all going very well...

Our presentation today about Virtual Communities was great. (Thanks to Lilia and Seb again for letting us "cite" them!) Maybe it was a bit too much information for all these who were new to the subject, but that's ok, I guess - they can look at it again at our blog that we set up especially for it, a reference list for literature is there as well, and I guess soon there'll be a few more anthropology-students here in Vienna interested in Blogging, Virtual Community and all the rest of it.

Now I'll have to prepare for my presentation tomorrow which is going to be about my thesis. The main question now is really: What's the focus of my diploma-thesis going to be. As Lilia asked, here's a rough translation of the bulletpoints of an earlier post...(as it's just a few ideas I didn't write it in english first, thought it's a bit embarrasing really, to let *everyone* read this *buds* [sorry Lilia for copying it, really love it though] of my reasearch) maybe by the end of this evening I'll have a few more ideas to add.

"thinking about it, still..."

first attempt of an autoethnographical mock-diploma-thesis (or maybe: diploma-thesis-dummy)

"Chana and I" an autoethnographical approach to Identity

context:

• Self/Other-Relation
• Identity
• Representation

general topics

• me as a beginning scientist
• structure of the group/virtual community I am in
  
• is access to it easy/difficult
• how I have to write, how I have to "be" to be cited, to be listened to/heard
• if it's really an ideal space for democratic discourse (Habermas, Winja).
• Which problems, which advantages I've got through it, how it affects my way of writing

regarding Chana:

• how I "see" her,
• how she "sees" me,
• what I "want" from here: (info about Blog-design e.g. good teamwork, helpful links).
• to what extent and how do I construct my online-identity?
• What about trust/competition?

apart from that: write about if it's at all possible to do online-research as an anthropologist, if so: how...

how I'll do my research, which data, how it is found:

• analyse my mails
  
• my blogposts
• chanas blogposts

sidenote: "mock-diploma-thesis" or "diploma-thesis-dummy" because at the time of writing this I felt with this approach couldn't really write a thesis proper. But maybe by this time tomorrow I'll know more about it - we'll see what my supervisor thinks. (Hey, you out there: she's looking for a job! Haven't you got sth. nice for her? She'd really worth it!)