What? This blog is an experiment in using "web2.0" to convene virtual focus groups for informal sociological "research." Briefly, the idea is to pose a question and then invite folks to comment on it and then I'll attempt to synthesize the results.
Why? In many discussions of web2.0 its unregulated, "anyone can be an author" (and, hence, anyone can be an authority) and every reader can (or has to) be her own editor aspects are championed. This raises the question of whether we really want to live in an "unedited" world, a feast of all raw information all the time.
How? In this project I'm exploring a middle ground. I want to use the web to invite input and conversation and debate among "informants," but also to promise some value added, namely, some tabulating, correlating, interpretation, abstraction, sense-making, evidence seeking, comparison, visualization, and all the other things a trained social scientist is supposedly able to add to public discourse.
It's an experiment. Let's see what happens.
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