Wednesday, September 28, 2005

52

two more pages done. part one only has two "under constructions" left, i'll get those out of the way soon.

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

thesis reviewed

i spent some time yesterday and today reviewing my work so far. the result: i'm happy with my chapter on weblogs. i'd say it's 90% done, which is good enough for the time being. the chapter on political weblogs and their role in elections is just beginning to take shape really - i'd say it's headed in the right direction. so: i can continue work as planned, which means page 60 by sunday.

for all those who missed it: google turned seven today. happy birthday google!

-update-
oh, and just a small quote from google:
In September 1998, Google Inc. opened its door in Menlo Park, California. The door came with a remote control, as it was attached to the garage of a friend who sublet space to the new corporation's staff of three. The office offered several big advantages, including a washer and dryer and a hot tub.

...you gotta love 'em!

Sunday, September 25, 2005

50! or: the end of a successful week

well well... it does help to set goals after all. i promised to write 10 pages this week, and that worked nicely. another 10 pages next week then...

i did realize that it is hard to spend each and every day writing. i think i wrote the bulk of those pages on 5 days, so ideally i'm going for 2 pages a day, 5 days a week and then having the other two days for editing. i seriously need to go through the whole paper sometime soon, to ensure that there's still a certain train of thought running through it. if not, then i need to fix that before i can really go on.

having said that, it is nice to be able to use a computer for all of this, as that enables some modular writing - meaning that if i need to, i can write something more or less anywhere in the paper and rearrange it later. certainly not the wisest thing to do, but better than not getting ahead.

Saturday, September 24, 2005

49

almost there. i need just one more page tomorrow to reach my goal of 50 by sunday.

Friday, September 23, 2005

47

i spent more time working on other things ("tuechtig") these previous two days than on my thesis, so i only managed to compose a single page of writing. that means that i don't get the weekend off (surprise, surprise)... 3 more pages till sunday. sounds doable!

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

46

mission accomplished for today: 46 pages. 2 more tomorrow and 2 more on friday and i'll have the weekend off - well, sort of.

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

42

although i am at the end of page 43, i wanted to give kudos to douglas adams at page 42 - for, as you all know, 42 is the answer to life, the universe, and everything (even google says so, so it's gotta be true!).

i set up a daily goal of two pages, which would give me 10 pages a week with weekends off (yeah, right...) - it's worth a shot.

my approach for the current chapter has changed yet again, though the direction remains the same. i'll start out by providing my hypotheses - so far:

  • blogs serve as an information platform

  • blogs evoke voter interaction

  • blogs provide access to field campaigners

  • blogs enable tapping of new funds


i'll then find support for these hypotheses - or lack of such, as the case may be - in the US and DE election landscapes. i started filing the material i have into these categories and it seems to be working out nicely. this appears to be my best approach so far, as it actually lets me use the material i have - it was turning out to be a bit of a problem to find some structure while incorporating the material into my paper. i suppose that's what tends to happen if you start writing before planning the whole thing out. but that's how i work, so... :-) let's hope this approach is successful!

Monday, September 19, 2005

schedule

to complete my paper on time, i have decided that i should maintain a speed of 10 pages a week now. that would get me to my goal of 80 pages within the next 4 weeks, giving me ample time for corrections and modifications after that. so, to stick to my step-by-step approach: page 50 by sunday, sept. 25.

right now i'm working on a list of expectations for the influence of the internet and weblogs on elections (1. information, 2. fund-raising, 3. civil empowerment, grassroots democracy, etc.). i'm placing that at the beginning of chapter two, then looking at the US and DE elections through that lens. this seems like the most straight-forward approach to me.

Friday, September 16, 2005

online survey (german)

for german readers: please take the time to participate in a german online survey regarding weblogs and elections if you can. it's a follow-up survey to the discussion paper i linked to in my previous post.

i spent the past few days dealing with other work mostly, so i'll reengage the work on my thesis starting this weekend.

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

update

no further writing done so far this week. planned some more though, and read up more on german articles etc. found a "discussion paper" which i plan to make use of: "wahlkampf in der blogosphäre - weblogs im vorfeld der bundestagswahl 2005" (in german, translates to "weblogs in the build-up to the general election of 2005"). interesting article on spiegel online, also in german ("WAHLBLOGS - Alles viel zu wichtig" / "election blogs - everything much too important"), dealing with weblogs in germany and their effect (or rather: lack of) in politics.

Sunday, September 11, 2005

summit reached!

and it's all down-hill from here. at least i hope so... the page count is up to 40, although the "missing" page didn't come easy today. these ups and downs are quite interesting. i should write a meta-thesis for psychology. :-) time for a little weekend now, before the new week starts tomorrow.

Saturday, September 10, 2005

outline for part two of my thesis

forgot to mention this...

i have made some progress on the outline for part two of my thesis. i'm starting out with a short intro (political blogs in general, though i might still bump that up into the first part), then performing two case studies, the US prez election of 2004, and the german general election of 2005, then rounding things off with a general look at the possibilities of weblogs in elections and giving some sort of outlook.

in the case studies, i will look at (and provide examples of) the different types of political blogs dealing with the election: those by politicians themselves, by their campaigns and their parties, by the traditional media, by other bloggers. i will also look at the ideas of a top-down vs. bottom-up approach of political campaigns online - the latter of which i am not expecting to find in the german elections (yet).

my plan is to draw on some statistics for the different types of blogs, generated from the number of user comments (or similar), and use that as some sort of indicator for the audience attracted.

additionally, case study 1 (US) will look at the effect of blogs in the dean for america campaign, and in building publicity for the "swift boat veterans for the truth".

seeing that in my previous post i just declared my inability to write any more sensible content tonight, i wonder how this will look in the morning. comments welcome as always.

goal (almost) achieved

along the lines of the glass being half full vs. half empty, i have decided to look at today's goal as almost being achieved (instead of being closely missed). the page count stands at 39 pages, about 3/4 of a page short of the full 40 aimed at for today. i do have an almost valid excuse: computer probs. my pc has been freezing up spontaneously for the past few weeks, causing me to reinstall windows (no effect) and exchange pieces to find out which component is responsible. currently i am blaming my cpu, although that isn't certain yet. it's a bit hard to find out whether the system is running stable now with a different cpu, as it had been crashing extremely irregularly.

i would force myself to write another page, but that would only result in one page of jibberish which i'd have to rewrite anyway. so, goal for tomorrow: cross the psychologically important 40 page mark.

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

36 pages

today was rather productive: started work on chapter two, mainly summarizing trippi's book. i'll smooth that out tomorrow and hopefully get my plan for the chapter done. would be nice to get up to 40 pages (roughly half of my minimum goal) by sept. 10, as that is 2-month mark.
oh, in case someone writes a comment: i turned on word verification, which means you'll have to recognize & enter a few characters to prove that you're an actual human. sorry 'droids...

Monday, September 05, 2005

quick update

finished reading trippi's book today - i can recommend it to anyone interested in politics and technology. a very enlightening and entertaining read. planned for tomorrow: sit down and write a structure for part two of the thesis.

Thursday, September 01, 2005

back from vacation

after a two week vacation in nerja, spain, i'm back on track. today i started reading joe trippi's book "the revolution will not be televised" - a very interesting read indeed. before leaving for spain, i more or less finished part one of my paper - the one about blogs in general. now i'll start work on the second part, namely weblogs and elections. stay tuned... (and i promise to post more often than of late!)