project proposal by Nimish, vijay and Guy-Richard

Mass media was once largely delegated to the responsibility of printed newspapers where an “elite” group of people determined what was newsworthy for the entire population. The written word with attribution constituted the principle medium through which information was disseminated. Now, however, the emerging networked public sphere offers several new mediums through which information is communicated. The purpose of our project is to investigate the differences in the way people behave when communicating through different forms of media. Medium investigated will include video, audio, written, email, instant messenger, and blogs.

In this project, people will be asked questions regarding controversial material. Possible examples include: (1) What do you think of the war on terror? (2) What do you think of the Bush administration? (3) What do you think of gay marriages? The questions will be posed to people in different forms of media. These open-ended questions are unlike multiple choice questions in that the interviewees are able to more freely express their opinion. We will then look to see if there is some correlation between medium and response; that is, do some forms of media lend themselves to responses that are more conservative whereas some forms lend themselves toward thoughts that more radical. The determination of whether a response is “radical” or “conservative” is somewhat subjective in nature. However, a criteria which allows numerical (objective) measures to be assigned to responses will be developed.

How do we make this objective?
What variables need to be controlled?
Whether responses are radical or conservative depend not only on the medium used, but also on the individual’s personal philosophy.
Can the same person be tested on multiple forms of media? Will retesting change their behavior?
The environment in which questions are asked should be controlled.

Differences between forms of media are expected. As Bleeker points out, people must act differently when they live in a world shared with “blogjects.” Thus people are expected to act differently when they know they are being “watched” by some camera or audio recording device. Thus, it makes sense to define the “control” in this investigation to be when people are asked questions with no (visible) form of media apparent.

The video recorder simulates television; the audio recorder simulates radio; the written response on paper (where name is required) simulates the newspaper. These are the conventional forms of media. The instant messenger, blog interface, or anonymous papers are the more contemporary forms of media that accompany the rise of the networked public sphere. For example, when people are asked to respond on a piece of paper and write their name on the top, they are simulating an interface such as Encyclopedic Britannica. When people are asked to respond on a piece of paper without writing their name, they are simulating an interface such as Wikipedia. If the latter results in more radical responses than the former, this would help substantiate Lanier’s claim that Wikipedia caters to the extremes.