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I have a friend taking an Anthropology class about Virtual Communication, and he picked these forums because it's exactly what he's looking for and the fact that he knows I've been around here for a while. The project is essentially to observe, record, and write about whatever it is we do around here, in which Part 3 (of 5) involves an interview.

It's a brand new class they just started offering this semester and the criteria is pretty broad and very easy to meet. All the information he needs is broken down via bullet points and I will provide that soonish when I get a copy of it. The interview requires 2 of us (me and whoever else wishes to participate) and is due by March 15th.

We just completed Part 2 and he's very impressed with how in-depth the site is and how knowledgeable and passionate the users are (he's not an anime fan at all, by the way, so the discovery of the culture and fandom themselves are pretty fascinating to him).

I just need a volunteer. Or, if a bunch of you are interested for whatever reason, I can just post the bullet points and you can all give your own opinions on what it is you think we do here, how you think the site/forums serves as mega-hub of anime information, how you perceive the social structure and communication between the users, etc., and I can just pick one of you as the lucky participant.

I'm interested in participating in this, but I think you'll get a fair number of responses eventually that it will be a given you will have to select from a group of "candidates."

So perhaps rather than making it random, just make a mental note of some criteria and whoever you think fits the bill the best, pick that person. Nothing formal you know, just use your judgement.

Well HELL if it's to addict another friend/user to anime I'm all for it!

Just give me a PM/email/msn/aim msg if no one else would like to help Very Happy

After that I can give you more of my info for the interview. I've had to do something like this in the past for a culture enrichment class (I know... I know... Michigan schools are F***ed up xD)

Bullet point me, my virtual acquaintance. I loves me the bullet points.

I don't interview well. For some odd reason, those who ask me questions often break down in tears.

Mesonoxian Eve wrote:

Bullet point me, my virtual acquaintance. I loves me the bullet points.

I don't interview well. For some odd reason, those who ask me questions often break down in tears.

It sounds to me that you do interviews too well if people break down in tears xD

I'd be interested in both answering questions if needed, and either way I'm definitely interested in reading your friend's paper (or whatever is going to be used to present this research) when it's done.

Gee I always wanted to be a lab rat.

I would have to see what the questions were before I could say if I was interested in participating. And by all means expect me to point out what's wrong with your questions when you send them.

Good luck with the project in any case.

I can help you, if you want. Would be interesting to see what the questions are and what my answers would be.

Likewise. I'm always interested to see what conclusions people draw from researching anime fandom.

Cool. I'll just post all the bullet points when I get a copy and you guys can answer. I'll even format in such a way where all you have to do is quote the post and put your answers in-between each question. Just remember to remove the very first and very last quote tags (otherwise, I could always do it myself if you forget). Hopefully it'll end up looking like so:

You wrote:

Quote:

Bullet point #1

blah blah blah

Quote:

Bullet point #2

blah blah blah blah blah

I believe a lot of the questions are the same as Part 2, only we have to answer from our own perspectives as users of the site. I don't remember what they are word-for-word, but it was something along the lines of "what did you observe within that community, what did they do/talk about, is their a hierarchy/social structure mindset that they operate with? etc."

You can be candid in your answers, and there's no limit to the length of it, but at least try to be somewhat detailed as if you were telling a college professor a little of what anime and Japanese subculture means to you and why you think these forums are awesome in letting you talk about it with people from all parts of the world. Oh, and don't limit your talk to just the General or Site forums (Talkback, Anime, Manga, etc.). If you're a subscriber, also mention the Community forum and take that into consideration for whatever questions pop up.

And now that I think about it, I believe the report calls for transcripts, by which I'm thinking we can just use the URL for this particular thread if need be, so consider all of yourselves as "outstanding representatives" of the ANN community(!), as it were. However, one of you will still be "Interviewee #2," which I guess I'll deal with when we get there.

HaruhiToy wrote:

And by all means expect me to point out what's wrong with your questions when you send them.

