Blau Exchange: Spring 2007 Roundtable (T2)

THREAD #2

Paul DiPerna:

What got you interested in your field of study?

Miia Akkinen:

In my thesis I looked at how online communities could be used so that they create value both for customers and companies. I chose this topic because I find online communities and social software in a more general level a very interesting field of research. A very significant reason was also the fact that I personally have joined several online communities and they provide a lot of joy and value for me.

Sarita Yardi:

I owe a lot of where I am today to Dan Perkel at Berkeley's iSchool. I was a first year MS student there and needed a project for my Needs and Usability class and he was beginning his masters project which was to design an online collaborative storytelling system with 5th graders at a local school. It sounded like fun to me... I've always loved working with kids and teenagers and it combined my existing experience and interest in technology and studying people interacting with it, so I decided to work with him. One thing led to another and I joined the Digital Youth research group at Berkeley, which I loved being a part of. I quickly realized that I should switch to a PhD track and find somewhere where I could keep doing the same kinds of research. So far at Tech I've had that opportunity and I'm grateful for that.

Paul Lawton:

I was attracted to Sociology in my first semester as an undergraduate. I had come in as a business major, wanting to follow in the footsteps of my wildly successful Uncle (Norm Smallwood). I took an introductory course in Sociology (having no idea what it was at the time) and just never looked back. I had been involved heavily in the Punk Rock scene in Winnipeg, and then in Alberta, and found out that Sociology addressed everything that I was aligned with - issues of racism, sexism, homophobia, social inequality... each had their own chapter! This was something I could do. I actually came to University after attempting a career as a musician, and failing miserably.

My substantive field in online culture came later. I took a third year course in "Sociology of Cyberspace" - and found it completely lacking. The reading we did for that course made it pretty clear (painfully so) that most of the sociology being done (at that time) was being written by people who clearly "didn't get" the web. I saw an opportunity to give voice to the people whom I felt were not being represented by the literature. Why are we still debating whether or not we can define online communities as "real" or not? Why are we still concerned that the person you might be talking to might not be whom they say they are? That, combined with the whole "Stranger danger" discourse (see: "To Catch a Predator!" on NBC Dateline)... I felt that there was an opportunity to contribute something new.

Fred Stutzman:

Well, my job prior to graduate school was working on a research project in UNC's School of Information and Library Science. The name of the project is ibiblio.org - and I was originally drawn to it due to its high-profile location in the open source world.

However, as time passed at my job, I realized that I was very interested in research. At the same time, social network services such as Friendster really caught my attention. I saw the research potential of these services and sort of saw the light... I had found my research area, albeit broadly.