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..

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.