The questions were made by the professor and are pretty simple to answer. The thing I've noticed through a lot of Anthropology courses is a general tendency to just "observe and report" in a sense that reading all of these notes and information will ultimately increase the readers' awareness of whatever is being studied. And given that this semester is the first time they even offered the course, I'm sure they made the questions so broad in the first place that anyone could easily do the project (it also counts for half of the course's grading).

Mesonoxian Eve wrote:

Bullet point me, my virtual acquaintance. I loves me the bullet points.

I don't interview well. For some odd reason, those who ask me questions often break down in tears.

Man... this really makes me want to interview you.

As a person who decided on a whim to start posting on this board today (but I have been a member since 2008 and have heard a lot about it from my absolutely perfect bff who is a member here), I am very interested in seeing people's responses to these questions along with the whole research project in general.

If you need another person, I would be glad to help.

I'd be happy to help. I don't post that often and don't read threads that are dedicated to anime that I don't watch though. I do however, go through different sections of the forum and pay attention to what people are posting and what threads are quite popular. Not sure if that makes me a good or bad observer.

I have a feeling this will end up like a Mirai Nikki Animenewsnetwork diary.

So I have the bullet points for Part 3 of this project, and it's kind of weird. It's supposed to be field notes from the perspective of the student in observation of two interviewees. I'm not sure if I should just type this verbatim in that it might sound funny, or if I should reformat each one in that all of you could better answer it from your own perspectives and we just make adjustments later for the actual report.

Don't quote this and start answering yet, but here's what was written by the professor for the student to observe:

-----------------------

Dates and times of the interviews

Were the interviews face-to-face, or what form of technology-mediated communication was used?

Description of the interviewees

How did the interviewees describe the forms of technology-mediated communication that the group uses? What do they regard as the affordances and constraints of each?

How did the interviewees describe the activities that the group engages in?

What did you learn from the interviewees about the culture of the group? What are members' goals, assumptions, beliefs, power relationships?

What did you learn from the interviewees about the social structure of the group? Is it a hierarchy? A leaderless network? Are people loosely or tightly connected?

What is the history of the group and its activities?
-----------------------

Yeah... I'm definitely gonna' have to reformat some of this. Think of this as food for thought, and I'll post an actual kind of questionaire once I've worked out the wording.

The assumption for the project is that the student is observing us (two interviewees) communicating over Skype or some kind of real-time chat/service, which we could technically do. But for the purposes of gathering more (and better information) from each and every one of you, I figure I could get what I can from all of you via bulletin board and just turn your answers into "observations."

I'm thinking I could just reword these:

Quote:

How did the interviewees describe the forms of technology-mediated communication that the group uses? What do they regard as the affordances and constraints of each?

How did the interviewees describe the activities that the group engages in?

What did you learn from the interviewees about the culture of the group? What are members' goals, assumptions, beliefs, power relationships?

What did you learn from the interviewees about the social structure of the group? Is it a hierarchy? A leaderless network? Are people loosely or tightly connected?

What is the history of the group and its activities?

and get loads of information on what you all think it is we do here, how you perceive the forums, and why you keep posting. And hopefully that will be enough to show just how tightly-knit we are as a community around here.

Questions and comments are welcomed. Encouraged, even.

From the looks of it, it seems like that's not really the questions that we (the members of the culture being studied) should be answering. That seems more like the list of questions that your friend will have to eventually answer in the project report. I would imagine that a big part of the project (and something that the professor will be interested in) is what questions the student comes up with in the interview(s) in order to obtain this information.

For instance, you wouldn't ask someone "What is the power relationship in your culture group?". But rather maybe some other (less direct) probing questions such as "Is there a leader to your group?" and "If so, how did he obtain such leadership?" could be used to get that info. If your friend simply turns in interview(s) where he copy/pastes the report analysis questions for his interview then I can't imagine the prof will be too happy.

Granted, I'm not an anthropology major. But this kind of project makes more sense to me. Maybe your friend has someone in class he can verify how the interview(s) should be composed?

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I need a volunteer.