Sociografiske iagttagelser af nyhedsgrupper

TR-2003-26, Author: Jesper Tække

Jesper Tække

October 2000

Abstract

Sociographic observations of newsgroups

This paper (in Danish), aims at describing a strategy - or methodology - for analysing social systems. The methodology is based on Niklas Luhmann's sociological systems theory and pictures newsgroups as self-organizing interactive systems. The paper describes these systems as de-coupled subsystems of society maintaining themselves by reproducing a border of meaning that separates them from a self-defined surrounding world.

The primary concern of the paper is to show how newsgroups can be analysed through the theoretical filter of the methodology. However, at the same time it is a tool applicable for making social analysis of selected empirical areas.

Two Danish newsgroups serve as the empirical cases behind the theory in this paper, but the operationalisation of the theory is the outcome of a discussion of a number of newsgroups with Associate Professor Berit Holmqvist and approximately 30 students from the University of Aarhus.

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Technical report TR-2003-26 in IT University Technical Report Series, May 2003.

Available as PDF.