podcasting

today i had my first real encounter with podcasting. after bbc's up all night sparked my interest, i decided to download a few podcasts to my mp3 player to listen to while doing sports. keeping my topic in mind, i googled "podcast election" and within a few clicks came across john & elizabeth edwards' podcast. john and his wife discuss quite a few interesting points regarding politics in general and also the effect of blogs and podcasts. i can understand why podcasts are gaining popularity. in a way, they can be likened to blogs: uncensored, unedited material brought to you in a simple fashion.
the interactions between blogs and podcasts are quite interesting - to such an extent that i think it would be good to include podcasting in my paper. at least by looking at it briefly as a new, powerful phenomenon. or maybe i will enlarge on them a bit more - i think i'll have to decide as i go along.

research questions

it's high time i focus my energy - to help me decide what is relevant and what isn't. this is especially important due to the endless amount of information to be found on blogs.
so here's my attempt of putting my roadmap into words:

what influence do blogs have on elections?

1. overall development of mainstream media (MSM) ~1998-2005
2. overall development of blogs ~1998-2005
3. comparisons; interactions of the developments?
4. influence of MSM on elections
   
5. influence of blogs on elections
6. comparisons; interactions of the influences?
   

1-6 will focus on the US, but include comparisons to the UK and DE.

roadmap v0.2: regional comparisons

after some additional reflection on yesterday's roadmap v0.1, i noticed that it's lacking the regional comparisons i talked about earlier. i still intend to incorporate them in my paper, with
two approaches coming to mind:

1. apply the roadmap to each of the regions (US, UK, DE) separately; compare findings
2. perform regional analysis within each square of the matrix

i dislike the first approach, mainly due to the fact that i expect the findings to be vastly different for the regions; not only regarding their quality, but also their quantity - for example, blogs are not very well established in germany yet, and as far as i currently know, their influence on elections is little or none. the second approach - basically splitting the matrix squares up horizontally - seems more feasible, as it would allow for regional comparisons wherever possible, but not requiring them by design.
generally i think it would be wise to focus on the US - maybe as a way of predicting the future for blogs on the other side of the atlantic - and compare the findings to those of the UK and DE.
another feature i talked about earlier was the development over time. although i did not explicitly mention this in the matrix (apart from the phrase "overall development"), this will of course be looked at in each square, and for each region. it might be interesting to see whether the current state in the UK or DE resembles one in the US a while ago.

new feature on bbc's "up all night"

who says staying up late and listening to the radio is a bad idea? last night - or rather early this morning - i listened to bbc five live's daily late night talk program "up all night". i've listened to the program quite a lot over the past year or so; they offer great in-depth presentations of interesting news items. anyway, they're starting a new feature: a look at alternative new media, especially blogs and podcasts. nice timing! it's a running feature, every monday night for the first hour of "up all night", meaning 2am-3am CEST. for those who enjoy sleeping at those times, all the shows are archived online, but sadly only for one week.
what makes this feature especially interesting is that displays MSM reporting on blogs - but progressive in so far as they offer you the ability to interact using not only email, but also instant messaging. their plan is to set up a blog to run with the program. i'm hoping to be able to ask some questions that will help me with my thesis - this looks like a great opportunity to get some feedback from members of MSM.

first roadmap

good news: the topic's taking shape. i can now present you with a matrix outlining how i plan to tackle my thesis (thanks to my dad for his support!). it looks like a small step, but it should be very helpful as a roadmap. without further ado:

the numbers represent the order in which i plan to write up the material, comprising the main part of my paper. preceding that would be an introduction, the research question itself, and a description of my methods and materials. i'd like to recycle parts of my term paper for the introduction and for #2 in the matrix (overall development of blogs).
next step: formulate the research question. i'll get that done today, or tomorrow at the very latest.

update 2008-11-11: moved files to a different location

term paper pdf / zip

wouldn't it be great if you could just click on a link and read my term paper? exactly! see for yourself if it deserved its 1.0 or not. :-)

