- Look Who's Talking: A Pilot Study of the Use of
Discussion Lists by Journalism Educators and Students
Look Who's Talking:
A Pilot Study of the Use of Discussion Lists
by Journalism Educators and Students
Mark Pearson
Associate Professor of Journalism, Bond University,
Queensland, 4229, Australia.
Email: [log in to unmask]
Presented to the Communication Technology and Policy
Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass
Communication annual convention in Anaheim, California, August
10-13 1996.
Brief abstract
This paper analyses postings over a week-long period to two
electronic discussion lists to position them as communication forms
and to assess their potential value to journalism educators,
students and researchers. The lists D Journet and Stumedia D
feature advantages including networking and scholarly co-operation,
knowledge acquisition, a sense of communion, and an opportunity to
keep pace with innovation. Disadvantages are the sheer bulk of
correspondence, low participation rates, maleness, US-centricity
and the preponderance of "junk mail".
Extended abstract
This paper analyses postings over a week-long period to two
electronic discussion lists to position them as communication forms
and to assess their potential value to journalism educators,
students and researchers. It sets out to define the characteristics
of two lists by analysing some of their content over a short
period. (As a postscript, it assesses the suitability of data in
such lists for analysis in a larger project gauging journalists'
and educators views on the Internet's impact upon journalism.) The
lists D Journet and Stumedia D are examined using both quantitative
and qualitative techniques. The author concludes that discussion
lists have the scope to offer a level of currency in the
international scholarly community well beyond the limits of other
information sources for journalism educators and students such as
newsletters, conferences and journals which might be weeks or even
years behind in the intellectual debate or technological
development. Using a discussion list or direct email to a target
member, an educator or student can glean first-hand expert
information within hours, perhaps even minutes. Other advantages of
participation on such lists include networking and scholarly
co-operation, knowledge acquisition, a sense of communion, and an
opportunity to keep pace with innovation. Disadvantages are the
sheer bulk of correspondence, low participation rates, maleness,
US-centricity and the preponderance of "junk mail". The study
suggests this is a field of data ripe for research in a variety of
ways.
Look Who's Talking: A Pilot Study of the Use of Discussion
Lists by Journalism Educators and Students
Computer-mediated communication, on-line news services,
electronic mail and file transfer protocol offer countless
opportunities for researching, reporting, publishing, conferencing,
teaching and learning (Smith, 1993, Spring; Smith, 1994, Winter).
Yet important questions about the application of these technologies
remain unanswered. Much of the debate to date has focussed on the
virtual and the imaginable at the expense of the concrete and the
tangible. This paper attempts to address that imbalance by making
a case study of just one manifestation of the Internet: the
electronic discussion list. It does so by analysing the discussion
during a single week on two such lists D Stumedia and Journet. The
immediate purpose of the paper D the purpose the bulk of the
discussion addresses D is to define the characteristics of these
two lists by analysing some of their content. A second purpose D
addressed as a postscript to the paper D is to assess the
suitability of data in such lists for analysis in a larger project
gauging journalists' and educators views on the Internet's impact
upon journalism.
Electronic discussion lists (sometimes known as bulletin
boards, electronic mailing lists, listservs, and collaborative mass
media) are a subset of the expanding realm of computer-mediated
communication (CMC) accessible through the Internet. Throughout the
world thousands of journalists and journalism educators are
communicating over the Internet as participants in such electronic
discussion groups. Six main listservs exist D CARR-L (Computer
Aided Research and Reporting List), Journal-net (a discussion list
for journalists using computers for research), Online-news (a list
for those publishing electronic newspapers), SPJ-net (that
sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists), Stumedia (a
discussion list for journalism students and student editors) and
Journet (a discussion list for journalism educators). These have
spawned several smaller discussion groups representing regional or
sectional interests.[1] This pilot study looks at discussions on
Stumedia and Journet over a single week.
Discussion lists are defined as "an interactive
computer-based communication system organised around the interests
of the users" (Ogan, 1993: 177). Several thousand exist in a
variety of forms, but the kind under examination in this study
serve as platforms for exchanging information and ideas among
scholars. Gilster (1993: 192) describes their operation:
A centralised structure is imposed over the
circulating
material, usually with a single person supervising
the entire operation.
Instead of bouncing and multiplying across the
network, messages flow to the
person in charge, who then sees that the discussion
is moderated, or at least
that each person's contributions become available
for all to read. Best of
all, this material is then delivered to your
electronic mailbox, in the form
of a series of messages that keep coming in until
you resign from the group
in question.
Communication researchers have grappled with
categorisation of the Internet. December (1996: 17) distinguishes
the Internet from other networks on the international computer
"Matrix" (Quarterman, 1990) according to the set of protocols which
define its rules for data exchange. Is it a mass medium? Morris and
Ogan (1996: 42) suggest its chameleon-like qualities force a
rethinking of the very definition "mass medium": "... (W)hat
becomes clear is that neither mass nor medium can be precisely
defined for all situations, but instead must be continually
rearticulated depending on the situation." The key point of
difference between electronic discussion lists and the traditional
mass media is that, while the latter involve one-to-many
dissemination of content, discussion lists involve a many-to-many
communication relationship (Rafaeli and LaRose, 1993: 291).
