The Interview Setup

I had some time between interviews to create a post. Probably not quite as much time as I need, since I wanted to include pictures, but it's possible.

So here's a staged picture of me doing an interview. I am actually too busy during a real interview to do this, but this is pretty realistic in terms of what is going on on my end of the phone line if you're being interviewed by me.

And here is my trusty equipment, including the very awesome Olympus digital voice recorder that I use:

There you see my handy phone card so that I'm not putting the interviews on my office's phone bill. Also pictured, the beloved Oral Consent form. Very important.

Lastly, here's a close-up of why I call people for interviews and how they get from the phone to the voice recorder:

See the little black box? That's what patches the recorder onto the phone line so I get a great recording. It's just one extra detail to set-up that makes a world of difference in recording quality.

So yeah. I just wanted to preserve for posterity what my evenings after work have been looking like, when I switch over to working on my thesis research. Good times!

Emily K.

EndNote X3

I attended a training this morning on EndNote X3 that was offered on campus, and I've spent most of the rest of my day building up my EndNote Library. Right now I have 45 references stored!


How cool is this software?! I cannot believe how excellent it is to have this citation management tool that is best friends with MS Word. X3 has tons of citation styles built directly into the program. For example, in my papers I cite with Chicago style, so I just set the controls to Chicago 15th B, and when I go to insert a citation into my paper, voila! It appears in perfect format.

Also, importing the references into EndNote has been pretty simple, since most of the academic articles that I have been using have options right on the sites, like JStor or SagePub, which allow you to just click a button and import the citation off the web directly into your software.

If you get a chance, seek it out. There are versions for Mac and PC, and if your school is like mine, you might even be able to get a copy free!

For all you grad students out there, do you use this? I LOVE it!

Personal Style Blog Research

Well, Tania of What Would a Nerd Wear asked to hear more about my project. So here we go.

Last semester I looked at Identity and Outfit of the Day Blogs. I interviewed seven OOTD bloggers to hear the story told through the voices of participants, and I followed approximately twenty blogs to watch how the community worked. My research question was: how is identity as an OOTD blogger shaped and influenced by the community of OOTD bloggers? I am a sociologist, so I am drawn to questions about the interplay between self and society.

This semester I am returning to the project and looking at it from a new angle. First, I have changed the terminology to personal style blogger, as that appears to be a cultural trend that has surfaced. Now I have two questions: what influences the personal style blogger's choice to, or not to monetize, and is personal style blogging a feminist enterprise?

A second big difference between last semester and this semester is that my current project is a research proposal for my thesis. My thesis will be due in April, 2011, so I have one year to read tons more books and articles, do more data collection, and do data analysis. This summer I will do a second round of interviews, and I would like to get as many as 40 interviews completed (if you're a personal style blogger and you're reading this, I would definitely like to talk with you). I will also be creating a database about PSBs, like posts per month, ads or no ads, links or no links, blogroll, number of pictures, cross posting, all that good stuff. From what I can tell, there is no centralized data collection of this kind, except probably Blogger and WordPress have use numbers. I suspect that blog companies would be unwilling to share that data, and also, since personal style blogs are not always distinct from personal blogs, mommy blogs, beauty blogs, etc., the info probably doesn't exist for just the type that I'm investigating.

So, what do you think? I have lately seen tons of reflective posts on these exact topics. Those are really cool and helpful, and I want to strike while the iron is hot, before people get tired of talking about why they do what they do. On the other hand, there is no money to do this research; I'm just working on my M.A., so it pretty much happens when I have time for it to happen. Same issues that most grad students face.

OK, so there you have it. Let's talk!
Emily K.

Riff is teh awesum.

Oh my word, I am so in love with this video. Linked by Gelman's Blog, source is Minimum Safe Distance blog, music is Royksopp.

Remind Me from Röyksopp on Vimeo.

Crossposted to LiveJournal.

Whew

I just finished reading the 45-page article by John Heilemann entitled The Truth, The Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth. It was published in the November 2000 issue of Wired and it covers the Microsoft monopoly trial, including events leading up to the trial, the trial itself, and some post-decision follow-up.

I can't remember exactly how I heard about the article. I have subscribed to Wired magazine off and on for nearly 10 years, and I also subscribe to their RSS feed. I do know that I bookmarked it to read more than a year ago, and just now got down to actually doing it. It was a VERY worthwhile pursuit. Heilemann is a great author.

I think the most salient thing I took from the article was that the technology industry is, and always has been, just another industry. At times, especially in the dot-com boom, sometimes I did buy into the idea that computing technology was so weirdly different, that it couldn't be fit to any other industry's standards. Yet reading this article, it was clear that Microsoft is a company, much like any other. I'm glad the Department of Justice sued them. It was a good move for business in America, and it was a good process to remind all involved in the tech industry that men are not gods. No matter how much money they have. Good stuff.