My case for moving beyond a printed senior thesis

Traditionally, and to my knowledge exclusively, Politics majors at Whitman College writing their senior thesis have been required to present the finished product as a nicely printed, double spaced, hard copy. This copy is turned in to your thesis readers but most likely never moves beyond those readers and the student’s close family and friends. If you complete Honors the thesis is archived in the Penrose Library but still does not move beyond the Whitman community. I’m proposing something different for my senior thesis on web communication technologies and political participation.

I propose to take advantage of the technologies that are the focus of my thesis. I aim to craft a special section of this site for the project and to present the content online and more importantly, online only.

Background on the project

At this point my research question is: To what extent is the greater accessibility of web technologies creating a radically different definition of political participation and participants in United States politics?

In order to answer this question I’m proposing to investigate the effects of various technologies that have grown around a desire to better communicate information. The project has to be 9,000 to 11,000 words in length. I am planning on writing an introduction and conclusion that will provide unity to 3 particular parts, each of 3,000 words, that will focus on specific aspects of communication on the web.

These 3 aspects will be:

  • Twitter and the “realtime” web – This piece will look at the political ramifications of communication through Twitter. In addition, it will focus upon the rapidity with which this communication can take place. As part of this I will discuss the political ramifications of having this communication take place under the guise of a company versus a distributed system like the loosely coupled 140 character network, otherwise known as RSS Cloud, that Dave Winer is building.
  • WordPress and the rise of self-publishing – The ability to self-publish content on the web is at the heart of participation in my mind. Among other tools, WordPress has made this ability open to millions of people in the United States and worldwide. This creates a common, open-source platform, through which people of varying statuses can come together to communicate about issues large and small. The software that is powering everything from mass media politics sites to hyper-local blogs that focus upon issues relevant to a community is freely available to any individual.
  • Layered and accessible data – This portion is less developed at this point, but what I want to investigate are the ramifications of being able to layer data sets on the web. From both a geographic perspective and a media perspective I think that this has interesting possibilities for political participation. For example, only on the web can you present multiple forms of media alongside one another in such a way that allows for the information in each to overlap in a readily apparent way. One very basic example of this is taking information from Twitter about swine flu and overlaying it with a Google Map of the location of the tweets.

Why post only online?

The question I get more than any other when explaining this project is “why not just turn in a printed copy as well?” It is possible but in my view a project produced specifically for the web has the potential to be far more powerful, relevant, and contextual than anything that can be done with the same project in print.

One way to visualize information on the web is as a series of subway stations. Credit: Information Architects

One way to visualize information on the web is as a series of subway stations. Credit: Information Architects

First, the ability to link to sources is a tremendous advantage to writing online. The reality is that most people (yes, even students at colleges like Whitman) do not read footnotes; thus, most readers are not seeing the citations and sources that make up an integral part of any lengthy piece. Writing for the web allows these sources to be placed directly in the text by linking to them. Since many of my sources are available online this means that I will be able to direct readers to the original.

Merlin Mann writes that there are users of the web:

who have that itch to share lovely bits of the world that come over their transom throughout the day.

I experience that same itch and because of that I want to make it as frictionless a process as possible for readers to find the full, original source that I cite. Context is key in any argument, particularly one that will be over 9,000 words. What better way to provide that context than to rely upon something as simple as clicking?

The printing press, is it still the best we can do?

The printing press, is it still the best we can do?

Second, the print medium inherently does not handle non-print sources very well. Videos, podcasts, and other non-print forms of sources must be manually typed in a browser. One can venture a guess that academic papers which reference a video most likely do not succeed in having the reader actually view that video in its entirety. The reality is that there is too much friction involved in having to go to a computer, type in an address carefully, and then watch the video. Posting content online allows for these other forms of media to be placed inline with the text which will be important for my project as I plan on referencing a significant number of video and audio sources.

The greater context and likelihood of viewing sources means that the project will more readily accomplish the goal of sources: acting as a filter of wider information sets. Scott Karp writes of the reading experience online:

When I read online, I constantly follow links from one item to the next, often forgetting where I started. Sometimes I backtrack to one content “node” and jump off in different directions. There are nodes that I come back to repeatedly, like TechMeme and Google, only to start down new branches of the network.

This type of jumping from node to node is exactly the type of curiosity and engagement that I would hope to stimulate. It is certainly valuable for people to sit down and read a 1000+ word piece from beginning to end. However, it is also a tremendous learning experience if that original piece motivates a series of links that lead the reader through an exploration of the topic that they would not have otherwise experienced. That exploration through a series of links is an experience that only the web can provide.

Let the community in

By posting this project online I hope to open it up to involvement from those outside of the traditional Whitman community. A piece as long as this thesis will truly gain traction in the hands of the readers. By expanding the pool of potential readers and participants I hope to bring in voices and critiques that I would not otherwise hear.

This project will allow others to comment on the pieces outlined above. It will provide a source that others can link to should they feel compelled.

Furthermore, by opening up the end result of this project I believe that I will create a better product. Marco Arment writes that because of the ability for anyone to see what you post online:

I start feeling obligated to raise the average quality of what I post

Knowing that what I create will be seen by a far wider audience than the traditional hard copy thesis will motivate me to put even more thought and effort into the construction of my thoughts. It is a phenomenon that I have a difficult time explaining. The reality, though, is that when I know my work will be seen by people (at least the 100+ who are subscribed to this site via RSS) outside of my immediate social circle I feel compelled to produce something of quality. They would be taking time out of their day to read what I have to say and because of that it needs to be made worth their while. This is not to say that print theses are not thoughtfully crafted but in my experience the larger the audience the greater the amount of time and thought a project requires.

Why now?

Finally, I would be hypocritical were I to be writing about the political potential of web communication only to have the finished product take the form of print, a style of communication that has existed for the last 500 years.

I strongly believe that the format of my project should reflect the claims I will be making. By creating a print product as the end result I would not be justifying my claims; instead, I would be invalidating those claims by proving that print communication is still the dominant force and that the web is merely an afterthought.

The reality is that the communication on the web happens faster, reaches more readers, and is inarguably the future of writing. Most importantly, the maturation of online publishing tools represents the biggest paradigm shift in publishing since the creation of the printing press in the 15th-century.

This is a shift in technologies that many media outlets have already begun to realize, working toward an expansion of political coverage and organization. In many ways publishing on the web represents the fulfillment of the political process. It is the ability to speak to a potential audience of millions and to leave open the possibility of those readers commenting and in some sense creating the finished product.

Every idea and thesis is simply one viewpoint. A singular viewpoint necessitates the engagement of others in discourse around that topic. Without a web component this interaction with the final product would be confined to a minimal audience within the existing Whitman College community. Posting the project online engages more opinions and viewpoints with the work and creates a community that incorporates greater diversity.

Ultimately, Andrew Sullivan says it best when he writes of publishing online:

It was obvious from the start that it was revolutionary. Every writer since the printing press has longed for a means to publish himself and reach—instantly—any reader on Earth.

The technology exists to bring any reader on Earth into our political discussions, the question is: will we use it?

Comments

jesatiu says:

One reason we may want to view hard copies is that errors are easier to detect in print than when presented on a screen, at least for many of us.

I know for a fact in my own writing I can spend hours going over the text on-screen and believe I have caught every single small typo or incorrect word, and then, low and behold, once I print the darn thing out, and take a red pen to it, guess what? Yeah…I do realize I do have perfectionistic tendencies, but, hey, why not go for perfect?

However, the arguement for having an online option does have some merit if that is something to do with intellectual property rights and the ability to distribute information…but so is the plaugerism problem…if everyone publishes everything online it is much easier for it to become taken and passed off as original.

Originality, in many respects, is the primary measure of value, I think…although I must admit, this is a quick and dirty assessment here, and I am, as I typically do, making this crap up as I go along…

Cheers!
Jess

Andrew says:

Jess, to counter your claim concerning plagiarism: I think that by having things posted online academic integrity would actually be easier to maintain. The reason I say this is that were works to be posted online it would be even easier for a professor to take parts of the text and search for other occurances of them online.

Also, there would be nothing to stop a professor from printing the pages out and editing them that way. Online only does not mean that no one can create a print copy, it just means that the work is not dependent upon print.

Thanks for the comment!

Mike Martinez says:

Truth.

Eric Hansen says:

Here here! Please let us know how it goes. The irony of academia being a hot spot of innovation and a stronghold for archaic practices still surprises me.

Ian Lamont says:

When scholars from the year 2059 look back on the current state of academic research and the dissemination of knowledge, they surely will marvel at the fact that so much of it remained oriented toward printed words on paper.

If you can convince your professors and peers to come around, that will be a really helpful step to promoting online publishing in academia.

Andrew says:

I couldn’t agree with you more Ian. The notion that academia is still creating hot beds of innovation while remaining within a centuries old form of knowledge distribution has confounded me since Freshman year.

Sol Young says:

An online-only version would be fantastic. A real-time stream of information is difficult or impossible to accurately represent, other than as a post-mortem, in physical paper form. Glad to see important people pushing towards an online-only thesis distribution.

Given that you’re pushing an online-only approach, you should make your Twitter account more visible on your site. Having your RSS feeds at the bottom of each post is fine, but having your Twitter account linked next to it would be better.

Andrew says:

Thanks for the comment Sol. I totally agree that Twitter should be more visible. I only just finished up this iteration of the design last night. In the next few days I’ll be shifting some elements around and will probably replace the photos in the footer with Twitter.

Sol Young says:

One other thought – found this the other day. It’s not automatic, and probably not nearly as pretty, but there clean ways to go direct from online-only (ex. blog) to print-on-demand http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/fastpencil_turn_your_blog_into_a_published_book.php

Larryb says:

Brilliant! I hope it comes to fruition for you!

Badass. I look forward to reading the intermediate and final versions of your thesis. One tech idea: it would be really cool to enable graf by graf commenting, such that it’s easier to react to specific points you make in your final piece. In addition, it would be really sweet if you had the ability to curate those comments and reactions to your final piece, whether they’re comments at the end of the thesis, comments on individual grafs, or posts people write on their own blogs in reaction to your work. Great start!

Andrew says:

Graf by graf comments are certainly part of the plan for the tech side of things. I’ll probably look into using the Feedback by Paragraph plugin by Andy Dickinson.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/feedbackbp/

Brian Frank says:

This is awesome. I love that you aren’t simply conforming to the old mindset but aren’t merely grumbling about it either. Recognizing opportunities is one thing… the ability to actually figure out what to do and then make a case for it will be more important than any other skill in the near future, imo.

Btw I hadn’t heard of Feedback by Paragraph before… looks interesting.

Andrew says:

Thanks Brian. I agree that it’s definitely time to start moving from discussions of opportunities and change to the action part. I think we’ve reached a point where most of the important discussions about what to use the web for have been had; it’s now time to figure out what works by doing.

I haven’t used Feedback by Paragraph since it was initially released so I’m hoping the bugs that were present at that point have been ironed out.

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