Proposal for Thought and Praxis II
This is my proposal for my final presentation of Thought and Praxis II in my Applied Anthropology Masters program at University of North Texas:
I propose to find out whether or not the Internet has an influence on voters through access to information on new sites such as CNN, Fox News, BBC, NYTimes Online, Salon etc as well as access to other voters in public communities such as YouTube, Twitter, Digg, Livejournal, MySpace and Facebook etc. I will also seek to establish a demographic and socioeconomic status of those that feel the Internet is an influencer versus those who do not find it to be so. For those that do not find it to be so, I will seek to find what predominate media forms influence them and why they do not utilize the Internet for this information. Theoretically I intend to take a structuralism approach to symbolic/interpretative anthropology to uncover the underlying structure of how people view the Internet in politically symbolic terms. Also, to understand how people give meaning to the cyber-political world around them as well as how they then express this meaning through their own cultural symbols within these online communities.
Now let’s see if I can pull it off! No better day to start than today – being the Texas Primaries!
March 4, 2008 @ 1:48 pm
First sentence should read “news” sites (plural) 😉
I look forward to seeing whether your findings show if there is a clear demographic & socioeconomic boundary between those who say the internet is an influencer vs. those who don’t.
March 5, 2008 @ 10:05 am
Is this an abstract for a conference paper or a master’s project? I guess a few questions immediately pop up, like:
– how can you measure or assert the influence of the internet on voters (and what influence actually means). I guess you can come up with some survey questions, but from a qualitative perspective they will be quite debatable.
– isn’t the scope of research way too big?
– what is information? you put together BBC and Facebook, which are not the same thing in many ways.
– the last sentences of your abstract are moving the discussion in a totally different direction then the influence on voters topic. you are now talking about meaning-making around internet in the political arena. and in the next section, you introduce yet another topic.
i don’t mean to be over-critical, but i just think you’ll need to narrow down a lot. the points above are meant to help you do that. good luck!
March 5, 2008 @ 10:17 am
This is for my final for a class – neither a Masters project (I’m in an applied program so this would never work for a masters project here), or a paper (I’ve never submitted a paper and really don’t intend to for a while – my job is far too intense to go that far into academia at the moment).
To answer your questions:
1- I plan on both a qualitative and quantitative assessment that will first define influence then ask to what degree
2 – Why yes it is! This is my brainstorm on what I’d love to do, but in reality it won’t happen quite like this in the amount of time I have to do it in.
3 – I’ve separated BBC and Facebook actually. BBC = Information whereas Facebook = other voters. Two different things entirely.
4 – This is because my assignment for the class is to incorporate Theory into it which means I have to ascribe to a particular anthropological theory as a means of my investigation. Unfortunately, this class is centered on theories that have existed for a while now and is not necessarily open to new theories and approaches such as Cyber Anthropology – so this is my way of melding the two. It does need work, this is why I threw it out there. 🙂
Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate you taking the time to read it and to comment on it!