Ruairi sent us a link for a tuturial on making line art rooms its here i havent done much research ive been looking at profiles of people on myspace but my connection doesnt really allow me to use it properly which sucks, i hope to do some reasearch soon cause time is running out, i hope to sort out my survey questions and start mailing as many people as i can

made a room and made a house, if you close 1 eye and turn your head to the side it looks like a fab art deco mansion. ed was telling me to have a look at vrml i think its called. virtual reality markup language of something like that, havent had a chance to look it up yet, but later....

was talking to mairead and fiona after class today about working together on a multimedia profile generator, and about the possibility of using quicktime vr as a means of exploring the profile/space. more info on what were thinking of is in a blog below. so were going to present our ideas in class on thursday. im not sure how it would all work but i guess having the idea first is the most important thing

doing my lit review, haven’t actually written much, still wading through stuff, im swamped with information, i just found a hypertext book, don’t know how i didn’t come across it before, there’s so much in it i don’t know whether i should reference it i one go or reference the chapters that are useful, either way to summarise it will be difficult as it covers so much!!
thinking of how to layout my review, possibly like what my table of content might look like. so anyway takes forever to do so i best be getting back.

I think I was going about my initial research all wrong, I was looking for my research topic, instead of all the things that make it up, one of the links in my last post looks really useful, I only scanned it but even looking at the table of contains, it looked that I could pick what interested me from it topic wise and what would tie into my research.
Ok so here’s some of it, there are loads of different angles here, (its a thesis)
(stuff in bold= i find interesting or could apply)

2.2 Gender and Computer Mediated Communications
2.2.1 Language on the Internet
2.2.2 Gender and Online Language
2.2.3 Online Name Choice
2.2.4 Avatar Selection or picture in the case of my case study
2.2.5 Emotive Features
2.2.6 Summary
2.3 What is a weblog?
2.3.1 Size of the Blogosphere
2.3.2 Age and Gender Demographics of the Blogosphere
2.3.3 Blogs and Computer-Mediated Communication
2.3.3.1 Names and Personal Information
2.3.3.2 Avatar Construction
2.3.3.3 Emotive Features
2.3.4 Features of a Weblog
2.3.4.1 Weblog Posts
2.3.4.2 Comments / Feedback
2.3.4.4 Templates
Chapter 3. Methodology


3.1 Participants
3.2 Procedure
3.3 Dependent Measures
3.3.1 Disclosure of Personal Information
3.3.2 Online Name Choice
3.3.3 Avatar Selection
3.3.4 Emotive Features
3.3.5 Blog Abandonment, Frequency of Use and Blog Characteristics
3.3.6 Common Blog Themes { and visual themes in the case of the profiles and youth culture influences}
3.3.7 Introduction to DICTION

4.4.1 Overview of Emotive Features
4.4.2 Gender Similarities and Differences in Emotive Features
4.5 Blog Abandonment, Frequency of Use and Blog Characteristics
4.5.1 Overview of Blog Abandonment, Frequency of Use and Blog Characteristics
4.5.2 Gender Similarities and Differences in Blog Abandonment, Frequency of Use and Blog Characteristics
4.6 Common Blog Themes
4.6.1 Overview of Common Blog Themes
4.6.2 Gender Similarities and Differences in Common Blog Themes



So anyway I think I need to look at everything separately, oh and decide what angles I want to take, it’s going to be really difficult with just 3000 words, every word/sentence will really have to count.

There are so many different parts in the contents above, I also want to look at the profiles, what the original template is like and how people modify them, not so much the process (e.g. generators) but the colours and images they use and how this ties into youth culture and collective identity with in sub cultures of youth culture. I want to look at what visual characteristics colours and symbolism, and have a lose framework of what images and styles apply to what sub culture, I don’t know is that a research paper on its own. I’m sure that’s a whole other section I should be researching.