• as a pdf (95 KB)
  
• and as a zip (89 KB)
  

that's the version i handed in a while ago. i hope i'll be able to recycle quite a lot of it in my thesis, so comments are especially welcome.

update 2008-11-11: moved files to a different location and updated links

cardinals & politics

i feel like a cardinal, trying to choose a new pope. 'cept that my own personal pope is my thesis topic. if i had a chimney, the smoke coming out of it would be gray-white right now.

i came up with a fairly new idea today: look at the effect blogs are having on the political landscape, focusing on elections or pre-electoral phases. i could attempt to compare the effects of blogs in the us prez elections of 1996, 2000 and 2004; then compare the findings with the effects on the uk general election on may 5, 2005; finally look at the role blogs played / are playing / will play in the german bundestagswahlen of 2002 and 2006.

i could round the whole thing off with a glimpse at the roles other forms of media play, such as print, tv, and radio - along with the development of their power over the years. of course, i would also have to look at what makes blogs stand out - including their problems (issues of trust, ethics) and opportunities (grassroots journalism, broad spectrum of views, uncensored information).

this is, of course, a very current topic (what did you expect?):

• US Federal Election Commission vs blogs:
  
• mar 03, 2005: "The coming crackdown on blogging", c|net news.com
• mar 23, 2005: "Online politicking receives temporary reprieve", c|net news.com
• mar 24, 2005: "Feds get set for Net rules", c|net news.com
• mar 24, 2005: "Bloggers narrowly dodge federal crackdown", c|net news.com
• apr 14, 2005: "Beistand für politische Blogger im US-Kongress", heise.de (german)
• apr 14, 2005: "Online Freedom of Speech Act Introduced in House", slashdot
• UK election: "The Election Monitor - our campaign weblog", bbc news
• german elections: "Wahlkampf", politik-digital.de (german)
  

...you get the point.

apart from reading up on what other people wrote about the power of blogs in elections, i could attempt to make smart use of search engines (comparing numbers of hits, looking at top search results), and maybe conduct some e-mail interviews with one or more of the following: politicians, members of the media, bloggers, and "average" citizens.

as always, comments are welcome! stay tuned for updates. i hope the smoke will lose its grayish hue soon.

thesis topic

so i've spent the better part of the past week trying to figure out what exactly to write about. it's not as easy as it may seem... to give you some idea of how far i've gotten, here's a photo of my idea sketchings:



i really like the idea of researching the interactions between blogs and msm (mainstream media). this includes taking a detailed look at the issue of trust (which in turn includes ethics, transparency, etc. for blogs and msm), and the new role of the (former) audience. one approach might be to look at the potentially different development stages the interaction is in in the US, UK and DE, respectively. it might be interesting to conduct some email interviews to help show how members of msm and the blogosphere feel about said interaction.

so, there has been some progress, but i'm not quite there yet. i hereby extend my deadline to monday...


update 2008-11-11: moved files to a different location

1.0!

i received my graded term paper today: a 1.0! that's as good as it gets... i wasn't quite expecting that, but i'm not one to complain. :-)

i spent the last few days thinking about what precisely my thesis should be about. my previous approach (read "we the media", find out what sounds best) doesn't appear to be working as i had hoped. so i'll have to come up with a more or less precise topic, then research that; my dad had a few interesting suggestions that i'll ponder on. i definitely want to get through this stage by friday, april 15, so i can start researching and writing.

edit: reminder for anyone who blogs: c&p the text before submitting it... i thought i'd have to rewrite this entry because blogger wouldn't publish correctly. turns out that it worked, but it's safer to make sure you have a copy.

march marches by, april fails to fool

another month gone by and not much progress to report on: march was rather unproductive regarding my thesis; however, there were nice developments regarding my company and i found a lot of time to relax. i'll have to make use of april in a different fashion though... the start was rather promising: after reading in bed this morning, i made good use of the warm and sunny weather and spent two hours reading outside. combining reading and soaking in the sun seems to be a good idea - at least until it gets hot.