Sinéad

Online consumerism has become a prevalent part of modern life. With greater choice of availability and 24 hour access to a global market, many are now switching to shopping on the the Internet rather than walking around high streets or shopping centers for their desired purchases. Recent studies indicate that 96% of Irish Internet users have made an online purchase. But what are the perceived risks that online consumers feel?

Hello my name is Lee Kelly and I’m currently studying for a Msc Cyberpsychology. As part of the course I am conducting a research project regarding attitudes towards online shopping. More specifically this study aims to examine levels of trust placed, when using online commercial sites. The study will also try to ascertain if levels of trust online differ between Digital Natives (people who grew up surrounded by information technology) and Digital Immigrants (people who learn to use information technology in adulthood). I’m looking for participants that would fall under both groups; so if you are over 18 and enjoy shopping online then I need to recruit you (sorry I’ve been watching Milk) to take part in my Online survey.

Once again participants will be given the opportunity to win €50 Amazon voucher on completion of the survey. Thank You in advance to everyone who agrees to take part in this study and also many thank to Sinéad Cochrane for her help in allowing me to guest post.

I’ve always felt like there weren’t enough hours in the day, more so in the last two years because I’ve managed to turn myself into a raging workaholic. Working 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, going to college on Saturdays and spending countless hours each evening writing a thesis will do that to you. My plan had always been to educate myself into a better paid, more stimulating job. Now that I’m coming to the end of my Masters and with the recession wreaking havoc with the country I’m confident that this plan won’t work out. I won’t be becoming a passionate career person any time soon.

I’m being a realist.

This isn’t pessimism. I’m trying to be realistic, and I’ve taken something extremely positive from this realisation. I might not have more money in my pocket, but I’ll have so much more time. Time to re-read the books on my shelf. To be creative, to write, to take 100′s more photos. To lie on my bed listening to music for hours. To spend evenings with my friends and not worry about missing out on a night of college work. To chase a whim and embrace an opportunity. To volunteer my time to a cause that needs bodies and minds. To learn new skills, and teach my own.

I don’t need money to do these things, I just need time. Soon I’ll have a lot more of that, and I’m grateful for the consolation prize.

I’m tired of reading and hearing so many criticisms about the Bodies exhibition from anyone with a loud enough mouth to get heard. No, it’s not art. It is Science wrapped in a publicly accessible package, that in order to survive is required to market itself. Yes, it is entertainment. This is necessary in order to engage with people that have never had an interest in Biology, or any kind of Science before. It succeeds where the Science museums fail because it engages your curiosity, appeals to your intellect and forces you to have emotional reactions.

The use of real bodies is paramount to contextualising what you are seeing. For example, the initial displays, in the first room of the exhibition are just fragments of bone and flesh, parts of bodies in glass display cases. More like a “real” museum than anywhere else. One of the largest of these  displays is a pair of legs, with the muscles prominent and labelled  – but without the context of the full body the display just ends up looking like meat, like a large ham at Christmas time.

Adding even more context is the fact that they are posed, which is something that has been heavily criticised, clearly by individuals that haven’t visited the exhibition. The poses represent physical actions, and the parts of the body highlighted match this. They truly help you understand what you are seeing. For example, the cadaver pictured has all it’s individual muscles peeled away from the skeleton, posed as if about to kick something – illustrating how the body’s 650 or so muscles work together for motion or to create force.

I was surprised there weren’t more children at the exhibition when Darragh, Jen and myself went. For anyone that has fears that their child might be afraid or disguisted… all children are naturally curious, and they will only have these reactions if you have them too. The messages it teaches are important for everyone, not just to adults, or to the geeks and nerds that would usually frequent museums.

The exhibition describes how inside we are all the same, that we are not invincible and tries to make you understand the complexity and fragility of how we function. Just because it succeeds in doing this by luring you in with the promise of the macabre doesn’t make it any less valid, or any less educational.

Irish Blog Research 2009, Survey Closes

Thank you to everyone that filled out my research survey. The response rate was double what I had hoped for and I’m really looking forward to analysing the data. Thank you so much to everyone that posted links to the survey on their own blogs, who retweeted it on twitter and emailed it to their friends. Thanks to Sabrina Dent for all her great ideas ideas (that definitely worked!), to all my tweeties that helped pilot study the survey and thanks to Irishblogs.ie for highlighting the research for me.

As Promised, Prizes at the end of the Rainbow

The winner of the first €50 voucher prize draw is Claire of Gingerpixel Photography.

The winner of the second €50 voucher prize draw is Barry James of Redbird Property & Maintenance. Who also has, quite possibly, the best twitter picture I’ve ever seen.

Music Marketing on Social Networking Sites

Have you discovered one of your favourite music artists by chance on a social networking site? How do you feel about friend requests from bands you’ve never heard of? Can you recall a really outstanding marketing approach from a music artist on a social networking site? Lots of questions and one survey which is trying to find out the answer:  Fansights 2.0

Fansights 2.0 – The Survey

To introduce myself: My name is Kathrin and like Sinéad I am a master student at IADT and right now running a survey as part of my master thesis. My survey Fansights 2.0 is about music marketing on social networking sites (e.g. MySpace, Bebo, Facebook) and the perception of these marketing techniques among music fans. I am still looking for music fans and music promoters who would be willing to take part in my survey. If you could take a few minutes to fill out the survey or pass it on to interested friends I would really appreciate it. You can also drop me a message under www.myspace.com/fansights and you will receive a copy of the results once they are published.

