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TextNorm>CoDiVE: Changing textual norms through cooperation in distributed virtual environments.

A field study of qualifying text and communication norm development in network-based multi-user text worlds.

A brief presentation:

Background:

The qualitative demands on scientific authorship are rapidly increasing. It is becoming more and more important for scientists and researchers to be able to translate and (re)present their research findings for other groups of readers than their own peer academic text cultures. Distributed multimedia and hypermedia technology are to an increasing degree being taken in use within the international scientific community in order to communicate about and disseminate scientific knowledge. At the same time, we are becoming increasingly aware of the strong influence that the particular sociocultural environment where scientific writing actually is carried out, exerts on this writing.

The object of study:

TextNorm>CoDiVE has the following general research question as its object of study:

In what ways do novice scientific authors' text and interaction norms change when they engage in using distributed, text-based, object-oriented multi-user environments (MOOs) for various forms of co-operative scientific writing?

Some issues being explored within the framework of this project are:

• Which aspects of scientific writing are affected by the technologically mediated ocial field which is constituted when novice authors collaborate with other novice authors in virtual environments?
  
• What effects on text and interaction norms has the technology that sets many of the premisses for how the virtual environment "looks" and "feels", and for the social field that emerges there?
  
• Does sociocultural difference (gender, educational background, ethnicity, handicap etc) have any effect on constitution of a collaborative text culture in a virtual environment?
  
• Do experiences novice authors acquire through participation in writing activities in virtual environments lead to changes in text-norm systems and interaction strategies effective in text cultures "outside" of these environments?
  
• Will collaborative scientific writing in virtual environments contribute to removal of barriers between established text cultures associated with scientific writing and publishing?
  
• Will qualitatively improved forms of communication emerge, transcending traditional boundaries between scientific text and discourse cultures and other text and discourse culture

Research design:

The basic research design is ethnographic. That means that a large part of the empirical data being collected is be in the form of text-, interview, and observational materials obtained through periods of participant-observation based field research in distributed virtual environments, as well as similar kinds of materials obtained by agreement from, and in cooperation with, other participants in the project.