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...

Yesterday

Just a quick update to say that time spent on MSc yesterday was spent collecting more data (as have all the other days since last post - when I have been able to work on the project). I have now collected around a third of the data needed.

Today I am working on my Literature Review and have decided to prioritise this over data collection because of the time-heavy nature of the collection and the fact that estimates of how long it would take were wildly underestimated. I will continue to collect data as a 'break' from LR but the latter is now my priority.

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/

Illness, return to work and yet more articles

Having been ill for the last ten days I returned to work yesterday and today have been back working on my masters. Frustrating to have such a long stint off but not in my control & I am quite pleased with what I have managed to achieve already since returning to the office.

I have found another 25plus articles in the last 24 hours, some of which are really excellent. In particular, it is encouraging to have found more articles on religiosity and internet use & also viral marketing - Word of Mouth (WOM) and electronic WOM (eWOM).

Having had some serious problems with the rate at which I could collect data for the samples I have found another suitable network to examine which is a more manageable size. This has allowed me to finish gathering the data overnight yesterday and today and so I finally have two complete networks which can be compared and studied. I am satisfied temporarily!!

My next task is to create a table showing all the data types that I have already and all than be collected and directly compared and contrasted. Obviously, the other main task is writing my Literature Review draft which is due end of February 2011. Please notice the deliberate mistake...

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..