Electronic discussion lists allow for ongoing discourse between
subscribers with a common interest, effectively creating what
Rheingold (1994: 5) calls a "virtual community", which he defines
as "social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people
carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient
human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in
cyberspace".
Rheingold (1994: 12) proposes that CMC has the potential
to change people's lives on three levels: the personal, the social
and the political. He suggests that at the personal level
individual perceptions, thoughts and personalities can be changed
through the use of the medium. At the social level, Rheingold
adopts a schema for determining whether a human group interaction
can be called a "community". Such a community must demonstrate the
following "collective goods": social network capital, knowledge
capital and communion. The third level for potential change to
people's lives is at the political level, at which Rheingold sees
the potential for CMC to revitalise the notion of citizen-based
democracy. The levels, and the schema for defining community, will
be revisited as part of the analysis of the two discussion lists
being examined here.
Scholars have attempted to fathom the communication
identity of computer bulletin board systems, or BBSs (an umbrella
term encompassing the discussion lists which are the subject of
this study). Several, such as Cunningham and Finn (1996), have
noted that Internet communication shifts the relationship between
the producer and receiver of a message. They give the example of
the multi-point chat format where traditional theories of audience
break down because the participant shifts between the roles of
audience member and content creator. The same applies to discussion
lists. Ogan (1993, Spring), found that the computer bulletin board
may indeed be a kind of hybrid communication medium. Ogan analysed
all messages filed to the Turkish Electronic Mail List (TEL) during
one month of the Gulf War. She used a classification schema
developed by Ball-Rokeach and Reardon (1988) to position the
electronic bulletin board as a form of telelogic communication,
containing characteristics of both mass and personal communication.
She concluded that bulletin board communication was unique in that
it:
y Connected people in a new social community
defined around
the interests of its members and not their physical
proximity.
y Provided a specialised medium to serve the
functions of
that community.
y Provided a new arena for group decision making
and
mobilisation.
y Allowed for other new uses not provided by
traditional
media, including the development of personalised
data bases for participants.
y Did not follow traditional means of confirming
participant
status. (That is, face to face interpersonal social
cues were lacking.)
(Ogan, 1993: 192-3).
Poster (1994: 83) agrees with the latter point, noting
that in CMC people "connect with strangers without much of the
social baggage that divides and alienates". This facilitates
conversations which might have been avoided if participants had
more visual cues about each other's age, gender, ethnicity or
social status. This lack of face-to-face social cues has
precipitated attempts to define codes of behaviour or protocols in
CMC, some reflecting the norms of traditional interpersonal
communication and others addressing peculiarities of this
communication form. These are the rules of on-line etiquette
("Netiquette"). Tennant, Ober and Lipow (1994: 45) advise new users
("newbies") to be patient and to avoid the temptation to send
trivial or poorly formulated messages to lists and to be
particularly careful with attempts at humour, which can be
misunderstood. They warn users off the practice of "flaming" D
sending critical or abusive messages across the Net. Gilster (1993:
195) lists other protocols.
This article draws upon the above research to quantify
and analyse the two selected journalism discussion lists with
special attention to their attributes of community and their
potential value to journalism educators and students. It is an
exploratory study, mainly intended to gauge the potential for
further research in the area; particularly to assess the
suitability of conversations on such lists as data for a larger
qualitative study.
Method
All postings to the discussion lists Journet and Stumedia
for the first week of November, 1994, were downloaded and saved.
These lists were selected from several available in the field
because they were among the most general and popular used by
journalism faculty and students. There were clear risks attached to
the selection of a single week of postings for analysis. Future
studies might take up a larger time frame to avoid such risks. At
the beginning of November students and faculty may be occupied with
mid-term exams and projects, for example, but different risks are
attached to other single weeks during the academic year. Clearly,
a follow-up project should remedy this. (Nevertheless, 46,840 words
of text were analysed in discussions in this single week,
stretching the resources available to this pilot project and
indicating the risks were more to do with the timing of the
collection than with the quantity of data.)
Basic data about the discussions was quantified. The
volume of correspondence was measured and absolute and relative
frequencies were calculated for key indicators, including
participation levels, roles as originators of messages or
respondents, and genders and nationalities of participants. The
content analysis involved the assignation of terms to the primary
topic discussed in each posting and the communicative purpose of
each item. Their frequencies were also recorded. The qualitative
element involved a critical analysis of the messages, exploring
issues foreshadowed in the literature review. Central to the task
was the assessment of the usefulness of CMC as a means of
communication for journalism educators and students. (The ethical
issues regarding the quotation of individuals' postings to
discussion lists were considered carefully. In the end, it was
decided that quoting such postings was not significantly different
from quoting passages of letters to the editor of a publication:
the comments have been posted into the public domain by their
mailing to a discussion list. Nevertheless, it is recognised that
the context in which they are being quoted is quite different from
that into which they were originally published. Readers should bear
this contextual shift in mind when reading excerpts from those
postings in this paper. The whole issue of the ethics of usage of
Internet material is worthy of much deeper exploration and
discussion.)
