That’s why it’s called ‘research’

A wee rant.  I came across this conversation about online communities on Research Live.  There is a discussion of the pros and cons of research-based online communities, branded online communities, and right at the end a commenter who says that all this community talk is ridiculous and simply listening to internet buzz (via networks like) [...]

The curious case of the game show neuroscientists, or how NOT to research an online community

I’m a fond member of the blogging/social networking site, Livejournal.   Over the last few days, I’ve seen the most incredible shitstorm unfold, over the cack-handed efforts of two rogue academics to research what they were pleased to call ‘the cognitive neuroscience of fanfiction’.
Background
First, a bit of background: Livejournal (one of the original social networks) is [...]

Hitting the wall: inevitable Twitter navel-gazing

I think I’ve hit a bit of a wall with Twitter.  The excitement of all the initial exploration and discovery has been overtaken by some feelings of hmmm, how can I put it?  Weary drudgery. Overload.  Disconnection.
I do recognise this flat phase from other networking – eventually after a bit of wild expansion, you need [...]

Participation? Not without eyeshadow.

One of my favourite things about the internet is what might broadly be termed ‘participatory media’: in other words, people creating things and putting them on the Net.   I’ve been exploring the new-to-me world of videoblogging, and as a family we have already got started, by filming our new pet gerbil, doing a bit of [...]

10 tips for productive online conversations

I’ve been trying to have online conversations for a while now, in different spheres of my life, and here are my top 10 tips for running online forums and groups.  There may be more along later, but these are the ones that occur to me first.
1. Aim for an intimate public conversation
Conversational style is a [...]

Can researchers engage?

Ray Poynter has an interesting item on what he calls Insight 2.0 – the implications of participatory culture (OK, Web 2.0) for clients.   One implication is the short-circuiting of formal research and research management by decision-making departments who are keen to listen to their customers more closely (possibly, without the filter of those pesky researchers).
In [...]

Adding Web 2.0 widgets

I’ve been writing a personal blog for several years, and now seems like a good time to extend that approach to my consultancy work. 
In the last couple of projects I’ve been involved with, there has been much talk of researching users’ attitudes to Web 2.0 style add-ons.   This is proving tricky, for several reasons.

Some sites that [...]