Internet Research 2.0 Preconference Workshop: 

Critical Choices in Web Research Design

Wednesday, October 10, 2001

9am ­ 5pm

The Gateway Center, University of Minnesota

 

Workshop Overview

This workshop will address the critical methodological concerns and choices which researchers face during each of the key phases of studying what’s on the Web. The workshop will consist of five thematically-focused and moderated discussions, led by facilitators with Web research experience. The facilitators for each session will provide a brief overview of the theoretical, ethical, and/or operational issues that pertain to the phase of Web research that is the focus of their session, and questions for discussion. Topics to be discussed include:

 

·        Situating Web research approaches in social theory: Implications of macro-theory for methodological choices.

·        Units & levels of analysis in Web research (e.g. html features, pages, links, sites, web events, web ecologies, web phenomena)

·        Capturing and archiving Web data

·        Processing Web data (e.g. identification of indicators, sorting, annotating, coding)

·        Displaying and publishing Web data and analyses

 

Workshop Registration

Funding for the workshop is being provided by the Association of Internet Researchers, but participants will need to pay for their own lunch. Anyone registered for the Internet Research 2.0 conference is eligible to submit a registration request for the workshop. Participation in the workshop will be limited to the first 30 people who submit registration requests.  Notification of registration or waitlist status will be sent in response to every registration request. Participants will be encouraged to bring 1-2 posters that provide an overview of their Web research project(s) to display during the workshop.

 

Workshop Organizers

Kirsten Foot (PhD, Communication, University of California, San Diego), is an Assistant Professor of Communications at the University of Washington, and a co-editor of the Acting With Technology series at MIT Press. As a Research Fellow at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania, she co-managed a large research project studying the development and impact of the political Web in the US 2000 elections. Her research interests focus on the dual relationship between new technologies and sociopolitical processes.

 

K. Ann Renninger (PhD, Education and Human Development) is a Professor of Education at Swarthmore College.  She conducts research and evaluation for The Math Forum (www. mathforum.com).  She and Wesley Shumar are editors of the forthcoming volume in the Learning and Doing Series of Cambridge University Press, Building Virtual Communities: Learning and Change in Cyberspace.  She is generally interested in (a) the role of individual interest in cognition, (b) change in learning and development, and (c) links between theory, research, and practice as they pertain to changed understanding.

 

Steven M. Schneider (PhD, Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology), is an Associate Professor of Political Science, SUNY Institute of Technology at Utica/Rome.  He co-managed a large research project studying the development and impact of the political Web in the US 2000 elections while a Research Fellow at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania.  His research examines the role of the Internet and other communication technologies on American political development.

 

David Silver (PhD, American Studies, University of Maryland, 2000) is an Assistant Professor of Communications at the University of Washington, and the founder/director of the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies. Silver's work on cyberculture has appeared in a number of books and journals and he is currently working on a book, Critical Cyberculture Studies: Essays and Annotations on an Emerging Field of Study, to be published by Sage in 2001. For the last four years, Silver has been building the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies (http://otal.umd.edu/~rccs), an online, not-for-profit organization whose purpose is to research, study, teach, support, and create diverse and dynamic elements of cyberculture.

 

Jennifer Stromer-Galley (M.A. University of Minnesota, 1997) is a doctoral candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Her doctoral research seeks to understand how people perceive and use the internet for political engagement and the implications such perceptions and use might have for the public sphere. Stromer-Galley's prior research has focused on identifying the social and structural forces that guide how political campaigns utilize the web.

 

Leslie M. Tkach (M.A., International Political Economy, University of Tsukuba), is currently working towards her doctorate in the same field. She wrote her M.A. thesis on how Japanese political actors used the Internet during the 2000 General Election in Japan by focusing on political party web-site analysis, questionnaires, and interviews. Leslie is currently expanding upon this theme for her Ph.D. dissertation to include cross-national comparisons involving domestic policy, telecommunications regulations, and sociopolitical issues in the use of the Internet in Southeast Asian countries.