Final Project

DUE MAY 12, 2013

Class on May 12 will consist of Extra Credit presentations and a final wrap-up.

Description

The final project is a 3000-3500 word (about 12-14 pages, double spaced) research paper, built around taking the theoretical concepts about Internet control brought forward in the course and applying them to a particular online community. The final paper is a mix of observational and normative analysis, and requires students to do the following:

1. Identify a particular online community – The community you select should be a social space, where members of the public interact online. It can be a particular website, a cluster of websites, or an online platform. It should not be so large as to encompass an entire population of users or the Internet as a whole, nor should it be so small a community that there’s no meaningful activity happening on at least a weekly basis.
2. Identify a particular objective or issue the community confronts – All online communities are trying to achieve some ends, and face some obstacles to achieving those ends. A social media website may want to encourage social communication, but be concerned about privacy; a customer review website may want to encourage fair reviews of restaurants, but be concerned about information quality and falsehoods; a media hosting website may want to encourage good content, but be concerned about intellectual property and piracy; an online game may want to help users have fun, but be concerned about bullying or trolling. Think of a substantive issue that the community you have selected faces. It should be a substantial issue; the rest of the paper will be oriented around the issue you pick.
3. Identify who controls the community around the issue you have selected, and how – Describe the different forces that govern the community around the issue you have selected, how those forces govern behavior, and what values they represent. This should lead with forces that are unique to this community; national law or high-level policy need only be discussed if it has a greater-than-average role to play in the particular community. We expect to see citations and references to the readings from the semester semester about observing online behavior and understanding forces of online control.
4. Observe how this control (or lack thereof) helps regulate and shape the community around this issue, both positively and negatively – Using the readings from the semester and related research, analyze how different control decisions may shape the development of the community around the issue you have selected. As we’ll see in this semester’s readings, decisions on where and how to exercise control can have both positive and negative consequences, and can limit the ability of certain benefits that may flow from ungoverned spaces. Your analysis should cite the relevant readings from the class, and any observations or generalizations about the community should be supported with evidence where possible.

Remember that this is a course focused on the consequences of regulatory actions, and how different control choices open or close different opportunities on the Internet. Think in particular about any unintended consequences of using certain mechanisms of control, and whether alternatives means could be used to achieve the same result without similar consequences. Do you think the community strikes the right balance? What changes could they make to improve their handling of the issue you identified? Could some future event change their thinking around how the community is controlled? You may also compare your community with a similarly-sized community trying to do similar things, to see how other communities approach the same problem.

In lieu of submitting a paper, you may present your finding using a different medium, such as a podcast, video, or web page. If you do submit a paper, your paper should be 3000-3500 words, presented in a legible manner. (Most students submit 12-14 pages, double spaced, using a 12- point serif font, e.g. Times New Roman, Cambria, Palatino, etc.) If you submit through another medium, we shall expect a depth and level of analysis equivalent to that of an 12-14 page paper.

You may work in groups as long as you let us know by March 24th.

Format

Your paper should be legibly presented and be no more than 3000 words. What works best for us is a paper 8-10 pages long, double spaced, using a serif font (Times New Roman, Cambria, Palatino, etc.). Please upload your paper as a .doc, a .odt, or a .pdf.

You may use any commonly accepted style to cite your sources (Chicago, MLA, Bluebook, etc.), but please be consistent.

Submissions

Please include your final project here, including wiki or real name(s) and title: Final Projects

Submit the final project on or before May 12th.

Research questions

In broadest terms, the general theme of the class is control. We look at who controls access to the web, who controls what content goes on the web, what tools they use (e.g. laws, contracts or other written rules, norms, code, other incentives), what sorts of things they seek to regulate and why, and how their decisions have both their intended effect and unintended consequences.

The goal of the project is to take this general theme and apply it to a particular online circumstance. The project should be focused on original documentation of Internet activity, analyzed through the paradigms discussed in the class and in light of the topical discussions had in the class. We are discouraging "book report"-style projects, which are based primarily on secondary sources. It is impossible to do a meaningful analysis of any question across the whole Internet or a very large website in 8-10 pages, so you should select a particular community and research frame for your question that will allow you to dive in and study the website at a meaningful depth. This could be an online community or small set of communities, a particular website, or participants in a particular online game. Your research may focus on a single Internet project or compare two communities, or sub-units within a given community.

One of the hardest parts of this assignment is picking a community of the right size. You'll want a community small enough that you can engage in meaningful analysis across the community, but not so small that there is not enough activity on the website to draw conclusions about how the community is controlled, and to what ends. The purpose of the prospectus, outline, and drafting process is to help students narrow the size and scope of their project to specific community, and a specific aspect about that community.

