Take 2

Ok. Since I’ve changed topics altogether with the Research Project, here’s my second attempt.

The use of social media is believed to be a driving factor in the Attention Age and supports the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers. It has been used so much this century by marketers directing their products towards their target audience. I think with the fact that social media has been  so prominent externally, there must be a way that it can be used to benefit the organization itself with internal knowledge management. This will make a difference because once we discover how social media can help with internal knowledge management and put the expertise to use, we’ll find more efficiency in the running of the organization.

week 3 tutes transient spaces

Just before the tutorial for this week, I started rethinking my options for the documentary. I know I should probably have a solid idea on what I’d like to by now but judging by how I have so many ideas, I keep thinking ‘how about…..’. Well all that has now officially been put to rest. I know I’ve said this before but this may very well be it. =D *hopefully*

At the beginning of class I was torn between the idea of either doing the documentary based on an aspect of gaming in the virtual world (as I mentioned previously) or an issue within the Brunei Students Society in Melbourne. I reopened the idea of doing the idea based on BSSMelb because I thought it would be perfect opportunity to showcase my skills where Bruneian officials monitor. I felt that I’d have better access to the people involved in BSSMelb (since I previously was an office bearer) and I knew the issues that normally took place within the society.

After speaking with Jenny, however, I decided to go with the online virtual community idea instead. This is because I realised that I was too close to the issues and the conflicts that are experienced by the student’s society and that no good could come out of ‘airing the committee’s dirty laundry’ for government officials to see. So yea, there is such a thing as too much conflict in a documentary. Jenny suggested that instead of doing this documentary in the participatory/reflexive mode, I should do it in an expository manner. But by doing so, I’d most likely be ostracised from the Bruneian community and I wouldnt be able to create a good documentary because of the lack of support that I’d get from the local community.

So now I’m permanently settling on doing a documentary based on the online virtual community. I was thinking about this last night (before actually laying eyes on the Fraser Allison and Harry Milonas documentary entitled Griefing and you )and I was considering choosing an issue that followed the same path as bullying in the virtual world. I think I should look for an alternative conflict now.

Jenny suggested that I should look at the Jakobsson and Taylor reading entitled “The Sopranos Meets EverQuest: Social Networking in Massively Multiplayer Online Games” to get ideas on the sort of conflicts that arise in online virtual communities. So I’ll start there. I also think I should do some reading into online subcultures, maybe I’ll get ideas from there as well.

I still think that this documentary will conducted in a participatory and reflexive manner considering I make up a part of the online virtual community and my avatar may make an appearance in the documentary (I have yet to decide what sort of angle the documentary will take).

After I come up with solutions to my current problem, I’ll have to answer the questions below as homework for this week. This seems like another version of Adrian’s four sentence abstract.

a. One sentence defining your community,

b. One sentence defining the issue you want to explore,

c. One sentence defining the conflict,

d. one sentence outlining the social theory that is relevant.

Anyways, expect another post before next friday with answers to these questions.

Four Sentence Abstract

1st attempt at a four sentence abstract. Here goes:

The workplace is an ever changing environment with new technologies being introduced to it on a day to day basis. Like a workplace, online games have a diverse population where there is a wide age range of people. I propose to conduct a survey/experiment to find out if the online game environment reflects the real life working environment and if these technologies used in online games make the work environment more progressive. This will make a difference because whether the results are positive or negative, we will know what is being done correctly/wrongly and be able to make improvements to the workplace environment.

I had to sit and think for a little while when trying to approach this task. I had a vague idea of what I wanted to do for my research project but when I had to put it into words on a page, it seemed a lot more obscure. Upon writing these ideas, a structure was created and it made the research project more real.

Doing this task over and over again really helps me refine my question – certain aspects of the research question may change but hopefully the bones of the project will remain the same.

I feel doing this four sentence abstract really helped me get started with the whole research process. Without having done this, I wouldn’t have known where to start.