The researcher decided not to participate in the lists
being analysed because the researcher would not normally subscribe
to both of them and be privy to the discussions taking place.
Rather than complicate the analysis with the researcher's own
contributions, the decision was taken not to participate for the
data collection period. (Some might argue with this, of course. The
researcher's "withdrawal" from the list he normally subscribes to
D Journet D could be portrayed as a corruption of the data in that
the researcher's own routine contributions represent a valid role
in their own right, worthy of analysis, and their absence may well
deprive the project of whole strings of valuable data.)
Nevertheless, having weighed the arguments for and against
participation, the researcher decided not to. The role of
non-participant observer sits well with the research questions and
the theoretical framework.
Results and discussion
a. Quantitative analysis
Some of the decisions about which of the data should be
subject to simple frequency analysis were relatively
straightforward, informed in part by studies by Ogan (1993,
Spring), Garramone, Harris and Anderson (1986) and Swift (1989).
These included tabulations of the numbers of messages in each list
over the period, the level of participation of subscribers, the
length of messages, the genders and nationalities of participants
and whether the messages were original postings or replies to other
postings. Separate figures for Journet and Stumedia are given only
where they vary markedly. Each of the discussion lists boasts a
relatively indistinct and broad range of interests. Journet is
billed in Okerson (1994: 365) as containing "topics of interest to
journalists and journalism educators", while Stumedia is listed as
containing "All issues of interest to student journalists. Students
involved in journalism in newspaper, yearbook, television, radio
and other forms of media are encouraged to join."
During the week of data collection a total of 187
messages were posted to the two discussion lists D 84 on Journet
and 103 on Stumedia. The discussion amounted to 46,840 words, with
the average length of a message being 248 words (excluding
addressing coding, but including excerpts of previous messages to
which the author have may be replying.) Of the total 187 messages,
62 (33%) were original postings, while 125 (67%) were replies to
other participants' messages. The fact that two thirds of the
postings were responses reflects the degree of interactivity of the
medium and at first seems to confirm Rafaeli and LaRose's (1993:
291) designation of CMC as a "many-to-many" communication medium.
However, it is worth noting that the messages were contributed by
only 110 individuals, representing just 9.1 per cent of the total
1202 subscribers to the lists. Just 59 (6.8%) of Journet's 872
subscribers participated during the week, while 51 (15.5%) of
Stumedia's 330 subscribers took part over the period. This was a
considerably lower participation rate than the 31% recorded by Ogan
(1993), although her study was over a one month period at a
particularly volatile time. Nevertheless, other studies of bulletin
board users have recorded even higher participation rates
(Garramone, Harris and Anderson, 1986; Swift, 1989). In the light
of this, Rafaeli and LaRose's (1993: 291) designation of CMC as a
"many-to-many" communication medium might be redefined as
"few-to-many". Follow-up studies might seek to explain this
relatively low participation level, which renders more than 90% of
the users of the two groups "lurkers" D subscribers who observe
debate rather than contribute to it. (Again, the comparison can be
drawn here with letters to the editor of print publication: the
fact that very few readers bother to write a letter to the editor
does not necessarily diminish the importance of letters to the
publication and its broader readership.)
The low participation level was reinforced by an analysis
of the participation rates of discussants. Table 1 shows that only
four of the 110 participants contributed more than five messages,
while 77 (70%) contributed only one message during the week. Only
one of the four frequent contributors could not be considered a
"discussant" per se, in that he was simply posting announcements
about industrial award negotiations. The findings compare with
Ogan's (1993, Spring) analysis of the Turkish Electronic Mail List
which averaged 5.8 messages per contributor over a one month
period. Morris and Ogan (1996: 45) suggest a bulletin board must
have depth and variety in its content to be viable.
If the audience who also serve as the source of
information
for the BBS is too small, the bulletin board cannot
survive for lack, of
content. A much larger critical mass will be needed
for such a group to
maintain itself D perhaps as many as 100 or more.
Both lists seem to meet this requirement, though only in
membership and thus potential audience rather than in actual
participation levels.
A related consideration in determining the functionality
of the medium is the membership and participation as a proportion
of the total population of journalism educators and students. Any
medium requires a critical mass of adopters before it can be
categorised as a mass medium. Valente (cited in Morris and Ogan,
1996: 45) positions this critical mass at the point where 10 to 20
per cent of the population have adopted the medium. No precise
figures exist on the number of journalism educators and students in
the countries with access to electronic mail and the capability of
subscribing to such discussion lists, but they would certainly
number tens of thousands, putting the membership of these lists
below Valente's critical mass threshold. (Electronic mail would
have a broader usage, and may be classified as a mass medium, but
for the fact that it is mainly used for one-to-one or one-to-few
communication.)
