The human subjects application for my dissertation was just approved! This means I can start collecting and analyzing data with the ethical blessings of the University. This is notable because, due to an audit of IU by the federal government, recent applications by other doctoral students in my school have taken 6-12 months to get approved.

Today, I officially finished the qualifying exam process, and became a doctoral candidate (ABD, PhC, etc.). Let the dissertating begin! For anyone interested, here is the final version of the qual paper.

Many thanks to everyone who attended, wanted to attend, or wished me luck on my qual defense this morning! For those who would like them, here are links to slides and an audio recording:

Slides (PDF, 1.4MB)
Recording (MP3, 48MB)

My qualifying paper (PDF, 900KB, 81 pages) is finished and will be defended on June 2. Lecture slides, and possibly a recording, will also be made available after the defense.

This recent working paper seeks to understand the nature of amateur reviews of amateur new media on the Internet by studying one of the largest, oldest, and most successful new media virtual communities. This topic was prompted by previous social network, genre, and demographic analyses of this interesting new Web 2.0 phenomenon. Review of the genre and aesthetics literatures suggested a difference between experiential non-expert judgments of art and technique-related expert judgments.

This is the final installment in my recent series of content analyses of the US presidential candidates' websites. One or more of these will hopefully be submitted soon to FirstMonday or presented at a conference. I have done these brief analyses for class assignments, because of the timeliness and intrigue of the issue. I don't intend on becoming a political analyst in the future.

I recently finished a small analysis of religious themes used on the presidential candidate websites (report). From the conclusions: