Thoughts and Opinions - Hi my name's Jeff and I do dumb research.

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Hi my name's Jeff and I do dumb research.

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Topic: Hi my name's Jeff and I do dumb research.

Posted By: agentwhale007
Subject: Hi my name's Jeff and I do dumb research.
Date Posted: 14 September 2015 at 6:45pm

Hello.

You know me as Whale, as I have been posting here since I was in middle school. Now I'm a professor. Exactly 25% of my paid duties involve conducting scholarly research. In the year since I graduated with my doctorate, I tried doing the research that I thought would be impressive to other people. It was uninspired. It kinda sucked. I am tired of doing it.

At some point over this summer, when I relaxed for the first time in at least a decade, I came to a conclusion. I was floating in a swimming pool after consuming a legitimate amount of Miller Lite. I came to the conclusion that I am a professor now. I can research literally anything I want to. I don't have to impress anyone anymore. Screw it, dude. I can indulge the things I am honestly interested in.

Here's my research lineup for the next calendar year:

A content analysis of how the national media presents the identities of "Millennials." I'm looking at a few thousand news articles that discuss what Millennials are, through there attitudes, habits, behaviors, etc. to see how the media paints a picture of people born from 1980 to 1995. Namely I'm looking at the psychological idea of "Othering" through a linguistic lens to see how the media portrays Millennials as outsiders to society.

A study of what doesn't get upvoted on Reddit. I'm looking at /r/news and /r/worldnews and screencapping the content that is posted but receives fewer than 10 upvotes on a daily basis. The goal is to apply a theory called "Gate Keeping," which says that you can determine value by seeing what is promoted as "news," in a backwards manner, to see what is not valued.

A study looking at the top threads on a forum used by the hate-speech group "GamerGate," namely looking at the lack of news literacy expounded by the posts themselves. The movement has named itself as seeking "Ethics in videogames journalism," yet seems to showcase very little understanding of how the news media actually behaves, is produced, or is promoted.

A content analysis of how traditional news and business news vs. video game news covered the purchase of Mojang by Microsoft. Namely to see how the two different types of news organization framed the difference between positive and negative future attributions. I'm using a psychological theory called "Mere Exposure Effect" here, wherein video games journalists were more exposed to Minecraft, and therefore felt the need to be more protective of the product.

The final and favorite piece: A historical study of how the national press covered Project Gemini, NASA's middle child in the space race. I'm looking to see if the project was ever given its own space in the national press spotlight, or if its technological achievements were overshadowed in the framework of the coverage of the Apollo project to get to the moon. I'm mostly using the NYT and the three TV stations.

Academia is a great and dumb thing.

Replies:

Posted By: tallen702
Date Posted: 14 September 2015 at 8:19pm

agentwhale007 wrote:

a legitimate amount of Miller Lite

Can any amount of a lite beer, especially Miller Lite, every really be considered legitimate?

THAT my friend is a research topic that I think we all can find worthy.

Glad you finally figured out that "working" for others instead of working for yourself (as in basing the value of your efforts off of what others think rather than what you think) isn't all it's cracked up to be. Have fun with your research! Also, I think you need to research how paintball + forum usage turns a bunch of misfit teenagers into successful upstanding young men.

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<Removed overly wide sig. Tsk, you know better.>

Posted By: Eville
Date Posted: 15 September 2015 at 12:32am

agentwhale007 wrote:

I came to the conclusion that I am a professor now.

A content analysis of how the national media presents the identities of "Millennials." I'm looking at a few thousand news articles that discuss what Millennials are, through there attitudes, habits, behaviors, etc. to see how the media paints a picture of people born from 1980 to 1995. Namely I'm looking at the psychological idea of "Othering" through a linguistic lens to see how the media portrays Millennials as outsiders to society.

This is completely unacceptable.

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Posted By: agentwhale007
Date Posted: 15 September 2015 at 1:30pm

Eville wrote:

[QUOTE=agentwhale007]

I came to the conclusion that I am a professor now.

A content analysis of how the national media presents the identities of "Millennials." I'm looking at a few thousand news articles that discuss what Millennials are, through there attitudes, habits, behaviors, etc. to see how the media paints a picture of people born from 1980 to 1995. Namely I'm looking at the psychological idea of "Othering" through a linguistic lens to see how the media portrays Millennials as outsiders to society.

This is completely unacceptable.

[/QUOTE

I had a serious day buzz going yesterday.

Posted By: impulse418
Date Posted: 15 September 2015 at 10:01pm

Day drinking and the only mistake you made was that? Impressive.

