regards Gerd Stodiek ISNM International School of New Media University of Lübeck Gerd Stodiek M.Sc. Digital Media Program http://www.isnm.de Willy-Brandt-Allee 31a 23554 Lübeck, Germany _______________________________________________ Air-l mailing list Air-l@aoir.org http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l