[Air-L] Analyzing Google Groups?

[Claudia Mueller-Birn]

Dear all,

Thank you very much for your valuable comments. Here is a summary of the results:

First of all, references from this area:

"Online political discussions. Methodological considerations"
http://www.javnost-thepublic.org/media/datoteke/vergeer-hermans-3.pdf

Marc Smith's research about newsgroups, http://www.connectedaction.net/about/   

Jones Q., Rafaeli S and Ravid G. (2004) 'Information Overload and the Message Dynamics of Online Interaction Spaces: A Theoretical Model and Empirical Exploration'. Information Systems Research (Vol. 15, No. 2, June 2004, pp 194-210).

Whittaker, S., Terveen, L., Hill, W., and Cherny, L. 1998. The dynamics of mass interaction. In /Proceedings of the 1998 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work/ (Seattle, Washington, United States, November 14 - 18, 1998). CSCW '98. ACM, New York, NY, 257-264. DOI=http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/289444.289500

Secondly, thanks Jerom for mentioning the Google Groups: Terms of Service; something to explore.

Thirdly, another other valuable data source are Usenet messages. Available information in the Usenet protocol are listed here: http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1036.html

Happy Thanksgiving!

:::Claudia


On Nov 22, 2009, at 7:15 PM, Quentin (Gad) Jones wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Google Groups is just a web UI for Usenet.  Marc Smith previously at Microsoft Research and now at http://telligent.com/communities/ developed tools for analysis of newgroups.  That should be your starting point.  The default for newgroups is that it can come to your newsgroup reader inbox, so this effort is one of picking groups and following for a while or finding a server with a long history.  
> You should take a look at some other papers in this area:
> Mine
> Jones Q., Rafaeli S and Ravid G. (2004) 'Information Overload and the Message Dynamics of Online Interaction Spaces: A Theoretical Model and Empirical Exploration'. Information Systems Research (Vol. 15, No. 2, June 2004, pp 194-210).
> 
> Steve Whittaker
> Whittaker, S., Terveen, L., Hill, W., and Cherny, L. 1998. The dynamics of mass interaction. In /Proceedings of the 1998 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work/ (Seattle, Washington, United States, November 14 - 18, 1998). CSCW '98. ACM, New York, NY, 257-264. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/289444.289500
> 
> Marc also has a pile of papers on the topic.
> 
> Regards
> Quentin
>> Dear Claudia,
>> 
>> Although I don't have a direct solution for the Google group retrieval
>> issue, I refer you to an article we wrote on analysing online discussions
>> and certain methodological and technical considerations when doing so. The
>> article is titled "Online political discussions. Methodological
>> considerations", published in Javnost, written by me and Liesbeth Hermans.
>> Follow this link for the pdf:
>> http://www.javnost-thepublic.org/media/datoteke/vergeer-hermans-3.pdf
>> I hope it is of use to you.
>> 
>> If you have a solution for the google group issue, I'd be happy to hear it.
>> 
>> best wishes
>> Maurice
>> 
>>  
>>> Dear all,
>>> 
>>> I am interested in doing some research using data from Google Groups;
>>> ideally I'd like to have the group archive in mbox or other parseable
>>> format. I can't imagine I am the first person who wants to do this and I
>>>    
>> am
>>  
>>> wondering if anyone has any tips or ideas.
>>> 
>>> Thank you.
>>> 
>>> :::Claudia
>>>    
> 
>