Also consistent with the findings of others (Ogan, 1993,
Spring; Garramone et al., 1986; Rafaeli, 1986; Swift, 1989) was the
domination of male and American discussants. Gender was not always
identifiable, but at least 133 of the messages (71%) were
contributed by men. Americans were by far the most prevalent
contributors, with 181 (97%) of the messages originating from the
United States, four (2.1%) coming from Canada and only a single
contribution each from Britain and Australia. This was despite
several non-American addresses featuring among the subscribers'
lists. This phenomenon adds weight to the assertions of
commentators such as Poster (1994: 76) who fears the cultural and
political consequences of an Internet dominated by US users.
Nevertheless, other factors may need to be considered here,
including the level of uptake of Internet technology beyond the US,
the propensity of users in other regions to start their own lists,
the origins and purposes of the particular lists under examination
and the peculiarities of this particular one week time frame. This
deserves detailed longitudinal analysis over a longer period.
Table 1: Messages on the Journet and Stumedia discussion
lists (November 1-7, 1994).
No. of messages
Contributors
(Journet)
Contributors
(Stumedia)
Total
contributors
1
47
30
77
2
6
9
15
3
3
4
7
4
1
4
5
5
1
1
2
6
-
2
2
7
1
-
1
10
-
1
1
Total
59
51
110
M = 1.7 messages per contributor. Mode = 1 message per
contributor.
Each of the 187 messages was then subjected to two distinct
categorisation processes: one reflecting the topic being discussed
and the other addressing the communicative purpose of the posting.
As can be seen from Table 2, the data presented five general topic
areas under discussion, classified as education, journalism,
technology, social and other. Each of these featured a number of
sub-topics (18 in all) which indicated a further refinement of the
topic being discussed. Postings were only allocated a single
categorisation in this process, necessitating the coder to decide
which was the dominant topic in each item. Clearly, these
categorisations reflect this author's own interests and biases.
Like any content analysis, the process of categorisation can be
approached in a number of ways. Researchers with different purposes
or agendas will categorise the data in different ways.
Table 2: Messages coded for discussion topic
Topic
Journet
Stumedia
Total
Education (total)
25
1
26
- Courses (comparison)
3
1
4
- Curriculum
12
-
4
- Pedagogical approaches
10
-
10
Journalism (total)
19
49
68
- Practice (including ethics)
10
7
17
- Story research
-
3
3
- Story idea
-
12
12
- Industrial issues
9
-
9
- News values
-
7
7
- Editors' issues (staffing etc)
-
20
20
Technological (total)
32
26
58
- Equipment
18
4
22
- Net Administration
3
1
4
- Internet
8
4
12
- Netiquette
3
17
20
Social (total)
1
13
14
- Personal / community
-
5
5
- Convention planning
1
8
9
Other (total)
7
14
21
- Employment issues
1
9
10
- Positions vacant
6
3
9
- Politics
-
2
2
Total
84
103
187
A note of caution should be issued on the interpretation of
such results. Since they only represent a single week of discussion
on each list, they are easily skewed by the course of that week's
debate. A single topic might never have been discussed on the list
previously and might never be discussed again, but in this
particular week might well have been the focus of debate. Other
factors may impact upon the topics. For example, it might seem that
Journet discussants have a strong interest in industrial issues,
while Stumedia discussants have little interest in such issues. In
fact, the nine postings listed under the topic on the Journet list
were simply bulletins posted by the Wire Service Guild about their
negotiations with Associated Press which generated no discussion.
More than one quarter of the discussion on the Journet
list during the period related to educational issues. Despite their
separate topic classifications, the distinction between curriculum
and pedagogical approaches is considerably blurred, with most
discussion involving a combination of both. What is more noteworthy
than Journet's discussion of educational issues is Stumedia's
neglect of them. This might be explained partly by the fact that
many of the discussants on that list seemed to be students who were
practising student journalism, but not necessarily studying it.
Nevertheless, one might expect tertiary students of whatever
discipline to take an interest in their institutions and their
educational practices.
Stumedia discussants were particularly vocal on
journalism topics, especially those related to the actual
production of their publications. Almost half of the Stumedia
discussion fell into the journalism category. Surprisingly, the
Journet discussion of journalism was limited. The 10 items about
the practice of journalism represented less than one eighth of the
overall discussion on the list during the period.
The most popular discussion topic on Journet was
technology, dominated by debate over the most suitable ways of
equipping journalism teaching labs and of using the Internet for
research and publishing purposes. Technology was also an important
element of the Stumedia discussion. The major issue discussed there
was "Netiquette", which took up a significant 17 or the 103
Stumedia postings in the week, indicating the extent to which the
courtesies of Internet usage can occupy time and space on such a
list.
