[Air-L] Need help: conversational analysis, threads, blogs, REFERRAL LOGS

[gus andrews]

Hi --

One thing I forgot in my request yesterday -- if anyone has seen a misguided
comment thread on their blog which is like the ones I described (see below),
I could also use REFERRAL LOGS for that page. I am trying to learn more
about how the people who comment reach these blogs, so information on search
strings will be helpful.

Thanks!
Gus


Hi everyone,

I am a doctoral student at Teachers College doing research on the
misunderstandings of blog visitors and their participation in comment
threads, such as the ones I have been posting at www.gumbaby.com. I'm
wondering if the AoIR community can help me with the following things:

1. I am specifically interested in conversational or discourse analyses of
individual blogs' comment threads. Does anyone have a good bibliography on
this topic, or can you recommend articles? Conversational or discourse
analyses of forum comment threads and probably even of flame wars would also
be helpful.

2. I am gathering comment threads like the ones at gumbaby.com, which follow
this pattern:

  - Blogger posts on some random topic, usually about celebrities (i.e. "I
  went to see Maury Povich's TV show taping") or technical assistance
("Here's
  a funny story about trying to cancel an AOL account")
  - Commenters arrive and address the *celebrity* (i.e. "Dear Maury Povich,
  please help") or ask for technical assistance ("I do not want AOL anymore,
  please cancel my account"), when the blogger has no ability to help them
  with their request

If you have seen comment threads like these, could you please send me a link
to them?

3. If you've seen comment posts like these on your own blog, would you be
willing to send along referrer logs for those pages? This would be a
TREMENDOUS help; I'm having a hard time getting concrete evidence of how
people arrive at threads like these.

Thanks, everyone!
Gillian "Gus" Andrews
Doctoral Student, Communications in Education
Teachers College, Columbia University
www.gumbaby.com
www.aftered.tv