Below are the questions that I will address in formal research for my project about dandelife.com:
1) Is dandelife a real community?
I will contend that it is a true community by using existing research about online communities as well as observation of dandelife user posts, etc.
2) Is this the next step in the way we think about history? Not in the traditional sense of dead presidents or large events, but as real people essentially piecing a quilt of lifetimes of experience? We talk a lot about citizen journalism these days. Is this citizen history in the making to the point of creating a revolution in the way events are recorded and remembered?
3) Why do people feel the need to reveal personal stories on a public forum? Do casual readers of other peoples’ stories/histories care if the writers are lying or not, and what is the incentive, if any, to lie on Dandelife?
4) Is the business model viable? Will dandelife grow and morph like ebay, from being designed to serve one maybe small purpose to something that may become a much larger community?
1 response so far ↓
bc // February 15, 2007 at 1:19 am
Ok, progress here, certainly. The first question is a non-question, though, so we’ll skip to No. 2. If dandelife was not a community, you would not be analyzing it for a class on online community. Fine to justify the site as an artifact for analysis — in fact, you’ll want a graph or two along those lines — but it’s not a research question that will serve you.
The second is too much of an opinion, too much of a prediction for me to feel real good about it in a research paper, but I like where I think you’re headed with it. Try “memory” rather than history. Beyond an individual’s circle of intimacy (kith and kin), I’m not sure how many people are ever going to read or interact with the information about these folks. But memory of them for that close circle? You might be able to draw reasonable conclusions there. We’re looking much more for evidence, findings.
Your third question I think is fine. Run with it.
THe fourth branches way off into commerce. Either stick with the sociological, psychological questions or develop another line of questions (and, therefore, another paper) on the business aspects. One class, one paper — not enough space or time for both.
Proceed.