Similarly, 13 of Stumedia's postings were categorised as
"social" D items of a personal or community nature or procedural
notices about the Associated Collegiate Press convention many of
the student subscribers were attending in New Orleans the following
week. The convention-related postings add fuel to the criticism of
the US-centricism of the list, with discussants paying little
credence to the fact that such a regionally based convention may be
of little interest to international subscribers.
Noteworthy about the "other" category in Table 2 was the
ongoing use of the lists to discuss employment prospects and to
post job advertisements. The employment issue surfaced on Stumedia
with a lively exchange over the relative value in the job market of
newspaper cuttings files and subject grades. The nine postings of
non-paid position vacant advertisements indicates a usage of
discussion lists as a "one-to-many" as distinct from "many-to-many"
form of communication. For such advertisers, Journet becomes a
convenient and inexpensive way of directly marketing a job ad to
872 target readers internationally.
The second strand to the categorisation process was to
adjudge the communicative purpose of each posting to the lists.
Table 3 shows that each posting was designated as having one of
seven communicative purposes: query, help given, banter, flame,
announcement, discussion or Net administration.
Table 3: Messages coded for communicative purpose
Communicative purpose
Journet
Stumedia
Total
Query
19
8
27
Help Given
15
9
24
Banter
1
6
7
Flame
D
2
2
Announcement
15
19
34
Discussion
31
59
90
Net Administration
3
D
3
Total
84
103
187
Almost half of the postings were categorised as
"discussion" D displaying the characteristics of either generating
or taking part in debate on an issue. This is purported to be the
primary purpose of such a "discussion list". Gilster (1993: 194)
calls it a "platform for exchanging ideas". Yet half the time the
medium was used it was for some different purpose, with the seeking
("Query") and giving ("Help Given") of assistance combining to be
the second most popular use of the lists (51 of the 187 postings).
The kinds of assistance sought and offered ranged across the
spectrum of topics listed in Table 2.
The posting of announcements was the next most frequent
usage, taking the form of posting announcements for the information
of the general list community, introducing oneself as a new
subscriber, and redistributing items found on other lists or in
other media.
The remaining categories of communicative purpose figure
only marginally in the total week's postings. All three D banter,
flames and Net administration D represent "noise" on the discussion
lists which fall outside the primary purpose of idea exchange.
"Banter" included the exchange of pleasantries and humour which
might sometimes strike a chord of collective support on the list,
but more often raises the hackles of other participants because of
its trivial waste of time and online connection costs. Similarly,
"flames" D those notes of abuse or personal criticism D use
discussion list resources to conduct an assault upon someone which
could easily have been addressed privately to their email accounts.
Net administrative postings are in some cases necessary evils of
the medium and in other cases public demonstrations of the
ignorance of participants. Only 12 of the 187 postings fell into
these three groups, a result that other list members might well
find encouraging.
b. Qualitative analysis
Rheingold (1994: 12) names the three impacts CMC can make
upon people's lives as the personal, the social and the political.
He explains that at the personal level "CMC appeals to us as mortal
organisms with certain intellectual, physical and emotional needs".
While personal impacts of CMC are hinted at in the text of postings
during the week under examination, a detailed study of impacts upon
individuals would require a different research model from that
adopted for this pilot study.
The data provided some examples of political exploitation
of the medium. The union-initiated postings on Journet of the
results of the Wire Service Guild's negotiations with employers was
one example. Another was the posting on Stumedia of an excerpt from
a book titled Guide to Uncovering the Right on Campus, edited by
the author of the message. However, both examples were one-off
postings which attracted no debate and gained no momentum. A study
over a longer period would find superior examples, such as the
email-generated groundswell of support during 1993 and 1994 for
journalism programs in North America threatened with closure by
their respective university administrations. These came much closer
to Rheingold's (1994: 14) notion of a "revitalised citizen-based
democracy" and deserve a separate study devoted solely to their
case.
The discussion here will centre on Rheingold's (1994: 13)
notion of the social impact of CMC, founded upon a schema Rheingold
himself borrowed from Smith (1992). Rheingold explains that the
notion of "community" is premised upon a group's ownership of three
kinds of "collective goods": "social network capital", "knowledge
capital" and "communion".
Social network capital is the development of
interpersonal contacts and relationships participants can gain
through active membership of such discussion lists. It is
impossible to gauge the actual scale of the social network which
can be created and facilitated by CMC. A printout of the email
addresses of all participants obtained from each list's
administrator offers a large network of contacts which may be
accessed individually. Similarly, private correspondence frequently
continues between small groups and pairs of participants long after
the debate has ended on the discussion list. Take, for example,
this posting to Journet:
Hello. I'm a graduate student at the University of
Missouri.
