Bbctheoriesf09's Blog

Trent Journal 3

bbctheoriesf09 — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:32:54 +0000

JOURNAL ENTRIES

JOURNAL NUMBER __3______

TEAM NAME ____BBC______________________

DATES RECORDED ___9/27,28, 10/11,12,14/2009________________

DATE	ACTIVITY	COMMENTS
9/27/09	Preparing Lit Review III	I sent a facebook message out to the group to inform what Lit Review I am going to do. I am comfortable with using the facebook application because it is easy to use.
9/28/09	Finished Lit Review III, talked about another application to use	I finished writing the third lit. review and turned it in. I think another good application to use would be something like skype where we could do it live and see each other why we are doing the research.
10/11/09	Facebook Message from Erika	I received a facebook message from Erika that said I have not responded to any of her messages, so I had to explain why I did not respond to the one message that I did not respond to, everything is worked out.
10/12/09	Writing the Individual Essay, Talked about email application	I wrote and finished the essay on what my contribution was to the group. My only problem with the email application is it seems that the group responds to facebook quicker.
10/14/09	Writing the Team Essay	Brandon sent a facebook message on how we will get this team essay done, so I decided to write the framework of the essay, what we had done an emailed it to the group for them to add changes if anything was needed or to put their perspective in it.

Trent Journal 2

bbctheoriesf09 — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:31:42 +0000

JOURNAL ENTRIES

JOURNAL NUMBER ___2_____

TEAM NAME __BBC________________________

DATES RECORDED _9/10,11,12,13,21/09__________________

DATE	ACTIVITY	COMMENTS
9/10	Facebook Group Creation	Erika created the Facebook group that will be used to do our communicating, so now our communications will be done on Facebook instead of the email.
9/11	Chose second Lit. review	I chose the second literature review that I was going to write which was Analyzing the uses and gratifications concept of audience activity with a qualitative approach. I Informed my other members via Facebook.
9/12	Internet vs. Face to Face	I learned that I like having face to face conversations over internet. The reason I like face to face more is because we can set a meeting time and get instant feedback on what we do. On the internet the feedback is delayed or we don’t receive it.
9/13	Started Lit Review 2	I started working on Lit review 2, and I read the article closely to understand it better.
9/21	Final Lit Review Topic	I am trying to come up with my Lit. Review topic to get an earlier start so I can finish it earlier. I have not had contact with the group since the last lit. review so I don’t know what they are doing, but I am sure we will contact each other when the lit review is closer to the due date.

Trent Journal 1

bbctheoriesf09 — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:29:32 +0000

JOURNAL ENTRIES

JOURNAL NUMBER ___1_____

TEAM NAME ____BBC______________________

DATES RECORDED ____8/25,26,29,31/09 9/02/09_______________

DATE	ACTIVITY	COMMENTS
8/25/09	First email from group member Choose group name and contact info.	I received an email from one of my members in the group about coming up with a name and dividing the work up. I noticed with the email system it may take many hours before responses are read because we have not designated a common time when everyone is free.
8/26/09	Group name and mentioned lit review	I said I was not good with coming up with a name so I said whatever my team members would come up with I would agree with. Brandon came up with the name BBC or last names, and the broadcasting company.
8/29/09	Thought about lit. review	I realized I have not received emails from the group in two days, so I didn’t know about what lit review everyone was doing. I realized now that I could have been proactive and sent an email and tried to get that information but I did not.
8/31/09	Lit. review and facebook	I currently almost done with my lit . review. I sent email yesterday to say what topic I decided to choose to make sure no one else decided to do it. Now we are all facebook friends so that should be an easier way for communicating.
9/02/09	Email about lit. review	I received a message in the google chat, and she asked did I turn in my lit review, but I responded a few hours later because that is when I had the time to look at it. I think it would be easier to work more things out if I were able to respond in real time.

