Half way through...?

I estimate that I am now about half way through writing up my literature review! It's also around half way through the time I have set aside for writing it before Easter. My plan was to use the ten days I have before my Easter break to complete the written first draft of my literature review and to finish the data collection which is again around half way through...

Although I am happy with how it is going and it is very satisfying to be writing up what has now been a long time of reading, preparing and searching for the relevant literature, I do need to up the daily output if I am going to make my deadline. It is quite a good feeling too that I am not feeling completely out of my depth - I do actually sound like I know what I'm talking about now (I think, sometimes, maybe).

So from here on in each subsection has a day dedicated to it. I aim to get as much of it as possible done by Monday evening and I will then have three days off to look forward to as my cousins are coming down - yay! I'm already enjoying the decision to dedicate more of my time in solid blocks to my masters and the plant that is my MSc is slowly looking more healthy for the daily attention I am now giving it...

Data data data data data

"Today I shall mostly be..."

Collecting data: data related to the tweets of all the members of the ego-centric networks pertaining to the specific organisations I am studying. This is a very labour intensive process! Having spent roughly two days (at different times over the last few) I have collected 225 out of around 1,200. So, we deduce, this will take quite a lot more time!! However, I am now limiting the sample more tightly so the rate of collection has increased.

The data being collected is extremely important and together with what has already been collected it will form the bulk of the findings for the project as a whole. LR work has taken a backseat to it over these two days but I intend to work on both these tasks over the coming days dedicated to research. Since the data collection is so monotonous this will hopefully be a useful pattern of work i.e mixing it up!

Chipping Away

Just a couple of hours to work on research today. I've mostly spent them inputting articles into a spreadsheet I am now keeping up to date, which tracks all the articles that I am referring to and how the articles they refer to overlap. This is a useful way to see the most cited articles in that area of research and any that I have not read which I should do. I have also worked out the way forward for data collection which is really useful - most of the rest of the time I have this week will now be spent collecting!

Reading & Searching

In the time I have had for research today I have been reading the articles found last week and have now spent a couple of hours finding and printing out further papers. These mostly deal with research on charities and giving as well as studies on the effects of websites and other factors on levels of giving. Reputation, credibility and identity in digital environments are all examined in various forms as well as more general studies on adoption of social media by nonprofit organisations.

Tonight and tomorrow I will be reading these and making notes. Tomorrow will be further reading and I am also going to be writing some of these things up in my draft Literature Review! The table showing data that can be compared and contrasted is a priority for tomorrow too.

I'll leave you with a link to a fantastic video a friend posted today: http://conteanimated.com/the-animation-2/thought-of-you/

Progress, setbacks and large amounts of reading

Having had a good meeting with my supervisors yesterday, they are happy with how things are progressing and we have some exciting avenues to pursue with the data captured so far.

I had a bit of a setback yesterday when in the ninth hour of accessing the data source I made a mistake and caused the whole thing to fail! This has meant that I have started again from the beginning - frustrating, but not the end of the world. I am now six hours into the process again (being extremely careful not to make the same mistake twice) and hopfully should be done tonight/tomorrow.

Whilst my computer has been off periodically because of this accessing I have been doing a lot of reading. Today I read one of the most useful articles I have found so far: Twitter Power - tweets as electronic word of mouth, which covers lots of the areas I am; with similar tests planned and exposition of research in word of mouth, branding and viral marketing. I have also found a useful paper looking at religiosity affecting use of internet and social network sites in particular which is great for further references.

My aim for the day has been to finish the data aquisition and I'm not quite there but "you can't hurry [data], no you'll just have to wait, [data] don't come easy, its a game of give and take, no you can't hurry [data]..." etc. etc. Anyone reading this now thinks I'm mad unless you get the reference? Answers on a postcard please..

LR Update

Just a shortish one - another good day, despite less time to work on research today I have been able to find some more excellent articles. What I'm finding is that as I find things for one section of the LR it is leading to uncover things that are useful for other sections. For example, today when researching academic writing on microblogging, references to viral marketing came up. It is too simplistic to think - 'I will just write this section today' - it is much more fluid and cross-pollenating a process than that!!

I'm working on a spreadsheet as well to help visualised the cross-referencing between the papers that I am using so that I can easily find the papers that are more cited by others in the field and also guard against gaps in knowledge of the field of study. It takes a bit of time but now that I have it up and running the papers that I read from now on will be more easily added to it & it should make my life easier! I do need to sort out my account with Refwords so that doesn't become a headache as well in terms of the references. That reminds me - my account with VOSON (mentioned 2-3 posts back) has been granted so I can now go ahead with testing that alongside NodeXl next week.

Anyway, I'm now going to cook in time for the family coming to visit for the weekend. Won't be working tomorrow but have lots of reading to do - yay!

Literature Review Update

Today's aim was to gather more research articles for my Literature Review which I am working on whilst also gathering data for analysis (alluded to below with pretty pictures..).

Apart from a saga involving an ATM eating my bank card which lasted 3 hours (all I wanted was a bite to eat for lunch) I've made some good progress. Some of the most interesting articles which I have located today have been on Twitter; how it is used, how it may be used in the future (as well as the web as whole) and how it was formed. I am planning a section on Microblogging and Twitter itself for my LR. As well as more general research, it is important that I present the academic research already carried out on and using Twitter.

Another of the more useful articles is on Religions going online (although slightly dated as it is 10 years old) and I have found a potentially interesting tool for improving the data collection process: VOSON (Virtual Observatory for the Study of Online Networks) which is a tool developed by The Australian National University. This can dovetail with the NodeXl addition to Excel (mentioned in previous posts) which could be really useful - we shall see.