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The newest Pew Internet Project research shows an interesting results on online participating in sports fantasy leagues. What the heck is that … I hear you asking … or at least I heard myself.
Well, this sentence was quite impressive to me: On a typical day, two million internet users are going online to oversee and check on their fantasy teams. Two million? Even tho this represents only 8% of adult Americans, it is more than a whole adult Slovenia.
As described in PIP report, sport fantasy teams are created by fans who ‘draft’ individual professional athletes to be part of their team. The ‘team’ is an artificial assembly of players from a variety of real teams.
So, to cut a long story short …
- 83% of the participants in online fantasy leagues are male;
- 76% of the participants in online fantasy leagues have six or more years of internet experience;
- 61% of the participants have broadband at home;
- 51% of the participants use the internet daily.
Two words on my mind … narcotic disfunction … oh … am no better .. only that I don’t play sports, but instead I do the online hanging out with friends.
By Nana | June 18, 2005 | Topics: Research, Tech | No Comments »
Yooopeeeee !!!
Three days over due but still … I finished the Oxford paper. But the party isn’t over just yet. Friday, deadline for Cambridge paper. Ok, off to work, Bojana!
And … and … and … less then a month and then I am off to London. For almost six weeks … I am so much looking forward to going.
By Nana | June 7, 2005 | Topics: Conferences, Research | No Comments »
Busy Busy
I am still around, haven’t escaped from the blogosphere yet. I am just so busy busy writing up papers for all those conferences. I always have the same problem when I sit down to write something. It’s a quite routine procedure:
- day 1: I get to my desk at seven, collecting all kind of articles and books that might appear to be useful … eventually I get lost in all those papers and I make it thru the day, trying not to drown into the sea of information around me;
- day 2: ok, today it should be easier, I am surrounded with all the resources needed. So I can start writing! Yeh right! Digging thru all the books and articles … still digging … digging a bit more. I don’t get much further as to open text document and write some really initial lines. I end up in bed, being angry about how little I did and how tomorrow, I am gonna produce A LOT of new text.
- day 3 (this is today;)): first, I delete all the crap I wrote the previous day. What was I thinking? Ok, now put my mind together and start writing. And, in the morning, I succeed to write about 600 words. Yoohoo! Then I go to lunch or to a meeting or I read part six of How Lisa came to Israel. Getting back at my paper isn’t pretty. I rewrite all those 600 words and start working on some more. I end up with 1200 words by 8 pm. Very bad. Tomorrow I have to improve.
- day 4 to day n (depends how much I need to write): I manage to put together some new 800 words and rewrite the bit from a previous day.
- final day: Most happy to finish. Trying to hire someone to do the presentation cos I don’t fancy what I wrote sooo much.
Ahhh, what a pleasant escape, this blog, and I have just written 334 words in a blink (if only was so quick when it comes to papers). I should get back to my paper …
By Nana | March 15, 2005 | Topics: Conferences, Research | No Comments »
Pew / Internet Qualitative Research
I was just surfing the Pew / Internet Project website to see what’s new and in the bottom of the site, left corner (wait, I have to check hands, cos I tend to mix up) I find the Your Input call for bloggers.
Are you a blogger?
Tell us why you created your blog, how often you post new material,
and what kind of impact your blog has had.
And tell us how to get to your blog.
Click here to answer.
They put quite some effort into blog-related research lately. I am looking forward to seeing the result of this one.
Bed torture
I am still confined to bed, it’s been more than a week now and I can’t take it anymore. Yesterday I tried to get out for a short while but my body immediately signalised it was not ready yet. So ok, I said, I give it another two days and then I am back to life;).
So, as it is, my life is very interesting these days. All I do is lie, eat and read blogs. I have read all the blogs I like criss-cross over and over again already, now I am waiting like a starved wolf for any new entries to pop up.
My ‘victim’ blogs at the moment are:
Lisa’s on the face - a blog, written in a way, that makes a reader feel every single word. Lisa is an incredible writer, whether her entries are on her personal life or just on life in general. She lives in Tel Aviv for the fifth year now and among all the great posts she wrote, there is an awesome series on How Lisa Came To Israel? along with all the ups and downs of bringing Middle East back to peace.
Allison’s An Unsealed Room - also an Israeli blog (actually I found this one first and then the snow ball effect happened). When reading Allison, I always imagine her as one of my senior colleagues at my uni, critical commentator of current affairs in Israel (I magine her as a great Foucauldian critical discourse analyst;)), and a very loving family woman.
Chayyei Sarah - yet another Israeli blog. Sarah is a master of provoking hot debates and discussions within the blogsphare. She’s the expert of throwing a bone (as we would say in Slovenian, but probably doesn’t make much sense in English). With the right amount of sarcasm, she manages to make her readers laugh but also to sit back and do some serious thinking. She’s all fun and I often end up laughing out loud.
A perfect marriage - recently discovered and figure out for your self, why I spend a considerable amount of time reading it. It’s a great blog on love of two middle-aged people and it’s a proof that love doesn’t neccessarily die after being together for 27 years.
All other blogs on my blogroll I don’t molest, but I visit them within reasonable frequencies.
Well, not that I’d be so bored, I have a to-do list waiting for me, really a long one, but I can’t start cracking just yet. Tho I could easily read some readings for my PhD or at least be thinking in this direction. Boooo! I want to get back to normal. The weather (despite constant light snowing) is nice for running and I can’t go. Or at least to take some nice walks! I lack my daily activities. Good that I have a laptop cos with a desk computer I’d be disconnected from internet as well. Which probably wouldn’t be so bad. Oh no, I think it would be quite useful. And even tho I have a laptop in my bed, I can’t work on those conference proposals that I need to, or work on my last RIS report. Cos it’s very uncomfortable having books, article and stuff around on the bed. It’s only suitable for the laptop. Excuses, excuses! Oh well, I will stop whining and go check my blogs again;))
By Nana | February 26, 2005 | Topics: Blogging, Research | No Comments »
The Future of Internet
Pew Internet Project gave out the results of another interesting study. In September 2004 they conducted online interviews with non-random sample of 1, 286 technology experts, scholars and social analysts (from affiliations like Harvard, MIT, Yale, IBM, AOL, Intel, Oracle, Google and some more) about the future of Internet. Mostly, they agreed that by 2014 internet will increase the size of people’s social networks far beyond what has traditionally been the case. Two thirds of them agreed that at least one devastating attack will occur within next ten years on the network information infrastructure. Half of them believed in future of copying and distributing digital product freely thru anonymous peer-to-peer networks. The also pointed out the growing surveillance by democratic governments and by authoritarian regimes due to increasing number of computing devices embedded in nearly every aspect of our lives.
And according to those experts, blogs will bring a dramatic change to the news and publishing worlds as blogs supplant the public’s attention to traditional media.
I try to imagine what would happen if tomorrow I woke up and there was no internet. Hmmmm, I would rather not have this situation to deal with. That would be just awful:))). Am I net-addict? Or net-holic? Do I feel insecure while offline? Intriguing questions, which I find hard to answer honestly, even only to myself. I know am a net-addict. Whatever that includes. At home, my laptop is constantly connected to cable, whether I actually am behind it or not. But I like the possibility of … I like to have all options open. With being signed on to Skype, Gaim (IM application) and x-chat I feel like my room is not bounded only to four walls but rather has all windows open to outside world, way beyond Ljubljana and Slovenia. It is something special about maintaining relationships with friends and colleagues online by overcoming time and physical distances. Information technology is turning into relationship technology:))). The form of online communication that I prefer least is certainly email. I find it so hard to sit down and write an email. I think email, even tho it deserves all credits for what it does make possible for me, is kind of retro. It’s the old way of communication, writing letters has been always at our disposal. Well, it did take a bit more time and effort to actually get it sent and received, but I don’t see anything so new in it. I think what puts me off a bit is its non-real time nature. I prefer synchronous communication to asynchronous. I prefer to be in real time interaction with people. Of course, there are situations where email is the only suitable form of communication. But …. there is one thing I don’t fancy so much. Webcams. I hear people praising them for all their benefits and I honestly believe they are very useful but I couldn’t use one myself. I see it as some kind of distortion of reality. Ops, which reality? Online or offline? I don’t divide these two. Now I got completely carried away with all this communication blah blah. Anyway, I would have troubles to get used to live without internet. And big ones, I guess. I don’t have any problem going away for a few weeks and not get online, but for good - that would be one sad thing to get used to.
By Nana | January 12, 2005 | Topics: Research, Tech | No Comments »
Cues Filtered Out, Cues Filtered In
Last week I came across Handbook of Interpersonal Communication, edited by Mark L Knapp and John A. Daly. First I was attracted to it cos I like handbooks per se and also because it appears intriguing for someone from communication studies. But when I took a closer look, I immediately realised I need to read at least half of it. It starts with some methodological perspectives on how to research the interaction processes, contexts, meanings, social cognition within interpersonal communication. It provides a detailed description on hypothesis testing and structural equation modelling. But … in the conclusion of methodology section they emphasise the importance of overcoming the “greatly overestimated gap between qualitative and quantitative approaches” (Poole at al in Knapp and Daly 2002, 62). I must admit I felt relieved after reading this as I was expecting it to be just another QUAN praising. But authors recognise the benefits of interpretative research – going below surface phenomena to uncover the underlying meanings and focusing on the meanings of the phenomena rather then objectifying them. So the next section delivers comprehensive overview of narrative inquiry as a paradigm for the study of interpersonal communication. And I really love how the author of this section, Arthur P. Boncher, describe the paradigm war:
“To quarrel over method is to have a goal in common but to disagree about how best to achieve the goal. But empiricists and interpertivists do not agree on the goal. Empiricists usually want to predict and control human behaviour whereas interpretivists want to understand human beings and help them decide what to do.”
It is important to acknowledge that there is more than one legitimate goal to which inquiry (on interpersonal communication) can be addressed and with doing so, we free ourselves from the chains of monolithic model of research practices. I think this could be considered one of the best arguments to undermine the incompatibility thesis.
But to move on from methodology, (which btw includes also a section on discourse analysis – quite impressing) the next few sections draw on conceptual perspectives and themes for interpersonal communication (e.g. culture and meaning). Then, slightly towards the end of a handbook, I discovered the “Cues Filtered Out, Cues Filtered In”, a contribution on computer mediated communication and relationships. An amazing piece of writing, written by Walther and Parks. I did read some stuff on Walther’s work before and I was astonished at his Social Information Processing theory (SIP), which greatly departs from all other theories (social presence theory, media richness theory, theory of electronic propinquity, SIDE theory), dealing with CMC and CMR. SIP theory explicitly rejects the view that the absence of nonverbal cues restricts communicator’s capability to exchange individuating information. Walther suggests that uncertainty reduction and social penetration can ultimately be as effective in CMC as in FtF interaction. An interesting point, with which I couldn’t agree more.
Oh yeah,this Walther and Parks section definitely worth reading, if you are even slightly interested in CMC.
By Nana | December 29, 2004 | Topics: Academic books, PhD, Research | No Comments »
Leading Libraries Books At Our Disposal Delivered by …
… Google. Apparently, Google is going to get really academic friendly since his intention is to scan books from some of the most important academic libraries and make them instantly searchable. So we can look forward to searching thru books from Michigan, Harward and Standford University Libraries, alongside with some archives at Oxford University Library. Wahay …. what a nice gesture.
By Nana | December 15, 2004 | Topics: Research, Tech | No Comments »
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