Brandon Journal 1

bbctheoriesf09 — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 19:02:37 +0000

DATE

ACTIVITY

COMMENTS

8/25

Describe the process of selecting your media applications. How did your team negotiate the decisions? Who set up the different areas? What are your feelings, frustrations, surprises?

I checked my email late tonight and the first media application we decided to use was email. The first contact was made today by Erika via Georgia Southern email, the next by Trent via the same medium. It’s late so I will email them back tomorrow. Both of them seem eager to get the project started and I am in complete compliance with that. We don’t know who is doing what yet. We’ll probably have to communicate a little bit more before we can figure that out.

8/26

General Progress

Today I responded to the previous emails and officially got into the group. The introductions are complete and now we can start to work. If they were any group decisions about how we are going to do things, I suggested that I am completely flexible and willing to do whatever as long as it helps the group achieve our goal. We haven’t set up anything else for our group at this point besides Erika listed the website for her blog.

8/29

General Progress

A couple of days ago via email, Erika began the discussion of what our team name should be since that is required for the project. I suggested the name BBC because it was the initials of our last names and it tied in with mass communications theme. Trent and Erika were alright with the idea and that became our team name. At this point, I am still feeling good about this process. We’re all working together well. I assume this will get much harder when we actually have to start working together instead of separately.

8/30

General Progress

I have been in the library finishing up the first lit review assignment. We haven’t really discussed who’s doing which lit review so I just picked one. Hopefully, none of us reviewed the same article. I checked my email earlier and there were no new messages from any of the group members so I just went ahead and finished up. I am still not frustrated. I am still pretty positive.

9/2

General Progress

I turned in the first lit review yesterday. I felt good about it, but who knows until I see the grade. Trent said he did Caught in Web 2.0. That’s good because I did An Autoethnography on Autoethnography. Erika emailed and said she had been sick and trying to get better. Now that everyone is back we can probably start assigning the next lit reviews for the next due date. I will email everyone when I get a chance. There is no hostility in the group and we are all communicating, so based on what I’ve heard about in class, our group is doing a better than some groups.

Brandon Journal 2

bbctheoriesf09 — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:59:14 +0000

DATE	ACTIVITY	COMMENTS
9/14	How does you experience, so far, compare to having face-to-face conversations? What are the benefits? What are the drawbacks? How much have you completed? Write about the group contributions of your different members.	We have continued to move on with the project. I just finished the second of the three individual lit reviews. Because we have to interact without actually speaking to each other, I feel like we are more anxious to get on the same page and get things done. Sometimes when you know that you can work together to do something, you wait until the last minute to do it. If we do that with this, it is not going to come together well. There are only a couple of advantages to this way of communicating that I can think of. The first being that there is a hard copy of everything that we do and the second is that it forces us to not procrastinate. The main disadvantage is the lack of straight forward communication. It can lead to miscommunication. At this point, we are still working on lit reviews and journals. Or at least that is what I am doing.
9/15	General Progress	I submitted the second lit review this morning and that one is done with. Erika started a group on facebook so that we could communicate faster. We’re trying to figure out the last lit review we are each going to do. There is still very light communication using our only sources. I’m not really working on anything for the project since I have just completed the second lit review.
9/17	General Progress	I went to sleep last night at about three o’clock this morning getting ready for the COMM 4333 test. I feel good about it though. I have not made any progress with the project because the next lit review is due in a couple of weeks and I’ve been busy doing other things. I just feel like writing in the journal today because we had the exam. I feel as though if we were able to actually speak to each other this project would be one hundred times easier and we would have gotten either most of it done or less than what have gotten done because it would be easier to do so we would wait to do it.
9/18	General Progress	I am writing this journal today because I am going out of town this weekend and will not be able to get a journal entry in until Monday night. I still haven’t made any further progress on the next lit review or anything else. I feel like I should be doing something though. We haven’t had any team communication because there hasn’t really been a reason to. We all know what we are supposed to be doing and I assume that we are all on target with what we have to do.
9/21	General Progress	I checked my email and there are no messages that have to do with the assignment so I guess there are no problems. I have begun work on the third lit review. I found the article and printed it out. I’m going to read it and highlight it probably later on this week. Communication has been limited recently, but it has not been necessary. At least I don’t think it has been. We’re all still working individually on our assignments. Next week we are probably going to started trying to figure out the group lit review that we have to do.

