Format: Why a website?

In choosing the world wide web as a format for presenting my research, I am employing a medium that has only been around since late 1990, when web pages looked like the one on the right.

Much has changed since then, and tens of thousands of websites have vanished over the years. The web is a very temporal medium. Why would I choose to put something as important as my dissertation (let me dream a bit here) into such an uncertain format? It is almost a certainty, if it is even still around, that in a few years it will look old, crude, and may not even be readable.

The website is not a traditional medium to present academic work, especially at the doctoral level. So why am I using a website instead of a paper?

Portability: Up until this point, I've been working in Keynote, using it to help me visualize the points and paths I wanted to take. It's a beautiful, but limited, application, that unfortunately is not very "portable". Creating a research website allows me make my research more accessible to interested parties, and I want to present my research progress to just about anyone who might be interested in order to get their comments, praise, and criticism. Such feedback should assist me in clarifying and honing my research perspectives. I should be able to pull up a site to help me explain my research anywhere there is an interent connection. Keynote and paper-based formats require me to have my own computer (or packet of paper) with me

Modularity: Hypertext lends itself to being chunked into easily digestable pieces that are often nonlinearly connected, and closer to how the human mind works. It certainly more-closely approximates how I organize my thoughts, that is to say that it works for me.

Using a website also allows me to make changes on the fly, develop my ideas, build upon and and flesh out my framework. I won't be printing off a hundred pages every time I want to see my current state. I can temporarily link to examples, and easily change them as I find better ones. If I am ultimately forced to produce a bound copy, it shouldn't be too difficult a task to translate the ideas on the web version into a cohesive "paper" -- the opposite is not necessarily true.

Appropriateness to my research: I am looking at a sort of art-based constructivist format, and studying how people design and present themselves in a computer-mediated virtual environment. Because of this, it struck me that I ought to explore it myself, and present my progress (at least) and findings (perhaps ultimately) in such a space.

Additionally, s ince I am primarily studying identity in online worlds, I anticipate that I will need to show screenshots, link to dynamic web pages, and even present animations and videos. The traditional paper-based format or Academic Discourse does not do animations well.

It is interesting to note that Academic Discourse is slowly evolving. Not too long ago images were discouraged in academic papers, but they are now accepted in some places. Part of my duty as a researcher of my generation is to move the field forward, and help shape the Discourse that guides it. I call this "bending Discourse" and have written about it for another class this semester.

Practice: I believe in developing my effectiveness as a communicator in whatever Discourse I inhabit. Because I expect Academic Discourse to evolve to include web-based discourse and practice, I feel I should learn to use it effectively. This semester I have decided to put all my final projects on the web as a way to challenge myself in presenting my research and ideas effectively in a web-based format. I believe services such as Google's G-mail are demonstrating that issues of permanance and durability are being addresses and overcome. Just as word-processing, email, and search engines have changed the face of research and writing. Shortly, Academics will be need to be literate in this aspect of digital literacy.

 

As fellow in the Spencer Doctoral Research Program (DRP), spent the semester exploring research. This is part of an exploration of my research ideas as I started the PhD program in Fall 2004.

This begins to explain my reasons for choosing a web-based format.