Next steps: Pick a faculty contact to work with, and a project slice to work on

Lew is going to post his notes from our Mar 10 meeting once they're organized, and I'll post that nice image map he created live once he emails it to me. But for now, I'm posting the last thing we discussed, which concerns the simple logistics of getting this done and picking a "box" within which to work for two months. We tentatively decided that each of the three current faculty participants -- Lew, Hemant, and myself -- would offer to advise students on different areas of our project, and students interested in working on those areas should contact each professor individually over the next week. That way we can get a sort of private understanding of who's willing and able to do what, and then coordinate sort of sub-committees to actually get things done.

Lew:

(1) identifying "influential" persons and groups within the social network, identifying areas of questioning (media use, issue importance, social network ties, etc.) to ask these folks about, and, finally, actually conducting interviews;

(2) getting IRB approval for our whole suite of elite and non-elite interviews (and showing students what's involved in this)

Hemant:

(1) identifying the relevant print, television, and radio content (both mainstream and "minority" outlets) and the proper time scale to cover them; working through these traditional media outlets in a combined qualitative and quantitative content analysis to identify issues, actors, and cross-connections; identifying actual reporters, producers, editors, and freelancers to interview; identifying areas of questioning dealing with the production of this news (who are sources, what are issues, what do letters to the editor say, who are your competitors in news production, etc.), and, finally, actually conducting interviews;

(2) thinking through a methodology to do non-elite (door-to-door?) interviews (and training students on what's involved in this)

Greg:

(1) identifying the relevant web-based media (weblog, web versions of print and broadcast media, school administration official web site, school board candidate campaign web sites, individual school web sites, other web traffic we might identify) and the proper time scale to cover them; working through these cyber-outlets in a combined qualitative and quantitative content analysis to identify issues, actors, and cross-connections; identifying key web producers to interview; identifying areas of questioning dealing with the production of this cybermedia (why are you producing, who is your audience, how do you grant access, what is your media diet, what are your social network ties, etc.); and, finally, actually conducting interviews;

(2) working with Brian Dieth to get a system to capture closed-captioning text/transcript data from all local TV newscasts (and possibly digital video as well) with an eye to a system which can be used department-wide (even getting some funding for this, possibly)

So pick your pigeon and send him an email. Be realistic: Don't sign up for all six groups! And remember: If you're really interested in any of these slices but don't have the time to commit right now, you should still email your point professor so we can keep you in mind for further developments.

(Lew and Hemant: In speaking for you I've left some things out of the "six boxes" for simplicity's sake, but if you want to add them in just remember that you are authorized to edit my posts!)