I have a friend from Warsaw, Poland who is
attending school here. He would
like to send email to people in Poland, but he
doesn't know of any addresses
to send to. He is fascinated by the email thing,
and he would like to stay in
touch with everyone back here in the USA when he
goes home. If anyone can
help him please send him an email. [Name and
address follows.]
Clearly, the social network capital of CMC is seen as vital
to the student on his return to Poland. Similarly, on Stumedia a
Texan subscriber sought to develop a network of contacts in his
home state.
While these are blatant illustrations of the operation of
such social network capital, a more subtle example is the "News
Idea" exchange developed on Stumedia. During the week under
examination, 12 ideas for news stories were posted to the list as
part of a co-operative story generation program developed by a
member. For example, an Australian participant shared her story
idea about youth suicide. A fellow participant in Canada followed
up on the story idea with a series of answers to frequently asked
questions about suicide D obtained, coincidentally, from an
Australian source on the Internet. The social network had extended
from Australia to a United States-based discussion list to a
Canadian member who happened to have accessed an Australian
information source and shared this with the international body of
subscribers including this author, also based in Australia.
The example also serves to introduce the second of
Rheingold's "collective goods" D knowledge capital. As well as
representing a development of contacts and relationships, the
suicide news idea depicted an exchange of information which was
perceived as potentially useful to the members of the list.
Rheingold (1994: 13) argues that knowledge capital is to be found
when members ask questions of the community "as an online brain
trust representing a highly varied accumulation of expertise". The
content analysis above indicates the high value that participants
on Journet and Stumedia place on the information sharing
capabilities of the lists. Many of the examples of the exchange of
"knowledge capital" during the week in focus were to do with
software for publishing and learning.
Typically, a member would post to the list with a dilemma
and ask for advice. For example, one participant explained he had
the opportunity to equip a new lab for journalism and advertising
students. He sought advice on hardware and software, particularly
a comparison of Quark Express and PageMaker programs. There was an
immediate response on the virtues of Quark from a newspaper systems
manager. Another participant then shared her expertise on the
respective merits of the two pagination programs, including her
experience with the software manufacturers' customer service
departments, the relative cost of the programs, and their
"journalism-friendliness". Similar exchanges took place on other
equipment-oriented topics. Amidst the wealth of information
exchange, one participant bemoaned the fact that email users did
not use the headline writing skills most had practised as
journalists:
I've been on CARR-L, Journet and SPJ-Online for
several
months now--and I have no idea what half of the
postings are about when I
scan the subjects in my mail reader. When I got my
journalism degree at the
Univ. of Illinois in 1969, they were still teaching
headline writing. Is that
a lost art, known only to New York tabloids
editors? With mail from three
lists, I assume I'm like most of you and hit the
delete key without reading
most postings. I certainly don't read those that
tell me next to nothing in
the header.
As the New York Post might have put it in the
1970's (or was
it the Daily
News?):
Ford to New York: Learn to Write E-Mail Heads!
The humorous note had a serious message to it. Whether or
not the information posted to the list is useful to its members is
a point often debated over the Net. During the course of the week
a lengthy debate ensued over the "spamming" (posting to multiple
discussion lists) of a missing person notice describing two
children abducted from South Carolina in a car-jacking.
Participants were keen to minimise the amount of "junk mail"
crossing their computer screens.
The third of Rheingold's "collective goods" evidence of
community is the notion of "communion" D the act of sharing or
holding in common. Rheingold (1994: 3) used as an example of such
communion the supportive messages sent to a couple in an electronic
Parenting conference whose son had been diagnosed with leukemia.
This type of bonding extends to a much more emotional and spiritual
level than mere social networking. Such "communion" occurred once
during the week under review; when the Stumedia list owner Kenny
Pate had been injured in a car accident. The 330 members of the
list heard of his fate in this brief message from the list
co-owner:
In case you are wondering where Kenny is, he had a
rather
nasty automobile accident on Wednesday, totalling
his car and breaking his
sternum. He is going to be fine, but he is in quite
a bit of pain, and hence,
unable to come in to work and access the computer.
However, drop him a note
at his personal address to let him know you are
thinking about him:
[log in to unmask] I am sure he would
appreciate it. He is still
planning to go to New Orleans. I think he plans to
use the alcohol for
medicinal purposes. Until he is back on his feet,
however, I will be handling
the list and any problems that arise.
The posting prompted a number of public responses to the
list and private get well messages to Pate himself, to which the
list owner rallied with this stoic response from his sick bed:
Subject: I'm baaack... (actually, I'm on my
back)
From: Kenny Pate <[log in to unmask]>
Hi there.
I'd like to thank everyone who sent me a get well
note.
I didn't expect that kind of response, and I guess
I'm a
little floored by it. Thank you.
I'd tell you about the wreck, but I'm finding it
fairly
difficult to think clearly while I'm on these
drugs.
Anyway, I'll be in New Orleans one way or another.
