In 48 hours, my dissertation final draft will be done and I’ll ship this thing out to my committee before my July 16 defense date. I’m exhausted from too many 15-hour days, but I sometimes marvel at the stamina I’ve acquired for research in graduate school.

I’ll wait to post a full abstract until this thing is fully defended, because I’m always a little nervous about putting the cart before the horse. But real briefly, I’ll say what it’s about. I surveyed a bunch of online community users of various types and over various sites to get a sense of their social ties. I tapped into ideas of social capital first theorized by Pierre Bourdieu and made famous by Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone.

The basic idea is that the thickness and the extension of peoples’ social networks is a powerful predictor of how we help one another and get involved in everyday civic life, types of engagment that span from voting to the reciprocity that comes with giving money to a friend in need.

Typically researchers measure offline social capital (offline ties for real-world local benefit) and online social capital (ties formed online for real-world local benefit). I measured those two as well as a third new variable I’ve created called virtual social capital, which measures online ties created for non-local beneft (I’m calling it Distance Engagement).

The one thing I can say so far is my created variable works big time as a distinct way of measuring online ties. So I’m thrilled about that.

But I’ve found some other stuff related to motivations for using online communities, social bonds, and the forms of engagement. I’ll save those results for later, save this teaser: social media doesn’t do squat for local engagement as a general predictor across all different types of sites, but it does surprising things for online forms of activism and helping. And the motivations/needs people bring to their media use is very important in determining how this all works. Viva la Media Choice Model!

Anyhow, 48 hours and I’ll send this thing out. Defense in 11 days, yikes!

Another quick update on the dissertation, since it’s the reason I haven’t been posting. I’ve been cranking on everything and finished data collection at the beginning of June. The past 10 days or so have been spent doing factor analysis, correlations and regression.

My created scales look really good, and the regressions are yielding both some surprising results and some confirmation of what I was hoping to find. In other words, I’m really jazzed about this data set.

The self-imposed goal for having this in my committee’s hands is June 30. I’m hoping to have a draft for four of the five chapters in my chair and methods folks’ hands by the middle of next week, leaving the discussion section and revision of those chapters.

So I feel like I’m on track. Defense is set for July 16. I should be freaking out because that’s less than a month to go, but really I’m still enjoying this process. I keep waiting for it to get unbearable, but it’s not.

In other news, my time is somewhat divided these days because I’m also teaching an online course (and having a blast with it) and dealing with issues related to the purchase of our home in Bethlehem. Yep, we’re first-time home buyers! Lots to do before we close the deal, but we’re working hard to get it done.

I  just sat in a couple interesting days of presentations and discussion here at the Reynolds Journalism Institute. Dean Thorson and RJI hosted a gathering of scholars that was provocatively titled ” How Newspapers Could Have Saved Themselves and How Some Still Can” and brought together both academics and industry leaders to talk about marketing, econometrics, and research needs for the industry.

It was an intriguing couple of days and I learned a ton. I’ll post some more developed thoughts tomorrow as I get some time to ponder it during my travels to ICA in Chicago, but I did want to highlight one thing.

There were a few statements regarding social media that stuck out. One presenter referred to and as “fads” compared to the staying power of newspapers. During discussion today, when the integration with social media was brought up, several pointed out that Facebook isn’t profitable and thus doesn’t present a viable model for newspapers.

Two thoughts on this. Read more

I cleared a big hurdle on the dissertation today after defending my proposal. This clears me to begin collecting data and gives me some light at the end of the tunnel.

I have to finish by the time we move to Pennsylvania this summer. Lehigh doesn’t require it, but there are a lot of incentives to finish by the time I get there (not the least of which is my own sanity).

It might seem that I’m cutting it close, but I feel pretty good about where I’m at and am confident I’ll have no trouble finishing before we move. The reason for this is I did a lot of work on the front end of my dissertation proposal, to the point that it’s nearly 70 pages. I spent a lot of time consulting with my committee members as well to make sure I addressed concerns and issues with my methodology before I sent them the final draft. Read more