Thanks a mill to Sinéad for posting this and to everybody interested in my research project!

World of Warcraft currently has 11.5 million monthly subscribers, there are 15 million registered-accounts on Second Life, and 38,000 active members in-world at any one time. These numbers show that millions of people are interacting, collaborating, and forming strong relationships online every day - with fascinating outcomes.

My name is Eily Coghlan, and I’m currently studying Msc Cyberpsychology along with Sinéad. My research is specifically interested in investigating gender bending online. This is when an individual chooses to play an avatar who has a different gender online then they have in real life. It’s a common occurrence in online gaming, and a simple Google search returns hundreds of thousands of results. I’m trying to discover what inspires people to gender bend and what reasons they have for doing so. As part of my reseach I have created an online survey which I need people who gender-bend in these games AND people who don’t gender-bend to fill out.

Like Sinéad has already done, you also have the chance to win a €50 Amazon voucher at the end of the survey! You can now double your chances! I appreciate anyone who responds, I am extremely grateful! If you don’t happen to play either of these games, please pass it on to anyone that you know who does. It’s quite quick, only takes 10 minutes to complete!

Thanks to Sinéad for letting me sneak in on her blog!

Irish Blog Research 2009, Survey Goes Live

As part of the M.Sc Cyberpsychology at IADT each postgraduate student is currently in the process of conducting a major research project. My own is focused on blogging, but from an Irish perspective, looking at the attitudes and behaviour of Irish bloggers and Irish blog readers. (Related Article)

Online Survey

At the very heart of this research study is an online survey which you can find here. I’m hoping to recruit a large sample of both bloggers and non-blogging readers. If you’re reading this, I’m assuming you fit into one of these categories and would very much appreciate it if you could spare 10-15 minutes to fill out the survey. Most of the questions are multiple choice, a small number are essay based but you can write as much, or as little as you like. This questionnaire is 100% anonymous, confidential and for research purposes only.  Even your IP address won’t be stored.

Prize Draws!

At the end of the survey you will have the opportunity to enter a prize draw for either a €50 Amazon voucher or a €50 Ticketmaster voucher – if you win, you can choose either prize.

I’m also going to run a separate prize draw for another €50 voucher for anyone that posts a link to this survey on their blog, or on a messageboard – anywhere really! To enter this separate draw just leave a comment on this blog post, this can be in the form of a trackback or a comment telling me where you have posted the link.

Thank You!

Thank you in advance for your help, without the Irish blogging community on my side this research won’t be complete. The hard part will be finding non-blogging readers to complete the survey, so if you know anyone that would fit that category please pass the link for the survey onto them.

As a way of giving something back to the blogging community I will be publishing summaries of the most interesting findings here on this blog. If you would like to be notified when the entire research document is available for download  – this will be a masters thesis of approximately 15,000 words, with an introduction to the psychogical aspects of blogging – you can enter your details on this form.

I’ve been following Stephen Fry on twitter, much to my own amusement, and to celebrate reaching 50,000 followers he is running a very Fry like competition, it’s wonderfully complicated and devilishly playful.

“L=50 in Roman. The best tweet containing exactly 50 Ls will win. All tweets to contain the tag #L and none to exceed 140 character limit SF” (link)

The Roman numeral for 50 is L, so the task is to use 50 letter Ls in one 140 character tweet. Quite the challenge. Directly after the tweet posted by Stephen Fry someone else in my stream posted a link to the Ryanair baggage story from this week and thus my first attempt was born.

Ryanair left my leather luggage in limbo with little likelihood of lawful retrieval. Lovely challenge #L

Unfortunately, this only contained 15 letters L. After much consultation with various online dictionaries I found a few prize words with numerous Ls, callipygian being my absolute favourite. Somehow the tweet evolved into a completely different monster and thus, my final tweet reads like a little story that could have been taken directly out of Stephen Fry’s autobiography.

Parallel multiple syllabic callipygian lads.Willfully polysyllabically lulled.Lawful release?Little likelihood.Lullllllllllilllllllllloo! #L (link)

Translation: Numerous young men with beautiful bums, sitting an equal distance apart from one another. They have a taste for syllables, and allow themselves to be calmed down by words with many syllables. Their release from prison very unlikely. “Lulliloo!” cried Stephen, joyfully welcoming them.

If you’re interested in entering the competition, it’s open to entries until Saturday the 24th of January at midday. Also, the twitter user ghijklmno has created a great utility to double check your entry. You can track the competition entries using the assigned hashtag of #L. The majority of them make little sense (not that mine does!), but I’ve found a few creative, witty and interesting entries. Looking forward to seeing which vocabulary genius from the twitterverse wins this one.