Some of the other surveys from my class focused on parental internet control, E-learning, the role of social media, Facebook and even one about online pornography.

(For the week of 5 – 11 October)

Our task for this week was to complete a time diary over a 24 hour period with particular attention to the use of media and technology. I won’t type up everything from the time diary in detail but here are a few of the things that I did. I began my time diary as soon as I was given it in class and was immediately able to fill it in because in my next class we used a projector to watch a short clip from a movie related to the course. After class I went home and played NBA 2K9 on the Xbox with some friends, then checked my Facebook account, and after these I began preparing dinner. I noticed that even while I was playing Xbox I used my mobile phone a couple of times to message friends, so I was using two forms of technology simultaneously. Even while preparing dinner I was in contact with technology as I watched the news on TV. I had several other instances of technology use such as checking emails and listening to my iPod but I also realised how much my day not only revolves around but also relies on technology. For instance the first thing I hear every day when I wake up is my annoying alarm clock programmed on my mobile phone, and I should probably thank technology for allowing me to take out money just by using my plastic eftpos card in an ATM.  The time diary made most people in the class aware of the strong bond that we all have with technology, gadgets and being interconnected through the use of the internet and mobile phones.

Content Analysis

In this week’s class workshop we were given IT and technology sections of old newspapers and told to use quantitative methods to perform content analysis. We were also given a coding sheet identify contrasts in attitude and content of the technology supplements compared to others over time . I was analysing an old Sydney Morning Herald IT section from July 1997.

I managed to only get through about 12 articles and I found that the majority of them (5/12) were short news items, and that 4/12 involved a ‘Technical’ problem frame. I also found that 3/12 were of  a ‘Business’ topic domain, and the majority of the articles featured a neutral tone to them. The time orientation of the articles was an overwhelming 11/12 in the present. There were not really any significant conclusions to be made from my quantitative results except that there was a focus on business-related information and the articles were very much concerned with the present.

(For the week of 21 – 27 September)

Representation
When watching a YouTube video clip you must be logged in to the internet, so representation is really only confined to online activity. However this activity can be performed at home, at the work place, in the library at university etc. These videos are represented through URL addresses online and also through related clip links on the side of the YouTube web page. YouTube also allows for the possibility of embedding tags and URLs into other web pages, therefore allowing rapid and easy circulation of memes and videos.

Identity
In terms of identity, it really comes down to user’s personal tastes and possibly values as well. It is hard to say what makes for a popular viral video but the main categories are videos that are funny, shocking, cute, illustrate incredible skill, sport achievements etc.. People all like different things so the identity traits cannot be tied down to just a couple factors, but clearly users would have to have a lot of free time to waste surfing the net, and statistics state that approximately half of YouTube users are under the age of 20.

Production
One of the main reasons for YouTube’s success is that any user can easily create a video and upload it in a matter of minutes. Production of these videos is not constrained to a certain group of people, these days anyone can produce a video and upload it. There is such a wide range of videos from very amateur clips to high budget professional videos made by firms to market products such as Nike’s popular clip of Kobe Bryant jumping over a driving car.

Consumption
There are a few systems which can show the consumption of YouTube videos. Firstly there is the amount of views tally under each video which indicates exactly how many times each a video has been watched. There is also the five star rating system at the bottom left hand side which sheds light on whether or not users like the video. Then there is the section for comments where anyone can leave a comment about the video. All of these together act as a pretty good estimate of the consumption of a video.

Regulation
YouTube allows almost anything to be uploaded as a video, however there is still a level of necessary regulation. Pornography is not allowed on YouTube even though there are some clips that come pretty close to soft-core porn. Also anything that is too extremely violent or offensive is taken down. Another reason for videos to be pulled from the site is when they infringe on any copyrights or patents, such as the use of music which was not given consent from record companies. There is also quite a tightly built in regulation system concerning the comments section of YouTube so there is a limit to how offensive and depraved the comments can be.

(For the week of 14 – 20 September)

Our questions were:
- What was the first viral video you remember seeing?
- What is your reaction when you receive one of these videos?
- When do you typically watch these videos (at work.. at home..)?
- How do you decide who you send them to?

I also showed some clips to ascertain whether or not people had seen them, and what they thought about the videos. Here are a couple of those videos:

Star Wars Kid

Miss Teen USA 2007

Some of my questions were not very well designed, as I felt that I needed to steer people toward the right direction to get answers sometimes. However, there was some good conversation that came about and many new ideas were thrown about. Overall this exercise really made me realised the importance of tailoring questions to get the desired results and information that can be really beneficial to ones research.

(For the week of 7 – 13 September)

1. How do you feel about people sending you YouTube videos/links to videos?
2. What was the first viral video that you can remember seeing?
3. What is your reaction when you receive one of these videos?
4. When do you typically look at these videos?
5. What do you do with these videos once you have watched them? (i.e. do you delete them, pass them on, save them etc)
6. If you send these videos on to friends, how do you choose what friends to send to?
7. If you do not send them on, why?
8. What type/genre of YouTube viral videos do you find most amusing: cute, displays of amazing skill, violent/shocking, sport achievements, funny, other?

