-----Erin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote -----
>You asked how I will account for lurkers on the Teaching Sociology
>newsgroup. Yes, I know that lurkers are present in unknown numbers.
>But if they do not post messages to the group, I cannot account for
>them. How could I? Lurkers present no behavior or communication on
>the newsgroup and hence cannot be observed.
In an earlier note, Morton Ender suggested some ways to do this -- figuring the
percentage of persons who post, for example. In a _real_ newgroup, you'd lack
the denominator for those percentages (because anyone can read the group). You
can't find the number of persons who read, say, soc.culture.yugosalvia.
That's _not_ true for teachsoc, however. We function more like a closed
listserv list, in that people must be subscribed in order to read the list.
That means you can get a number of subscribers to use as the base of your
percentages. All you need to do is ask me <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> for the number of
folks subscribed. Even ethnographers use numbers sometimes ...
>You asked how I can contextualize "living" with the group if I do not
>teach sociology. My assignment was to observe a newsgroup with
>professional interests, such as newsgroups for musicians, dentists,
>photographers, et cetera. I'm "living" with the group because that is
>the very premise of fieldwork. No, I do not teach sociology but I am
>"living" with a group of sociology teachers for fieldwork purposes.
I also second Morton's suggestion to read Barry Wellman's work on electionic
communications networks as communities. You might start with: "(N)et-Surfers
Don't Ride Alone: Virtual Communities as Communities," Chapter 10 in Wellman's
edited collection Networks in the Global Village: Life in Contemporary
Communities (Westview Press, 1999; ISBN 0-8133-1150-0). You'll find lots more
on his web page (http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman/).
Best,
James Cassell
------
James Cassell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