Brandon Journal 3

bbctheoriesf09 — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:55:08 +0000

DATE	ACTIVITY	COMMENTS
10/8	What are the applications that you are most comfortable using? Why? Which are the applications that you like the least? Why?	When it comes to communicating using electronic media, not including a phone, I am definitely most comfortable using email or some type of instant messaging service because that is what I grew up with. On the other side of that spectrum, I haven’t embraced newer communication methods like Twitter or Skype just because I don’t really like change.
10/13	Other than meeting face-to-face, or talking on the phone, what types of applications do you wish were included on the media you used?	I think we have the ability to text message as long as we send the messages through the general email address, but if not that is definitely something that could be valuable. Conventional messaging takes too long for responses and it can hinder communication. That is probably the most valuable media.
10/14	What types of features do you wish were included as part of the application?	As far as included aspects go, I wish Georgia View had a collaborative project mode where you could share files and go into a virtual room and work together. That would make this ten times easier. They should look into developing something like that since they change the interface every year anyway.
10/15	General Progress	We had a communication problem, but it has been resolved. I finished the individual essay and turned it in on Tuesday and we finished the group essay. We need to get the fourth lit review out of the way so we can start on the paper and the project and so on.
10/18	General Progress	We took the second test on Thursday. Our group hasn’t started talking about our next steps toward the next phase of our collaboration. I’m fine with it I just don’t want to let time slip away because one of my classes just stated so now I have more work to do.

Brandon Lit Review 3

bbctheoriesf09 — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:51:27 +0000

Predictors of Internet Use Analysis
Zizi Papacharissi, Alan M. Rubin
Brandon Bennett
9/29/2009

Every day people use the internet for various reasons. Zizi Papacharissi and Alan Rubin decided to study what these reasons were and why people were motivated to look at what they searched for.

There are several concepts that the authors have used as theoretical grounding. Some major theories include the uses-and-gratificatifactions theory, media richness theory, and social presence (Papacharissi 2000).”

The uses-and-gratification theory “assumes people communicate or use media to gratify needs or wants. It focuses on motives for media use, factors that influence motives, and outcomes form media related behavior. Psychological characteristics, social context, and attitudes and perceptions influence people’s motives and behavior (Papacharissi 2000).”

Papacharissi and Rubin describe the media richness theory “assumes that people distinguish among communication media based on the intrinsic properties of the media (Papacharissi 2000).”

The authors depict social presence as “a sense that others are psychologically present and that communication exchanges are warm, personal, sensitive, and active (Papacharissi 2000).”

These are just a few of the concepts that the researchers have used to start their study. Before they conducted their experiment they researched older studies that other scientists have conducted.

Rubin and Papacharissi conducted their experiment by surveying a group of college students. There were a total of 279 students from an introductory communication class (Papacharissi 2000). “The sample breakdown was 58.8% female and 41.2% male; 51.6% of the students were first-year, 33.3% sophomore, 12.2% junior, and 2.9% senior and participation was voluntary (Papacharissi 2000).”

The researchers created several different scales for each aspect of the survey. A few of them include the contextual age scale to assess life position, the unwillingness-to-communicate scale which shows how axious someone is about interpersonal encounters, and the internet affinity scale which assesses liking or affinity with the internet (Papacharissi 2000).

Papacharissi and Rubin found several different data sets when they completed their experiment. But overall they found that “those who were more mobile, economically secure, satisfied with life, comfortable with approaching others in an interpersonal context, and who felt valued in their interpersonal encounters preferred the more instrumental internet uses, such as information seeking (Papacharissi 2000).”

