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CHAPTER 5. MEASURING THE PUBLIC SPHERE 70 one year period. This section describes the criteria used to select the case study, and details the procedures used to collect and analyze the data. Once a decision was reached to study the structure of Usenet newsgroups, there were essentially two methodological options available (assuming a limit to the amount of data that was to be processed). One option was to select a number of groups and examine the patterns of interaction across groups over a relatively short period of time. The advantage of this option is the increased generalizability that results from patterns observed in several groups. In addition, the multi-group analysis method allows the content area of the group to be a variable. The second option was to select a single group and examine patterns of interaction across a relatively long period of time. The advantages of this option is the increased ability to detect and understand subtle patterns of interaction. This study adopted the second option, and uses the case study method to examine structural patterns within a single newsgroup. The talk.abortion newsgroup selected for analysis is focused on “all sorts of discussion about abortion and the abortion issue” This issue, as discussed in Chapter 4 on page 57, is an important ongoing public issue with unresolved aspects featured in public discourse (Ferree & Gamson 1993). The nature of the abortion issue requires a well-constructed public sphere in order for a democratic resolution to emerge, and it is particularly dependent on a strong and active informal public sphere, given the direct links between personal beliefs, personal behavior, and public actions. At the same time, the abortion issue may be particularly well suited to computer-mediated discussion; given the very personal nature of this issue, many people who may be reluctant to engage in discussion traditional settings (Noelle-Neuman 1984, Salmon & Neuwirth 1990, MacKuen 1990) may find an alternative in the computer-mediated setting. The benefit from an intensive, overtime examination of the patterns of behavior within a single group struggling to discuss a controversial, emotional and political issue outweighed whatever limitations are present as a result of the focus on just one group, and perhaps especially a group focused on this topic. Before proceeding, it may be helpful to introduce and define several “terms of art” that are used throughout the remainder of the thesis: Message A message or newsgroup article is a self-contained collection of words written by a single author and contributed to the newsgroup as a unique entity at a specific time. Each message can be identified by its day, author,
CHAPTER 5. MEASURING THE PUBLIC SPHERE 71 thread, included text and original text. See Figure 3.1 on page 53 for a description of a Usenet message. Day A day is a 24-hour period beginning at midnight. Each message receives a time stamp containing the date current at the author’s network host at the time of posting. In other words, the day is assigned by the author’s host computer, which may or may not be in the same time zone as the author at the time of posting. Authors An author is a unique individual posting at least one message to the newsgroup. The uniqueness of the author is identified by an electronic mail address associated with each message. Electronic mail addresses are in the form of name@host.domain.type. Authors were identified by unique name@domain strings. Thread A thread is a collection of messages posted with a common subject heading. Lines of Text A line of text is a collection of characters outside the message header ending with a “line feed” character. Lines whose first non-blank character is either a letter or a numeral are considered original text, written by the author. Lines whose first non-blank character is neither a letter nor numeral are identified as included lines, indicating that they contain text from a message previously contributed to the newsgroup. Available Messages Newsgroups exist in various forms, depending on the machine which is hosting the group. The key variable to consider is message expiration. A newsgroup hosted by a machine that expires messages in a particular newsgroup after seven days would look very different – on the same day – to the same newsgroup hosted by a machine that expires messages after four days. The measure available messages, as used in this study, assumes a seven-day expiration period. That is, the number of available messages on any given day is calculated as the sum of all messages posted on that day, as well as the previous six days. Data collection for this project was relatively straightforward. Every message received as part of the talk.abortion newsgroup by the newserver 1 from April 1, 1 The server used for this study was located at the SUNY Institute of Technology in Utica, NY.
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CHAPTER 1. COMPUTERS, CONVERSATION
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Appendix B Density Scores Table B.1
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APPENDIX B. DENSITY SCORES 165 Tabl
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Appendix C Supplemental Analysis 16
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APPENDIX C. SUPPLEMENTAL ANALYSIS 1
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 177 Best, Michael L. 1
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 179 Fisher, Bonnie, Mi
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 181 Hiltz, Starr Roxan
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 183 Mansbridge, Jane.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 185 Pateman, Carole. 1
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 189 U. S. Congress, Of
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