Blog 1 - Why Study The Internet

     In outlining the necessary steps in order to analyze the web in a Sphere, Foot professes the need to archive information presented to us. While his methodology does not actually include social networking, I believe it would be possible, and indeed perhaps quite simple, to include social media sites in this sort of web sphere analysis.

    Upon taking this sort of task on, one might think the idea of archiving all the interactions amongst users, especially on a social networking site, to be a daunting, if not impossible task. But is it really any different than trying to archive the interactions between people elsewhere? Just because these sites see a greater degree of traffic than others, and certainly more interaction, does that really make it less likely for us as analysts to archive the goings on between people? I think not.

     In fact, the mere nature of the social media networks, such as Facebook or Twitter, make it easier than it would be otherwise to monitor the interactions between people and the "bits of content," as Foot describes them. As an example, let's look at a typical Twitter post:

 

 

       Ignore the content, but let's look at what information it gives us. Not only does the post impart the information the user was getting at, we have two other important bits of data that are very conducive to Web Sphere Analysis. One of those is the hashtag. By itself this is a pretty meaningless phrase, but the nature of hashtags is that they spread, and many users end up adding them. In this way, we have a built in way of tracking the flow of similar thoughts and the passage of specific "bits of data," without having to do practically any work. Second, we can see at the bottom who's "retweeted" the post, another way of allowing us to easily see the flow of site-based interaction.

     In Foot's study of 9-11, he found that personal sites were the most allowing of expression of both types. If we were to do a similar study, using the Boston Marathon Bombing, and including Social Networking sites, I anticipate that the primary location of either type of expression would shift to networking locations, specifically Facebook and Twitter. These types of sites have somewhat replaced personal sites for uses of expressing one's opinion. Why take the time to create and author a blog about your opinion when you can reach a wider audience with ease on a social media site?