Posted By: Hairball!!!
Date Posted: 15 September 2015 at 10:53pm

agentwhale007 wrote:

A content analysis of how the national media presents the identities of "Millennials." I'm looking at a few thousand news articles that discuss what Millennials are, through there attitudes, habits, behaviors, etc. to see how the media paints a picture of people born from 1980 to 1995. Namely I'm looking at the psychological idea of "Othering" through a linguistic lens to see how the media portrays Millennials as outsiders to society.

Since I don't have nearly the same sort of interest in the nitty gritty of journalism, this is probably the most interesting one to me. I find that portrayal of millennials is all over the place, from being accused of laziness and entitlement to knowing what's really important in life. I'm also pretty confused by the choice of defining a group of people by such a broad age range. Maybe just because I'm pretty close to the middle of that range, but I notice massive differences between 20 year olds, 25 year olds, 30 year olds, and 35 year olds. Hell, I noticed huge differences in overarching mentality and behavior between my high school class and the class behind mine, though not nearly as much between my high school class and the class ahead of mine.

Posted By: Darur
Date Posted: 18 September 2015 at 4:06pm

agentwhale007 wrote:

A study of what doesn't get upvoted on Reddit. I'm looking at /r/news and /r/worldnews and screencapping the content that is posted but receives fewer than 10 upvotes on a daily basis. The goal is to apply a theory called "Gate Keeping," which says that you can determine value by seeing what is promoted as "news," in a backwards manner, to see what is not valued.

I really like this one. Reddit has a neat API that would make this task easier on your end as well. It might also be interesting to compare against other social media to adjust for demographics.

Posted By: usafpilot07
Date Posted: 19 September 2015 at 6:11pm

Holy **edited**, Darur is alive

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Posted By: Darur
Date Posted: 24 September 2015 at 4:35pm

Opps, they found me

Posted By: agentwhale007
Date Posted: 08 October 2015 at 11:58am

Hairball!!! wrote:

Defining who Millennials even are is tricky, and there's a lot of nuance in the upper and lower fringes of it. I'm using the Newsweek definition, one that a lot of other academics tend to use, which is that you had to be between the ages of 10 and 20 when Sept. 11 happened.

Posted By: agentwhale007
Date Posted: 08 October 2015 at 11:59am

Darur wrote:

I really like this one. Reddit has a neat API that would make this task easier on your end as well. It might also be interesting to compare against other social media to adjust for demographics.

This one is actually a reverse study of two I did prior, which looked at what did get upvoted on /r/news and /r/worldnews. Someone actually just walked up to me at a conference where I was presenting one of the studies and asked "Hey why don't you look at the stuff that stays at 1 vote" and then walked off. I have no idea who they even were, but I remember they were from the University of Utah.

Posted By: usafpilot07
Date Posted: 08 October 2015 at 1:18pm

I'd be interested in seeing how headlines have changed over the years (ie; if things are posed in controversial ways on purpose these days to gain attention, or if it has always been that way, it's in my imagination, etc)

I mean that about basically any headline as well, not just what made me think of it, but

I say that because someone I know in law enforcement was chasing a violent fugitive, was shot at and later exchanged gunfire and killed the suspect. About as cut and dry as a n OIS can be, honestly A year later, headlines about the SBI/grand jury/etc decisions made it sound like it had been shrouded in controversy from the get go.

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Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

Posted By: impulse418
Date Posted: 09 October 2015 at 10:33am

There was a comment on Reddit, in which the person said he worked for companies to help up vote their own content and down vote others. Wish I saved it.

Posted By: Hairball!!!
Date Posted: 09 October 2015 at 3:29pm

agentwhale007 wrote:

I have no idea who they even were, but I remember they were from the University of Utah.

I'll find them, don't worry.

Posted By: Benjichang
Date Posted: 15 October 2015 at 12:30pm

tallen702 wrote:

agentwhale007 wrote:

a legitimate amount of Miller Lite

Can any amount of a lite beer, especially Miller Lite, every really be considered legitimate?

It's only legitimate if you didn't pay for it, and there are no better options.

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irc.esper.net
#paintball

Posted By: tallen702
Date Posted: 15 October 2015 at 3:23pm

^ Holy crap, he's alive! (Well, I knew he was alive from FB, but still....)

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<Removed overly wide sig. Tsk, you know better.>

Posted By: Benjichang
Date Posted: 16 October 2015 at 9:24am

Haha, yes. I've been feeling really nostalgic for some reason this week so I figured I'd see who was still around. It's crazy to think about all that's happened in life in general since I've been posting here.

Cheers!

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irc.esper.net
#paintball

Posted By: Mack
Date Posted: 19 October 2015 at 10:35am

agentwhale007 wrote:

I was floating in a swimming pool after consuming a legitimate amount of Miller Lite.

I am fairly certain that all of the really important discoveries have started out in a manner similar to this with the only differing factor being the adult beverage being consumed.

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