This assignment will help you begin your practice of qualitative research. You will choose some online "space" where people interact with one another and examine the rules and behaviors of the interactants. This could be an online space that you already frequent or one that you choose for this assignment. Examples of places you could examine include web pages with comments sections, Reddit, Facebook Groups, online games, message boards, a specific area of Twitter, YouTube, etc.

Once you choose where you are going to do your observations you need to start observing how people interact in this online space. What are the mechanisms for interaction? How do these mechanisms encourage (or discourage) discussion? Is there any other context you get for participants (pictures)? Are there formal or informal rules governing the discussion in these online spaces? What are people talking about? How do they talk (Is it formal? Informal? Filled with slang or jargon? Does the syntax resemble formal writing or more informal communication methods like email or text?)?

From here report some of your observations and give me your impressions of the online space and the participants, linking them to some of the ideas we've talked about in class so far.