GENERAL NOTES

We are finally starting on data collection! This assignment is essentially your planning phase. Things may change between this assignment and your project outline and that is okay! That is part of the research process.

As a reminder: It is okay if you have hypotheses, but they are not necessary. You can let the data speak for itself (via your interpretation). What do you see? What patterns are appearing based on your assessment?

Remember: This is practice! It does not need to be perfect and it is completely based on your interpretation and your goals with the final project.

FORMATTING

Please use the typical formatting for this assignment: 12 point Times New Roman or Calibri font, 1 inch margins, and double spacing.

Please present your work in paragraph format. Keep in mind that a paragraph is 4-8 sentences and should not be near one page long. If your paragraph begins reaching a page in length, break it up!

INSTRUCTIONS

With this assignment, you will begin taking a look at and collecting your data. Please note that you have some parameters on data collection for the final project (you only need a few data points for this assignment):

At least 5 posts OR at most 25 posts and at least 3 comments OR at most 10 comments per post. We will cover this more later as well, but this means that you could have a sample of 15 posts with 8 comments each. You will just explain your sample decisions in your methods section of the final paper.

For the first section of the paper (with a heading, in paragraph format, and about 1/4 to 1/2 of a page):

• Discuss the subreddit (remember to consult Subreddit Possibilities.docx if you have not already).
• Include a link
• Describe what the subreddit is/is about
• Include information about how many members are subscribed and how many are online (it is probably helpful to reference the video on Reddit in your Week 3 Navigation)
• Include some general information about what you see, including what the top post is and how many upvotes it has

For the second section of the paper (with a heading, in paragraph format and about 1/4 to 1/2 of a page):

• What is your plan for data collection (how many posts/comments?). Please note that this might change and that is okay.
  • Why do you plan on this sample size?
• Do you plan to search for terms, use “top,” or use “hot” posts?
  • Give an explanation for your answer.

For the third portion of the paper, I want you to start taking a look at themes (with a heading, in paragraph format and about 1/2 to 1 page). In your final paper, you should have three themes, but it is okay if you only have one for now. You should be able to use this later. Consider:

• What are some patterns you notice in what people are talking about? What do they focus on? What kinds of posts do you see?
• Are users positive? Supportive? Do they provide constructive criticism or advice? How do you know or recognize these things?
  • This is based on your interpretation
• Focus on three observations that you can make, label the patterns, and explain how you arrived at these labels or identifications

Finally, provide some information about your data organization (with a heading). There are multiple ways to do this (shown in the walkthrough example and the video) and you just need to choose one. See what works for you and test some things out while you look at your data.

• Explain how you plan to organize your data in paragraph format (about 1/4 to 1/2 of a page)
• Show how you are organizing your data by inserting screenshots or tables (example provided in your example document and in the lecture video on the assignment)
  • You only need to start with one post and a few comments at least
  • If you would like to include more, you can, and it’s less work later!

Here is a walkthrough: Content Analysis Brainstorm.docx

And here is a reminder of the lecture video discussing the assignmen