The next step will be to gather evidence that will help to answer your research question. This should be primarily direct observation made by you exploring the community online. (Avoid direct engagement with members of the community, as your influence on their behavior will inherently change what you are trying to observe.) The observation should be methodical to avoid any arbitrariness or selection bias - and think about way by which you can gather both quantitative and qualitative data to study your question.

Finally, you will compile this into a final report that summarizes your research topic, methods and conclusions. We hope that you will be able to weave in one or more of the theories and constructs that have been introduced in the class.

If you find yourself struggling with this, you're not alone; finding appropriate research questions is often the most complex and time consuming process in research and will normally take many iterations. Feel free to contact the class staff if you have questions or need help narrowing a topic.

Steps

1. Decide upon a research question set of research questions.
2. Define a research frame (website, federation of websites, group, community, etc)
3. Gather evidence
4. Compile into report that summarizes your topic, methods, and conclusions

Frequently Asked Questions

These are questions from past years, and we'll add to them as the final project approaches this year.

Q1: What sorts of research papers tend to do well in this class?

A1: We leave the class research prompt deliberately open so that people can take this in many different directions, but the best papers we see focus prefer depth over breadth of topic, looking at one particular issue in one particular community, engaging in a good deal of direct observation of behavior in that community. Past topics have included a study of code-based mechanisms to assure information quality in a particular online review website, law and norms around ownership of art in an occasionally-collaborative online artistic community, a comparison of cultures around two different severs hosting the same multiplayer online game with radically different levels of griefing behavior, and a mapping of moderation norms and code in an especially productive open discussion community. All of these included direct observation of a community, analyzed through class readings, focused on the question of what was trying to be controlled and how the website did it.

We don't expect you to come to any sort of comprehensive theory of how a website controls a certain behavior - to attribute causation to any given element requires a far greater depth of study than can be done in one class, and can rarely be ever said with any sort in certainty. Instead, we're asking you to make observations about a website and explain (using class readings) how that attribute contributes toward the regulation of the site for a particular objective or end.

Q2: I'm having a really hard time selecting a community. Any advice?

A2: Remember that we're trying to encourage direct observation, and discourage "book report"-style projects that are primarily synthesis of secondary sources. So look to websites where you can see the action happening - can you see when the community is upset about a certain action? Can you see when content has been deleted or other action taken by the website happens? Can you see the community grapple with how to approach a particular issue? (Websites with active discussion forums or comments can be helpful there.)

Also, it's easy to fall into selection bias traps if you're dealing with a massive website. Websites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, and LinkedIn are too big to study as a whole (each has millions or billions of posts daily), but there might a particular subset or subculture operating on those platforms that can be more manageable. Niche websites or websites operating toward a particular goal can be good places of study - especially if they are especially "good" or "bad" at achieving their goal. Some students have found it helpful to compare two websites that both serve a particular topic or subculture, each of which is very similar in may respects, but whose results are wildly different. So, for example, one student compared to different servers of the same online game, each of which had about the same number of users and session activity, but one of which was extremely productive, and one of which was filled with toxic behavior. Another student compared two different forums for Android developers, which each had about the same number of users and posts per day, but one of which was radically more productive than the other.

Q3: Do you recommend user surveys as a way of conducting the paper?

A3: No. There are a mix of reasons for this, but we prefer you to observe the communities passively. If there is a specific reason why you don't think you can capture a community without a survey, let us know and we can discuss further.

Q4: If I have exhibits, should I include them in the paper? Do I have to include exhibits in my word limit?

A4: If you think visuals or other reference material (screenshots, transcripts, etc.) will help present the information clearly you may certainly include them, but we'd prefer it if you attached them as an appendix in the back. The exhibits do not count toward your word limit.

Q5: How much do I have to describe the scholarship I'm using in my analysis?

A5: If it is material from the class reading, you can assume that the reader has seen that material. If you are introducing new concepts, spend a few sentences explaining them, but keep the majority of the paper focused on your observations and analysis.

Q6: How strict is the 3000 word limit?

A6: We are holding that as very strict (with the exception of appendices, noted above). We will only be grading based on the first 3000 words of your analysis; anything after that will not be used in calculating your grade. If you're worried about things to cut, remember: we care much more about observation-informed analysis than exposition and background material.

Q7: What are you expecting from our analysis and conclusion?

A7: We are expecting students to be descriptive and not normative - that is to say, we expect the paper to talk about how a website or platform influences, controls, and is influenced and controlled by its community. The bulk of the paper should be your own observations about what is going on within the site, and how those decisions tie into what we have read in the class. We are not asking for or expecting students to make arguments in this paper about whether these choices are good or bad (as that takes away valuable space from observation and analysis), and we do not want students to try to prove that certain choices cause particular results (as to do that with any certainty requires far more observation and analysis than can be expected here).