Slides and notes from my political commentary online presentation
Here are my slides in PDF format for my presentation I did on political commentary online for Thought and Praxis II Spring 2008.
It was an oral presentation, but I’ll be happy to post my more in-depth notes if anyone is interested.
Some notes from the slides that didn’t make it into the PDF:
This PowerPoint is part of an oral and written presentation for 5021 Thought and Praxis II as a part of the Masters in Anthropology program at the University of North Texas taken during the Spring semester of 2008.
All candidates are listed in alphabetical order.
All analysis was done on comments available Tuesday May 6th between the hours of 5pm and 7:30pm CST. This was the day of the primaries in North Carolina and Indiana.
Specifically wanted to chose YouTube because it can be used off of the YouTube site and on both of the other sites
Problem – not everyone actually views the videos on YouTube’s site!
Notes on analysis of the YouTube comments:
Chose the ‘most watched video’ of each candidate in order to objectively select the videos for the study.
The comments were: Mainly Critical of the Video
The For/Against had to be explicit to be counted – hence the ‘vaguely’ denotation. These referred to songs that were suggested in a negative tone rather than a positive one – but this was a matter of perspective and thus could not be judged objectively as explicitly for or against the candidate and therefore are not marked as a part of the for/against criteria above.
Notes on analysis of the MySpace comments:
The comments were: Mainly Supportive in Nature
More Spam Comments on MySpace than other Services
Clinton had more Spam (unsubstantial ) comments than either of the others – as a result those viewed as spam were not counted as part of the 20 analyzed.
Notes on analysis of FaceBook:
The comments were: Mainly Conversational in Nature
There was more of an actual discourse on Facebook than there was on YouTube or MySpace.
Average word count: 55
Notes on using YouTube as a research tool:
Took about five minutes to make and post video.
Was posted to all of my social networking sites including the three above and Twitter. Could not be posted to Twitter in video form so it is not counted in the above.
Notes on Interview Highlights:
Answers presented rang true with most interviewees.
As far as the second highlight goes I’d like to make a special note in my participant observation exercise where I participated in a political race online there were several entries that were not very serious but due to their nature of not being serious they accumulated votes very quickly. This was an interesting phenomenon to watch happen. Neither the people or the race seemed to be taken very seriously by the community at large in the beginning. It wasn’t until the second round (which occurred after this presentation was given) that some seriousness was given to the occasion.
On the Participant Observation part itself:
1st bullet though I knew I’d be a good candidate and had several ideas as to why – it was hard to put these ideas into words, especially without sounding contrite
2nd bullet Word of mouth, friends of friends, all through social networking online it caught on and spread, status messages on Ims and profiles as well as posts to friends lists and communities
A conclusion not presented in the slides: even if the same people are participating in the commentary on each social network they are doing so in different ways. YouTube is about the content, MySpace is about the Politician, and FaceBook is discourse with each other.
If you are interested in obtaining the actual slide presentation please let me know!
