doing an internet study
DESCRIPTION
AoIR 2007 presentationTRANSCRIPT
Doing an Internet study without e-science in a strong Internet
nation
Han Woo PARK, PhDDept. of Communication &
InformationYeungNam University
Republic of Korea (South)Email: [email protected], [email protected]
Website: http://www.hanpark.net
• This is written for a round table, “Internet studies and e-science: New tools and
concepts for research”, in annual conference of AoIR (Association of Internet Researchers) in Vancouver Canada, 17-20 October 2007.
Biographical sketches of author
• Han Woo Park is Assistant Professor at YeungNam University in South Korea.
• His research on the use of new digital technologies in extending social networks has contributed to development of a new research field, Hyperlink Network Analysis, and his research has appeared in several international journals, including New Media & Society and the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication.
Acknowledgement
• The author kindly acknowledges support through the Korea Research Foundation Grant (KRF-2004-042-H00004).
• I have been a principal investigator in a research project titled “Analyzing South Korea’s political websphere” supported through the Korean Research Foundation Grant (KRF-2004-042-H00004) from December 2004 to November 2007.
• Let me give some reflections on the four round table questions based on a personal experience with this particular project.
• This project is composed of three research
package. The first is to compare South Korea’s electoral websphere with other countries.
• This was done as a part of the “Internet & Election Project” whose e-science aspect is well introduced in a recent Journal of Compute-Mediated Communication’s e-science special issue (Jankowski, 2007).
• The second is to examine the structure of online relational networking using a set of hyperlink data collected from the official websites (Park, Thelwall, & Kluver, 2005; Park & Thelwall, 2007a forthcoming)
and personal blogs (Park & Kluver, 2007b forthcoming) of elected politicians,
• i.e., National Assembly members, and citizen blogs having a strong engagement with Korean politicians (Park & Jankowski, 2006).
• The third is a cross-national survey of websites produced by Japanese and South Korean politicians by comparing their websites features and hyperlinks
(Tkach-Kawasaki & Park, 2007).
• Through this research project, I have been able
to collaborate with several oversea scholars in terms of brainstorming, writing-together, and conferencing.
• However, most of these activities were done through commercial softwares
(e.g., Skype, MS office, Webdex etc.).
• These proprietary programs are neither safe nor confidential enough to do a scientific communication.
• However, public e-science communication tools for instantaneous Q & A, mutual writing/proof-reading, and co-analyzing are rare in nearly all nations including South Korea with strong Internet infrastructure.
• There are some embryonic attempts driven by the USA, for example, SNAC
(Social Networks and Cyberinfrastructure, http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Conferences/SNAC/index.html).
• Therefore, the development of public e-science tools for scholarly communication particularly among humanists and social scientists needs to be perceived as an important policy issue.
• Further, a focus interview with scholars having a strong desire about adopting e-science communication media can be taken as an appropriate approach to policy issues regarding social Internet studies and e-science.
• A heavy dependence on commercial application is also true of “link analysis” that is often referred to as the most promising area where Internet studies and e-science can meet (Ackland et al., 2006; Park & Thelwall, 2003).
• None of non-commercial crawlers is superior to major search engines such as the Yahoo, the Google, and the AltaVista in terms of the coverage of World Wide Web.
• Therefore, in order to conduct link analysis, researchers should be aware of (advanced) search engine queries and technical components comprising of a website.
• In relation to this, Nentwich (2003, pp.235~244) provides a good sketch of new skills and roles for scholars and librarians in the e-science age.
• Lastly, if I had had an access to virtual collaboratory with massive data storage capacity and advanced research network, it would have greatly enhanced the quality of a cross-national research that examines the different styles and practices of politician websites between South Korea and Japan.
• Its primary method lied in identifying the existence of certain information and engagement characteristics contained in the websites of national assembly members.
• This joint project accompanied with downloading and storing entire websites of individual politicians using the Offline Explorer, a paid program that allows you to download certain website and navigate the site offline.
• Due to the limited bandwidth capacity of ordinary Internet network, I was not able to share archived websites with a Japanese partner as a class and vice versa.
• Only screen-shots were exchanged via email. Table 1 summarizes the total amount of South Korean politician websites in terms of website size, number of folders, and number of files.
*Table 1) Website sizes of South Korean politician homepages
ItemWebsite size
(byte)No. of folders
No. of files
Median 269,590,955 84 1,728
Minimum 292,202 7 11
Maximum 4,177,982,280 2,088 11,500
N = 277
Thanks for your Thanks for your attention !attention !
• Interesting & growing areas• Promising approaches
• New Media & Society Lab at YeungNam University in South Korea
* Website : http://www.hanpark.net * E-mail : [email protected]
• Many thanks to my assistants and collaborators!