Research methodology

So I already kind of covered this in the last post, but my research methods are going to be heavy on the traditional style. I'm going to try to get a strong background in the theoretical background surrounding media ecology, specifically about electronic media and then apply those theoretical models and adapt them to what I see happening now. For the "field work" side of things, a lot of observation, lurking, and interaction on Twitter, blogs, etc. are going to be required.

If I can get a good enough sense of what is going on, my ultimate goal is to follow Neil Whitehead's example and try to test what I have learned about the sensory biases and ecologies to then make a message I see well-publicized. I need to look through Whitehead's article again, as well as examine the ethics of this idea, but if I deem it ethically upright I think that it could add validity to any conclusions I find. Or I could hopefully find a thread and track the evolution of it as Anonymous pushes it to the forefront of the web.

Simply put, research begins with media ecology theory followed by exploring the new ecological domains on the web, and only then will "participant observation" and message creation take place. Interwoven throughout this all will be attempting to track how Tay Zonday or Boxxy or any of the others were pushed into microcelebrity or destroyed by people like Anonymous. That should give me some excellent hints into the biases... Also (I forgot to mention), looking at code will be included in the theory research (specifically Lessig's work...).