I think I should defiantly pick what I’m actually looking at before I start to write my lit review.

things im looking at for my lit review

i wasnt able to find much before because i think i was focusing to much on the whole concept of youth culture, i found lots tonight on gender, and blogs

Gender, Identity, and Language Use in Teenage Blogs by David A. Huffaker Sandra L. Calvert, i wont go into it now, i suppose its all in the heading.
Bridging the Gap: A Genre Analysis of Weblogs about blogs in general
Gender and Web Home Pages
The Presentation of Self in Electronic Life: Goffman on the Internet

blog census
Common Visual Design Elements of Weblogs
Introduction: Weblogs, Rhetoric, Community, and Culture
Visual Blogs
Blogs as Virtual Communities: Identifying a Sense of Community in the Julie/Julia Project
Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog
"I'm Blogging This”
A Closer Look at Why People Blog

Representations of Digital Identity
Profiles as Conversation: Networked Identity Performance on Friendster
GENDER SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES IN ONLINE IDENTITY AND LANGUAGE USE AMONG TEENAGE BLOGGERS i think i may have something the same or similar above...

anyway its 4;30 in the morning, god damn coca cola, i know you dont just want links with no expansions, but in some cases the title says it all, im just posting them here so i dont lose em, i know its making more work by not writing out my notes on them now, oh well

Projects that would tie into my research, I haven’t really been talking to anyone in regards to working with them on our multimedia project, I don’t know how well I would work with people in the class or who would even want to work with me, I wont be working with Carolyn or Lorna, don’t know about anyone else. I think it would be good to do some sort of web application because before we were all thinking cd rom projects. I know we don’t have to do web projects even though that’s where my research leads but I think I would like to. I was in Carolyn’s earlier and I spoke to Steve, he was telling me about his project idea, one of the worlds in it was a colouring in one, where there is a pallet and you click and colour basically, i think it would be interesting to use something on the lines of this in a profile generator
(Examples of profile generators)
here- myspace
here
and here
also here


,where people could create a visual representation of a physical location for their profile, there could be certain templates and you could change colours and fonts, perhaps a CSS overlay that’s compatible with several sites where you have a profile. i don’t know and I don’t know if i explained that very well! Also I don’t know how hard it would be to do, but there’s no point doing something I already know how to do because it would be quite basic and id never learn anything.
so what do you think?

My Research Proposal
Online Identities of Youth Culture


I propose to do my research paper on how youths use the internet to convey a shared identity which differentiates them from the dominant culture. I will be looking primarily at how youth cultures use profiles on the internet to create identities. I want to look and their use of text, images and audio as the means of communicating identity. I hope to gain a better understanding of how youth culture act online, and how they form their identity. I will conduct a case study of youth culture on www.myspace.com looking at how they use their profiles to form a collective identity. I will be looking at the age group of 16-20, I want to look at Irish youth culture as well as other countries to see if there is any difference depending on what country you are from.

I am studying this because I find it interesting that through the internet, homepages and profiles give youth culture a platform to express themselves in a new way. Traditionally youth cultures express themselves through clothes, music and make-up etc. but the internet gives them another set of tools to create an identity and a visual representation of how they want the world to see them. Although there is extensive writing on youth culture there isn’t any looking at it from the angle I want to. I hope that, by carrying out my research I will be adding to the knowledge base of my peers. I would hope that something from my research paper would feed in to my group project.

I am going to employ several different research methods to look at the ethnography of online youth culture. Methods;

Online Surveys, sent to 100+ people within the correct age group and from a mixture of countries.
One on One Interviews, with approximately 10 people who have completed the survey. This method will be carried out in person if possible or using online instant messaging.
Textual Analysis, as I am doing my case study on youth culture using myspace.com, I will be analysing profiles which will be a great source of information such as:

-Images of themselves and others including bands, falling hearts, gif.s and background images, even down to the colours used.
-Text, the profiles are full of personal information including interests, taste in television, movies, music and blogs. I think the language used would also be very interesting.
-Audio, some people have audio on their profiles and even music videos.


I hope my research will broaden my investigation and research skills. I think it will give me a deeper knowledge of the research methodologies studied in class, and it will give me a better understanding of how to apply them to a real world scenario. I would like to achieve a greater understanding of youth culture and how their identity is developing on line. I find it very interesting that the internet can be used for this and think profiles and blogs are still a relatively new way of expressing the collective identity of youth culture. I am also interested in what the future holds in terms of tools for self expression on the internet.