Kenny
Clearly, this is as close as we might get to Rheingold's
notion of communion; evidence of genuine empathy and bonding
between electronic correspondents who may never meet face to face.
Conclusion
This exploratory study of just one week's postings to two
lists indicates a field of data ripe for research in a variety of
ways. Important issues arise which could not be addressed in this
study. They include:
y Why is there such a low participation rate at any time?
y What is the role of the "lurker"?
y What is the "life cycle" of a discussion list community?
y How does the community "gel"?
y Can it meet the discussion needs and interests of both
newbies and veteran participants?
y How much time does active participation absorb?
y What are the views of participants on its usefulness?
Such questions could be addressed in future studies using
a range of methodologies.
The discussion list as a form of CMC offers several
points of difference as a telelogic medium, noted by Ogan (1993,
Spring: 192-3), including: providing a specialised medium for its
members; being an arena for group decision making and allowing for
new uses such as the personalised data bases. Ogan mentions two
other points of difference which are worth elaboration and
qualification. Firstly, she proposes that the discussion list she
studied "connected people to one another in a new social community
defined around the interests of its members and not their physical
proximity" (Ogan, 1993, Spring: 192). If one accepts Rheingold's
definition of "community" (and, no doubt, some will not) then it
follows that the discussion lists under examination certainly
possess it. Yet the physical proximity of participants still seemed
to have considerable influence. Some of the messages and
discussions, such as the organising of the New Orleans convention
on Stumedia, were US-centric to the exclusion of international
participants. This phenomenon encourages groups of members to form
splinter discussion lists based around either sub-topics or
locations. One such group was formed to discuss visual
communication. Another offshoot was created for Australasian
journalism educators: JEANet. This may of itself be an encouraging
sign of the cultural internationalisation of the Internet.
Cunningham and Finn (1996: 88) comment that "while Net culture
bears unmistakable signs everywhere of its birth in the US and the
extensive dominance of US users, there is also a powerful and
practical sense of Net interactions that are growing more global
rapidly".
A relevant factor here may be the time difference between
different regions of the United States and the rest of the world.
While the communication may be virtually instant over the Net, many
participants are not reading messages until they arrive for work
the next day, often several hours after a message has been posted.
(Some participants subscribe to the listservs as a "digest",
choosing to have all the messages for a particular day sent as a
package once per day.) Whether by choice or not, this may leave
them well behind the debate, perhaps too late to make a worthwhile
contribution. This might explain in part the low level of
involvement of non-US members of the two lists.
The second of Ogan's points worth further attention is
her contention that CMC "did not conform to traditional ways of
confirming participant status" (1993, Spring: 193). To an extent
that is true, with the age and social status of the participants
rarely mentioned and body language and voice tone indicators
absent. However, gender is usually discernible in the name of the
participant and ethnicity, while not apparent unless mentioned by
the participant, is open to conjecture based upon the name, country
of origin or institution of origin of the member. Participants also
make attempts at replicating face-to-face communication by using
textual graphics and codes to indicate humour or emotion. The
sideways smiling face :-) ; the frown :-( ; and the wink
;- ) positioned strategically within text are examples.
Technological developments in the incorporation of audio-visuals
will undoubtedly bridge this gap further.
Discussion lists have the scope to offer a level of
currency in the international scholarly community well beyond the
limits of other information sources for journalism educators and
students such as newsletters, conferences and journals which might
be weeks or even years behind in the intellectual debate or the
technological development. Using a discussion list or direct email
to a target member an educator or student can glean first-hand
expert information within hours, perhaps even minutes.
Nevertheless, potential disadvantages may limit the value
of CMC to educators and students. Firstly, the sheer bulk of
correspondence over the period (46,840 words in text alone, plus
many more in administrative notations) would be prohibitive to
some, particularly those who already know the answers to many of
the questions being asked and who have already resolved the
dilemmas being debated. Secondly, any community D "virtual" or
actual D must rely upon a minimum level of participation on the
part of its membership. The notably low participation rates on the
two lists prompt questions about whether they have ebbed below a
critical mass required for fruitful ongoing discussion. Thirdly,
the dominance of discussions by both male and US participants may
cause concern, particularly to those journalists and educators who
are female or who do not share the common US perception of the
socio-political role of journalism. Fourthly, the relatively high
usage of the lists for announcements (sometimes quite lengthy)
evokes visions of a junk medium similar to the traffic in facsimile
press releases which has become the bane of almost every newsroom.
Fifth, reading and participating in such discussion lists takes
time which might previously have been spent on other tasks. The
field deserves a comprehensive time and motion study of discussion
list participants to help evaluate the worth of the medium.
Journalism educators and students might weigh these
potential pitfalls against the demonstrated benefits of membership
of such lists: Rheingold's lauded personal, social and political
impacts including the social networks, knowledge base and communion
of the virtual community; the scope for journalistic and scholarly
co-operation with distant colleagues; and the opportunity to keep
pace with the speed of innovation in an ongoing electronic
idea-mart. The decision on whether to participate is indicative of
the dilemma facing us all in an age of technological innovation and
information overload.
