Here it goes : i've entered this year in my fourth year of studying sociology at the uni, after which i should hopefully be rewarded with a dregree (well it's not really a degree, it's somewhat of a transitional diploma between bachelor's and master's degree - anyway it's an important step). As my main assignement, i have to write a ~100 pages research paper about a subject i get to choose. Considering that i have to spend more than 8 months reading stuff and investigating on the same subject, it'd better be something i'm interested in and preferably familiar with.
And so i chose to study internet forums.
You'd think that this subject had already been dealt with by thousands of geeky students before me, well it seems to be quite the opposite in fact, at least as far as french sociology is concerned. This has probably a lot to do with the method of investigation : observation is a big part of it, but when it comes to actually getting to know the person behind the screen, it gets trickier. The cool part is indeed that i can explore my research field directly from my home, the bad part being that it's extremely difficult to actually meet the real persons that constitute such a scattered field. Ideally, i should be conducting face-to-face interviews for this kind of study, but as i agreed on with my teacher, this will only be possible in a few cases here. So in most cases i will be interviewing people online.
This brings me to my point : i need people who would agree to answer a few questions and chat about their activity as forum users. I chose the Inf forums as the first place to look into because i've been hanging around here for quite a while, and i think i know most of the members. This at least prevents me a bit from being bullsh*ted by the first aol kiddie looking for online prank thrills. I'll probably be asking on the BuF OT too.
So to be more specific, i'm looking for people to interview online via any possible method : irc, aim, icq or such. The interview has to last at least 2 hours, that's the bare minimum to get an acceptable content using text based communication. Of course the longer the better, and so it's perfectly conceivable to have the conversation reconducted upon several times. There will be some questions about your personnal background, but the conversation will mainly be about your foruming activity, whether it'd be on this forum or anywhere else. I have a very flexible schedule, and i can meet anyone online from 7am (GMT+1) to 4am : tell me when and i'll be there. Please note that i'm looking for people who have at least a 1 year experience of foruming, but it doesn't have to be on the Inf forums necessarily. If any lost old timer happened to drop by, and despite the personnal grievance he may have against what these forums have supposedly turned into, i'd love to hear about their reasons for leaving too.
This is not a call for help, and so i don't wanna sound insistent about it. There's no rush for doing it, the deadline is of about 3 months. If you'd be ok for it but don't have the time right now, just drop me a line and tell me what time would be more convenient for you, and i'll recontact you later on.
In short, if you happen to be bored sometime at work or at home and wanna talk about your internet life, remember that your experience can be of a great interest to me. Just pm me or reply to thread.
And so i chose to study internet forums.
You'd think that this subject had already been dealt with by thousands of geeky students before me, well it seems to be quite the opposite in fact, at least as far as french sociology is concerned. This has probably a lot to do with the method of investigation : observation is a big part of it, but when it comes to actually getting to know the person behind the screen, it gets trickier. The cool part is indeed that i can explore my research field directly from my home, the bad part being that it's extremely difficult to actually meet the real persons that constitute such a scattered field. Ideally, i should be conducting face-to-face interviews for this kind of study, but as i agreed on with my teacher, this will only be possible in a few cases here. So in most cases i will be interviewing people online.
This brings me to my point : i need people who would agree to answer a few questions and chat about their activity as forum users. I chose the Inf forums as the first place to look into because i've been hanging around here for quite a while, and i think i know most of the members. This at least prevents me a bit from being bullsh*ted by the first aol kiddie looking for online prank thrills. I'll probably be asking on the BuF OT too.
So to be more specific, i'm looking for people to interview online via any possible method : irc, aim, icq or such. The interview has to last at least 2 hours, that's the bare minimum to get an acceptable content using text based communication. Of course the longer the better, and so it's perfectly conceivable to have the conversation reconducted upon several times. There will be some questions about your personnal background, but the conversation will mainly be about your foruming activity, whether it'd be on this forum or anywhere else. I have a very flexible schedule, and i can meet anyone online from 7am (GMT+1) to 4am : tell me when and i'll be there. Please note that i'm looking for people who have at least a 1 year experience of foruming, but it doesn't have to be on the Inf forums necessarily. If any lost old timer happened to drop by, and despite the personnal grievance he may have against what these forums have supposedly turned into, i'd love to hear about their reasons for leaving too.
This is not a call for help, and so i don't wanna sound insistent about it. There's no rush for doing it, the deadline is of about 3 months. If you'd be ok for it but don't have the time right now, just drop me a line and tell me what time would be more convenient for you, and i'll recontact you later on.
In short, if you happen to be bored sometime at work or at home and wanna talk about your internet life, remember that your experience can be of a great interest to me. Just pm me or reply to thread.
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