Meetings, meetings, meetings

[onefixedstar]

The last few days have been very busy.

Wednesday we "elected" the new executive for the Graduate Sociology Students' Association. As usual with such things, it wasn't so much an election as doling out positions to the handful of people who bothered to show up for the meeting. thoughtfreely is our new president, MasseyPrincess decided she didn't want to return, and I'm back in my old position of Graduate Student Union rep.

Last night was the big lecture by Claude Fischer. He spoke about how to raise the public profile of sociology and bring sociological ideas to the public so that they can be used in solving problems. He described what was in some ways a very activist approach to sociology, but he managed to do it without making it seem like the pure knowledge people are wasting their time, which many activists do not. I have to agree that it would be nice if sociologists could get some of the respect currently accorded to economists. I was joking with a friend today that economics is rather like a cult--leaders make all sorts of predictions that later prove to be completely wrong, and people just shrug and cling even more closely to the doctrine.

This morning was the grad student breakfast with Claude Fischer, followed by class, the NetLab lunch with Claude Fischer, and a presentation on the possibilities of GIS for sociology. Lunch went really well. Professor Fischer was surprisingly enthusiastic about my work, as was the Chair of our department, who was also at lunch with us. It was almost enough to make me think that maybe my idea really is worthwhile--if I can find a way to get data.

Comments

[semiotic-trader.livejournal.com]

Professor Fischer was surprisingly enthusiastic about my work
By "my work," I assume you mean the proposal you submitted to SSHRC? What did you end up going with?

[onefixedstar.livejournal.com]

What I talked to him about wasn't actually what I told SSHRC. I needed something with a workable methodology for SSHRC, and I haven't figured that part out yet.

What I talked to him about was looking at the role the Internet plays in information gathering strategies and influencing people's decisions on political issues. The research questions here would be things like:

1) Does the Internet displace other information sources? Which ones?
2) Does the Internet displace other influence sources? Which ones?
3) What are the implications of using the Internet for political information/discussion for tolerance?
4) Do what extent do people use the Internet merely to reinforce their existing views (something which is easier to do online than with the mainstream media)?
5) We know that social networks strongly influence political attitudes and behaviour; how influential are online networks vs. offline networks? (If you hear it from an online friend, will you give it as much weight as if you hear it from a co-worker?)

The problem is that doing a survey large enough to capture a sufficient number of people who use the Internet this way to learn something interesting is too expensive for a poor grad student. That means workly exclusively online and treating readers and participants in online political discussion as a special group, with all the usual problems of generalizability that accompany that. There is recent evidence that it might be possible to combine social networks with a snowball sample to generate generalizable results, but it would only be generalizable to people who use the Internet for political purposes, so any comparisons I try to make will have to be made based on the literature, which could be a bit dodgy.

So those are my methodological blues, and the reason I didn't try to write it up for SSHRC.