Last week I had the opportunity to participate in a very interesting meeting in Traveler on the topic of presence, which Oz of OzGate help me set up. This meeting will be part of the material in my first study on conversational negotiation and social presence in online virtual environments. Several of the members of the Traveler community were there and gave their insights on the topic. To me it is very interesting to note the differences between the way in which these accustomed users interact and refer to their interaction and the behavior of newbies. This is something I will develop further in my first article. The participants in the discussion also started discussing multitasking, and since this is what my second study will deal with

Not much blogging lately

I am really excited to have found this tool for transcription and analysis of digital video called Transana. It allows you to view the video window, a waveform of the sound as well as a transcription window (all interconnected) simultaneously. By using short commands you can easily move around in the video clip while transcribing, and after having time coded the transcript it is for instance possible to let the program calculate pauses between utterances. Much much easier than using a tape recorder, or even any type of digital player. Also, it is open source, which is good!

I’ve been using Transana to transcribe the material collected so far for the first part of my thesis which now goes by the working title “Negotiation and social presence in online virtual environments”. Tomorrow is my first work-in-progress seminar, and I will use the program to show short clips from my video taped material. I’m really looking forward to getting some critical response to my analyses and the theories behind them.