Postscript: Usefulness of discussion lists as data for
qualitative research
A secondary purpose of this paper was to consider the
suitability of listserv discussions as data for a qualitative
researcher investigating journalists' perceptions of the impact of
the Internet upon journalism. (The author is in the process of
planning such a major project.) Some researchers have already drawn
upon discussions during computer-mediated communication as data for
qualitative projects (Smith, 1992; Reid, 1991).
Miles and Huberman (1994: 27) note that qualitative
research is usually concerned with small samples of people "nested
in their context, and studied in-depth" and that qualitative
samples tend to be "purposive, rather than random". This is because
researchers are working with a relatively narrow definition of
their universe (in this case, journalism faculty and students
participating in electronic discussions) and also because random
sampling would render confusing the social and intellectual
phenomena under analysis, which are themselves inherently logical
and coherent.
Marshall and Rossman (1991: 54) list four characteristics
of the "ideal site" for qualitative study:
1. Entry is possible.
2. There is a high probability that a rich mix of
many of the
processes, people, programs, interactions, and/or
structures that may be a
part of the research question will be present.
3. The researcher can devise an appropriate role to
maintain
continuity of presence for as long as necessary;
and
4. Data quality and credibility are reasonably
assured by
avoiding poor sampling decisions.
Interestingly, discussion lists go close to meeting these
"ideal site" criteria if the data is pertinent to the research
topic. Of course, an important decision would be the selection of
the most appropriate listservs for the proposed study. Entry is
certainly possible; the mix of interactions (conversations)
required of this kind of research question will be present; as a
"virtual" site there is no problem with the researcher maintaining
an appropriate role; and sampling decisions are relatively
straightforward as they are restricted to discussions relating to
the impact of the Internet upon journalism practice. (Of course
this final criterion depends upon the researcher's judgment and
insight.) The selection of the discussion list as a research site
is not dissimilar to the interviewing of elites as described by
Marshall and Rossman (1991: 94-95); an acceptable research strategy
in appropriate circumstances. If discussion lists were selected as
the primary source of data, the actual sampling process within the
discussion lists selected would be primarily a matter of data
reduction. The first and major sampling decision would be the
selection of participants' discussions related to the impact of
technology upon journalism practice. Further sampling decisions may
be necessary during the project, depending on the quantity of
material captured through this primary selection process.
Access is gained simply through the registration in one
of the discussion lists, with no explicit conditions attached.
Certain unstated conditions apply as dictated by the concept of
"Netiquette" - the code of conduct on the Internet. Each of the
discussion list administrators posts an electronic introductory
text upon registration, featuring basic guidelines on
correspondence to the list. This does not affect access to others'
correspondence.
Use of discussion list conversations as data has
similarities to other common sources of data for qualitative
researchers. Certainly this technique can be seen as document
analysis, in that it presents itself in a textual form. To an
extent, it is also a form of "participant observation" because it
is observing the on-line behaviour of the discussion list
participants in their interactions with each other and their
responses to each other's comments. It could also be seen as a form
of interviewing, in that the responses to each other's comments
elicit heartfelt contributions from participants on a particular
topic. Certainly, follow-up interviews could be conducted with
participants at some later stage in the project. Finally, the
technique is unobtrusive; so unobtrusive, in fact, that it raises
several ethical issues which are beyond the scope of this paper but
require serious examination. They include issues related to
consent, deception, privacy, harm, identification, confidentiality,
publication and reciprocity.
Qualitative research projects often present difficulties
to researchers who want to return to the site in which they
conducted a pilot study. The "virtual" research site of the
discussion list presents no difficulties to the researcher who has
already conducted a pilot study. Just as a pilot study on the
letters featured in a metropolitan daily newspaper would not affect
the capacity to conduct primary study on the same topic, an
exploratory study of a discussion list does not stand to impact
upon the larger project. If, however, it is deemed necessary to
interview some of the participants during the project these issues
will need to be revisited.
The discussion lists as "sites" can be compared with the
staff common rooms in large institutions representing workers of
the kind participating in the discussions. The Online News list
approximates a common room where those publishing and working on
electronic news publications come and go and conduct conversations
among themselves while in the common room. The CARR-L list can be
compared with a staff room frequented by mainstream journalists
using computer aided research methods. The Journet list consists
mainly of journalism educators discussing issues common to them.
The SPJ-online list is a gathering of both journalists and
educators.
It seems that discussion lists, despite the shortcomings
which have surfaced during this pilot study, would be a worthwhile
source of data for a qualitative study of journalists' perceptions
of the impact of the Internet upon their work.
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[1] . Examples include JEANet, a discussion list for
Australian and New Zealand journalism educators and
Computer-assisted Reporting Caucus (restricted to members of the
Canadian Assn. of Journalists).
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