Additionally, they found that “those who were less satisfied and who felt less valued in their face-to-face communication used the internet as a functional alternative to interpersonal communication, or to fill time (Papacharissi 2000).”

Inside of Papacharissi and Rubin’s article, they say how they could have changed their experiment by adding what it lacked. “Because our method did not allow respondents to describe their Internet conversations, we could not be certain as to the users’ intended behaviors. In the future, researchers should focus on illuminating this aspect of interpersonally oriented Internet communication (Papacharissi 2000).” Another way the experiment could have been changed to get different results is to change the group that was sampled.

The researchers have done a wonderful job gathering information and testing theories. The methods by which they conducted their experiment were sound. The procedures seem to be in order and the experiment had integrity. The sampling was appropriate because it was a class that uses the internet and that is what the experiment was based on. The information makes a valid addition to the research field.

Bibliography
Papaharissi, Z., Rubin, Alan. (2000). Predictors of Internet Use. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media Vol. 44, 175-197.

Brandon Lit Review 2

bbctheoriesf09 — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:49:45 +0000

The “4 C” View of Media
Guarav Mishra
Brandon Bennett
9/15/2009

When describing aspects of media, several terms are used that can be construed differently by groups of people. Gaurav Mishra has recently been obligated to explain social media works to high-ranking officials and has decided to figure out a way to make these concepts easier to comprehend. Because of that, the researcher uses the “4 C’s” to plainly categorize these terms into four basic categories and to show how each “C” is used and influenced by different types of media.

The”4 C’s”, described as “the underlying themes in social media”, are Content, Collaboration, Community and Collective Intelligence.

Mishra describes Content as “the idea that social media tools allow everyone to become creator, by making the publishing and distribution of multimedia content both free and easy, even for amateurs (Mishra 2009).” This may be the case, but the author suggests that more people prefer to just “consume” the content that is available instead of create their own content.

The author describes the concept of Collaboration as “the idea that social media facilitates the aggregation of small individual actions into meaningful collective results (Mishra 2009).” Mishra says that collaboration includes conversations. Conversations lead to the community aspect of the “4 C’s”.

Community is depicted as “the idea that social media facilitates sustained collaboration around a shared idea, over time and often across space (Mishra 2009).” Mishra also described Community more directly. The author said a community “…has a large number of members who have strong relationships and frequent interactions with each other (Mishra 2009).” Mishra suggests that a strong community is built around a social objective.

Finally, Collective intelligence is described as “the idea that the social web enables us to not only aggregate individual actions, but also run sophisticated algorithms on them and extract meaning from them (Mishra 2009).” For example, “Amazon and Netflix are able to offer us recommendations based on our browsing, buying and rating behavior and comparing it to behavior of other people like us (Mishra 2009).”

The author does not list any sources that were used in acquiring information. Based upon that, it can be deduced that the writer is drawing from their own knowledge. The author only refers to websites and organizations as examples for each of the “4 C’s”.

Mishra concluded that each of the “4 C’s” builds upon the previous “C” and links it to the next one. The author stated, “Each layer is often, but not always, a pre-requisite for the next layer. (Mishra 2009).”

The article is solid. All four of the walls of social media framework are well-described. The author has reached their goal of clarifying the subject matter and simplifying it for the masses. Mishra could have researched some type of external source to get some outside information. Other than that, the information presented is a nice addition to the communications field. The topic is fully covered otherwise.

References
Mishra, G (2009). Digital Activism & the 4Cs Social Media Framework. Retrieved from

http://www.digiactive.org/2009/05/10/digital-activism-the-4cs-social-media-framework/

Brandon Lit Review 1

bbctheoriesf09 — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:47:43 +0000

Autoethnography Review

Sarah Wall

Brandon Bennett

9/1/2009

There are several methods of research that can be used to study and observe an experiment. The technique that Sarah Wall decided to study was autoethnography. An autoethnography is a “highly personalized account that draws upon the experience of the author/researcher for the purposes of extending sociological understanding (Wall 2006).” Wall studied the method to find out more about it, how it is used, and to see how practical it is in the scientific world.

