Friday 11 November 2011

"What we’ve done and what we need to do" or: The perils of the digital revolution

As stated our current aim is the collection and analysis of data. However a relatively large problem was encounter during this process. After a mass buying of news papers from all areas of print, we discovered a fundamental flaw, personal columns or lonely hearts ads are now somewhat scarce. Aside from a few examples in local and free papers (which we felt would not give a particularly good representation of the public), data was rather hard to come by. This is likely due to the popularity of social networking and the internet.

So (and rather appropriately for this module) we've shifted our attention to the internet, and personal ads on dating websites. This throws up some interesting areas that will affect our report.

  •  With printed personal ads you tend to pay per word, this is not the case with online ads so structure, abbreviations and other features of printed ads are no longer present.
  • We can no longer compare between different varieties of newspaper (tabloid, broadsheet, etc.) so may have to focus on other variables.
  •  There are literally dozens of dating sites out there, each with a different take on the medium. We have selected one or two of the bigger sites that provided a “general service” (i.e. don’t cater towards people from specific careers, faiths, etc).

Currently we are collecting data from a variety of ages across both genders, as our main focus with be language and gender comparisons.

Still to do is obviously the analysis and formulation of the presentation. More info on how we will organise the presentation on the website should follow soon, after a bit more discussion.

1 comment:

  1. So - an important lesson learned: check that the data you hope to use exists in the places you think it does at an early stage! This is why we always advocate doing a pilot early on - it can save a lot of time later. Still, you've not been defeated and it looks as though, with some fairly intensive work, you can get back on track to collect, analyse and present your findings by the deadline. Don't forget to view the v-lecture on data analysis, as well as consulting the textbook for further details and advice.
    Good luck.
    Alison

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