After reading this week's articles, I feel like I may change my focus a bit. The article about the Virtual Ethnography was really interesting to me, and I am really intrigued about the response that the community gave when the judge decided to release his verdict online. I was amazed at the number of websites and the way that the release got so much attention - sparking new websites, web chats, petitions, along with the traditional media outlets.
I'm do marketing for Housing and Dining at Columbia, and I am very interested in the marketing aspect of the Internet - such as how the judge's decision caused so many people to follow the trial online. One similar such incident that comes to my mind is the Blair Witch Project, in which the filmmakers created a marketing scheme to convince people that they had footage of a horrible event that occured, caused a huge number of people to go to the movies and see the footage first hand. I love this type of marketing and I'm interested in how this occurs and why people do "fall" for it or believe the hype. Although I think it all stems from the same areas that we were speaking of in class, about identity and community.
So as far as things that I need, I feel like I want to talk to Sarah about my thoughts for the final project, including this marketing aspect, and I would also like to find some more articles, similar to the one about the virtual ethnography. I also want to do a few interviews with some of my friends that are frequent MUD users.
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You know, what you said about the Blair Witch Project and marketing makes me think of the term viral marketing, which you're probably familiar with (if not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_marketing) . I think there are definitely areas of overlap with class that you could explore in a final project, particularly given that this type of marketing looks to make use of existing social networks and social network tools. Or, when a company uses social software like a blog to try to create community around a particular product - does it work? is it really community? that sort of thing. Just thinking "out loud" here, but you were interested in that last question, you could even use the model we worked with in class yesterday to examine one such site in a mini research study. At any rate, I think this is an area that will be fruitful to explore further.
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