New vision

In the meeting with Adrian this afternoon, we discovered that there was no actual issue to the project I was planning to do. Also, if I continued to pursue it, I would most likely end up writing a thesis instead of conducting a project. I’ve already done a thesis and it didnt seem like very much came out of it. I really feel the need to do a project in order to make this honours year feel worthwhile. Also, I’m pretty sure doing really hands-on activities that’ll be assessed would help prepare me for the work place next year.

Feeling my drive to a research project instead, Adrian suggested one for me that is a Parks Victoria project which requires me to use social media to connect people with information so that if anyone is looking for an expert in a certain region, they’d be able to find one with a click of a button (well thats what it is a very small nutshell). He asked me to read Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations by Clay Shirky.

Upon reading half the book, I found that everything that I’ve done in the lead up to honours is essentially social media. This is actually what I wanted to do, just framed differently. I’m glad I had the discussion this afternoon eventhough my head wasnt really in the meeting.

Still thinking about my previous idea I suppose it would’ve been fun to conduct experiments in the online virtual world. However, Adrian did make a good point that if I assumed that the virtual world was similar to the real world, there wouldnt be a point conducting the project because there wouldn’t be a difference to reflect on.  He also mentioned that it would’ve been too big a project for an honours thesis. I suppose I can always recycle this idea and use it for my documentary project in Transient Spaces later on.

I came out of the meeting this afternoon wondering if the project that he suggested for me would be a good fit. Upon reading the book on social media, I think it just might be. In any case, I’ll most likely have to amend my four sentence abstract.

Week 2 slides

Looking through the ethics approval issue, I remember having to worry about this when doing past projects. People really take this seriously. The whole ethics issue will narrow down what you can/cannot ask or do in an interview. I used to avoid doing interviews for mini projects because you have to fill up a form and prepare questions that are to be asked months ahead of time. I’ve previously gone through the ethics approval process and fount that by the time it was approved, my research project had changed direction and I had to go through the whole process all over again. This process can take a long time to get approved and this can hold back progress on a project.

I’ve known from the beginning what conducting an honours research project entails but hearing Adrian reiterate that nothing new has to be discovered really takes pressure off me (especially seeing as we dont have a long time to conduct extensive experiments). I am planning on doing further research eventually (that would require me to discover new things) but probably not in the direct future.

As for having a supervisor, I know I’ll definitely be needing one, I just dont know who to look to for advice in Computer Mediated Communications in RMIT. I wouldnt be able to use my initial choices as I am only allowed to ask for help from RMIT supervisors.

I already have the bare bones of my research project figured out, but I’ll probably still just run it by the supervisor and see if he/she has any suggestions that would improve the idea.

I plan on working next year back in Brunei in the government sector. This research would contribute to my work next year because contrary to what people think, communication within different departments in the same ministry OR WORSE among various ministries is notoriously bad! Im not looking to uproot the whole system, I just hope to be able to improve it piece by piece.