My master's thesis on online communication

[Occhidiangela]

Angel' date='May 30 2006, 08:39 AM' post='110900']

Although I've made some general notes, I still feel rather directionless. I've put my aims into words:

My aim is to discuss the limitations on content and style of publicised texts in two domains: the virtual realm of CMC and the real realm of traditional writing and also to explain what sets these limitations.


What is meant by "traditional writing and publication"? Newspaper articles, poetry, fiction, letters? When I got the topic for my presentation, I automatically assumed that I would be comparing two similar media in two different domains (e.g. emails vs letters; they're both 1-1 correspondence and they're both (often) personal). But then again, private letters are not "published" in the strictest sense of the word?

Moreover, what about forum posts (the main medium of my thesis)?

To my knowledge, there really isn't a direct equivalent to this in the "traditional" realm of writing and publication. Perhaps I'm putting too much emphasis on the "publication".
I've made this preliminary outline to get my thoughts going:
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1. Which ones do I choose? (Forum posts, emails, chatting, web pages) (Newspapers, letters, fiction?)
2. How do I go about comparing them? Should I do a text type analysis of the media like I did with forum posts and emails in my thesis? IIRC, Görlach's categories did touch on the issues of expression, style and control.
3. Obviously, I could make a note of e.e. cummings and gonzo journalism if these are the text types I choose to focus on, but even so, these are not conventional and representative examples of their respective genres, but merely examples of the most extreme uses.

A few thoughts.

Traditional publishing in books (ficiton and non fiction) periodicals, and newspapers all have an editorial process. The publisher prints an edited work for books and periodicals, the newspaper prints after the editors, and often the editorial board, approved each artical.

A message board with any moderation has an editorial board in the shape of admins and mods. They tend to exercise command by negation here, in other boards they control content more closely. Command by negation means "the editors" will only step in if something already published/posted falls outside their editorial philosophy, or outside the scope of the board's intent. They won't edit the words in the post. Admins who do so create immense friction on a site, due to perceived need for freedom of expression. It means the content provider, poster, probably leaves, or the boards rep/circulation suffers. Similar problems ensue when editorial boards approve badly researched or false stories, see last year's New York Times scandal for a great example.

On the Lounge, the editors let a lot of stuff get by, more than an editor in a newspaper would. Posts on cheating are edited out / deleted as a matter of policy. Similarly, an editor removes pornographic cartoons or obscene language from a news article, and often changes a story's slant to fit the paper's editorial bias, or sends the story back to the writer with comments before it prints.

Syndicated columnists tend to enjoy a bit more freedom as content providers -- Cal Thomas, Molly Ivins, Art Buchwals, te al -- since they tend to edit themselves, write to a high standard, and attract customers.

Message boards that are run not for profit, like the Lounge, have a very different motivation for attracting readers than do papers run for profit. The idea is to build a critical mass of content providers, not circulation. For papers and magazines, circulation sometimes lives on sensation, so sensational news gets different treatment than does mundane news, as it tends to get more readers, subscribers.

Periodicals tend to select for quality of input. My favorite examples are Scientific American and The Atlantic Monthly, both of which I have always admired for the broad range of topics, and the quality of writing they attract. They are more likle the Lounge, in that they target a particular style, content, and quality of writing.

Forums. Editorial board = mods, but mods don't edit the content of posts other than by deletion of narrowly defined taboos.

General discussion forums are very similar to "letters to the editor" with little to no editing, but clearly objectionable content gets unpublished AFTER the fact by an edit. The "print" command for a forum article is at the writer's control, while the "Print" command for a paper or magazine is in the editor's control. "Stop the presses!" :w00t: This makes retracting a forum letter less onerous, as it is merely deleted, thought it at times leaves "bad" content or "content not consistent with editorial policy" availble to the customer/reader base until a "correction" can be issues by a deletion. A newspaper can't retract a published article, thought it can additionally publish, at a later date, a retraction/correction notice.

Most forums now allow for "after the fact" editing, which can't be done in print. The older message boards, pre edit, put a greater premium on proofreading by posters to ensure the message came across correctly and clearly. Now, with new tools, Preview is our friend, even if we neglect it too often. That relieves editors of the proofreading responsibility.

I hope this helps.

Occhi