Before Wall began her study, she already had ideas of how information could be collected. The researcher stated that she had been “socialized” to believe that actual scientific data is only quantitative, experimental, and only known to a select few (Wall 2006). However, autoethonography is a qualitative research method that Wall used to study. She used it because it has an origin in analyzing relationships between people and it also allows the observer to see how people view themselves and the social world around them. The article later stated, “It is suggested that the freedom of a researcher to speak as a player in a research project and to mingle his or her experience with the experience of those studied is precisely what is needed to move inquiry and knowledge further along (Wall 2006).” That is the primary theory behind autoethonagraphy.

In the process of her research, Wall read several studies by published scientists including Neuman, Ellis, and Moustakas, on several types of qualitative research methods that are similar in style and related to autoethonography. The trials of these other researchers included short stories, poetry, fiction, novels, photographic essays, personal essays, journals, fragmented writing, and social science prose that were created by the people involved in the experiments (Wall 2006). She read and analyzed all of the findings of these individuals’ experiments and drew understanding from each set of data.

Wall concluded on page 6 of her article that, “What can be learned about method in autoethnography is that it varies widely from the highly introspective, through more familiar approaches connected to qualitative research, to somewhat experimental literacy methods, experimental, at least, in terms of thinking of writing as research (2006).” She believed that autoethnography, like all types of qualitative data, is subjective, but it is an interesting way to gather information. Wall leaned towards deeming this research method a success when she claimed, “…Autoethnography is more authentic than traditional research approaches, precisely because of the researcher’s use of self, the voice of the insider being more true than that of an outsider (2006).” Additionally, Wall suggested that she had a problem with her research. She was not able to find something “concrete” that she could learn with the general knowledge she gained from reading other researchers’ articles (Wall 2006). Using ones’ self as a method of study is not a usual experimental procedure. Because of that, autoethnography is not thought of as a legitimate source of information by some because they feel as though “common knowledge” is not found in an expert way.

In sum, the research presented in the article is sound. Each piece of data is thoroughly supported by a study and all of the opinions are not lacking basis. The methodology of research was a typical way for a student to find out about a topic. The researcher’s use of studies allowed her to gather background information which helped her gain a better understanding of the subject matter. Throughout the article, the author sprinkles in the views of the scientists she came across. It does not detract from her commentary – it makes it stronger. Using someone else’s knowledge in combination with her own opinion reinforced her findings. The article is certainly an acceptable way to educate masses in the field of autoethnography. The author was able to take all of the appropriate steps in researching this field of methodology and it shows in her writing. However, the article tends to drag on towards the end. Perhaps Wall could have used less supplemental information later on in her research.

References
Wall, S. (2006). An autoethnography on learning about autoethnography. International Jouranl of Qualitative Methods Vol. 5 Issue 2, 1-12.

Journal Entry 3

bbctheoriesf09 — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:58:56 +0000

I am most comfortable using our facebook group and email accounts to communicate with my group members. This is probably because these are the applications that I use most often from a day to day basis. I am comfortable with the wordpress account because I have had to use a blog in other classes, but I don’t find it the most convenient because it is hard to explain to my group members how to use it without showing them face-to-face. I wish that each of us had access to a camera so we would be able to use skype. I know this is already included for one of the applications we can use, but my group is unable to because we do not all have access. I think this would truly make a world of a difference in our communication because being able to see the person’s face and hear their voice while you are communicating plays a huge role in the success of the communication; both in how messages are sent and received. This is one of the most important things I have learned while doing this project so far. I think that may people don’t realize the advantage of face-to-face communication until it is taken away.