(I will upload an interview shortly …. )

(For the week of 31 Aug - 6 September)

When I first got on the bus (17:30) there was already five men and three women on board. Three of the men were just sitting and not doing anything, one of them was using his phone to text or play a game (not sure), and the last guy was listening to music. Out of the women two were not using a mobile phone and one was listening to music.

By 17:35, and a few bus stops later, six more males had boarded the bus with two of them listening to music from their phones. Five new females had also now boarded the bus with three of them texting or using their phones for something else. I also notice at this point that one of the men who had been on the bus from the start had now started using his phone to call someone and the other guy who had been using his phone to text at the start had now put his phone away.

About ten minutes later at 17:44 several passengers (four males and four females since the start) had gotten off the bus and again there were a whole batch of new ones. Eight new men had boarded the bus with one of them listening to music from his phone, and two others who were texting or fiddling around with their phones. Another six women had also boarded the bus by now, and one of them received a phone call shortly after boarding and another made a phone call shortly after getting on the bus as well. A third woman began texting when she sat down. The other three did not use their phones at all.

About another eight minutes later and I was just about to get off the bus at my stop on King Street in Newtown.  I had lost count at this point of how many people had gotten off the bus but I had taken note that another six males and three females got on the bus. Apart from one man listening to music from his iPhone, none of the people were using their mobiles for anything for the first few minutes getting on the bus. Two women had both started texting at some point but appeared to be just bored and messing around with applications or going over old text messages.

As I stepped off the bus to walk home I realised that I chosen a very busy time to observe mobile phone use as it was the period of the day where everyone is going home from work. Because there were so many people I lost track of who had and hadn’t been using their phones. I also could not tell if most people were texting or playing games because I was too far away to see. All in all however there was a trend of about 40% of passengers on the bus who would at some point on their journey take out their phone to text or play with it in some way.  I observed that several people listened to music from their phones, about 6 out of the total 42. Others were also listening to music but I only counted it as connected to a mobile phone if I was sure that it was. Overall it was an interesting first-time ‘observing’ for me but I definitely should have picked a better venue as I could not see all the people on the bus clearly, and also there were so many people coming and going on the bus that I was not able to keep exact records of people’s interactions with their mobile phones.

(For the week of 24 – 30 August)

The first ethical principle was that the ‘Benefits Outweighs the Risks’. In the case of Howard’s implementation of network ethnography to study the network of political campaign consultants, the methods were definitely appropriate to the aims as only a combination of social networking and ethnography would work to research the complicated e-politics network as it was a mobile community.

The ethics principle of ‘Justice’ was adhered to by Howard as all the results from his experimental implementation of network ethnography were present in the article, and he went through the step by step process of his research and methods.

An interesting ethical principle is that of ‘Respect’ which focuses on the regard for beliefs, perceptions, privacy, sensitivities etc. Howard’s research was culturally sensitive and did not appear to disregard any participant’s beliefs, but the article did not explain every detail of the research execution so as a reader one cannot be 100% positive that these ‘Respect’ principles were fully met. Howard does however divulge information about individual’s movements between formal employments which, if traceable, could be considered a disrespect of privacy.

Another ethical principle discusses avoiding ‘Risk and Harm’, which could also be linked to the disclosure of people’s employment affiliations. I cannot be certain just from reading the article, but ethics relating to the harm of reputation or other social humiliation could be breached.

In terms of ‘Consent’, Howard did not go in to detail whether or not participants in his study were fully briefed and informed of the true nature of the experiment. In relation to ‘Attribution and Honesty’ and ‘Ethics and IT’, again not enough information about the actual study was given so I cannot be sure that there was not a breach of ethics here.

All in all Phillip Howard’s research was very well structured and appeared to be (from the information available) very transparent.  The only issue which might be a breach of ethics was that of the relationship between individuals and firms, but only if these relationships are able to be traced back to specific participants.

(For the week of 17 – 23 August)

Howards article discussed the idea of ‘network ethnography’ which would facilitate the study of complex formal and informal organisations that operate over great distances through new media. By using the example of a network of political campaign consultants, Howard found that this ‘network ethnography’ was the most effective way to study and research communities that are built around new media.

Howard’s methodology for studying these ‘hypermedia organisations’ was really a combination of two major research methods: social networking and ethnography. He states that ethnography is positive because it allows people to tell stories about their group/community and through these the researcher can discover the culture and closely experience organisations. However, when concerned with hypermedia, ethnography does not really allow researchers to be certain about “time, location, and social context in which messages are generated, draining colour about the real field site from researchers’ observations”. Howard states the positives of social networking as it being good at “making personal relationships comparable, defining core and group membership, and expanding the number of social observations possible in traditional ethnography”. However, it has limited use in revealing stories of mobility within communities. Howard takes a mix of the positives from both research methods to create ‘network ethnography’ which in his view is the ultimate way to study ‘hypermedia organisations’.

 The methods used to carry out this ‘network ethnography’ on this e-politics community were a combination of the two base research methods. Howard needed to overcome four challenges; the e-politics community is unlike others previously studied, micro and macro-level research questions were needed, methods had to allow an exploration of the multiple dimensions of contemporary work, and the methods had to give evidence of both technological and organisational determinism. In the end he used interviews, in depth analysis and observation of e-politics network, and investigated the correlation between individual actors in the networks. The disciplinary organisation for Howard’s research was organisational and sociological.

(For the week of 10 – 16 August)