Dissertation draft

This blog was created to support work on my dissertation.   This is my dissertation so far.  This post was created so that people could easily find a link to the most current draft. Any and all feedback on my dissertation draft is appreciated.

Updates

December 8: Added a temporary table of contents to make navigating the file easier.  Changed some of the wording in the introduction.  Added a micro-chapter about Anna Meares.  Added about 5 appendixes but did not include these in the draft.

December 9: Added a temporary table of contents to make navigating the file easier. (Some headings mismarked.) Removed some appendixes to reduce size/space.  Reordered definitions in introduction to match literature review.  Removed section on soccer and swimming as not relevant to chapters.  Added a lot of comments in to give a better idea of thinking behind some wording and organization choices.  Edited literature review in areas near where I commented.  Added some text to hopefully make it clear that I’m looking at how fandom allegiances change.

December 13: Standardized spacing for fan base, did a replace of fanbase/fan base. Trying to put all end notes at the end of the section. This may result in everything being footnoted instead. APA Style Guide seems to preference footnotes. Only the first letter of a citation should be capitalized. Working on fixing that. In Review of Literature, added a few introductions.

December 19: Edited to remove repetitive uses of certain words and phrases like “according to” and “characterized/characterizes”. This was done in the review of literature. Did some minor fixing of wording in the introduction.

December 20: Made some changes to the Melbourne Storm chapter. This was mostly minor grammatical changes and adding a better introduction to LiveJournal and non-English Wikipedias.

December 23: Removed notes from the Introduction. Made some changes to the Melbourne Demons, Port Adelaide Power and Google chapter. Changed introduction and conclusion to better reflect purpose as stated in the introduction. Added a new chapter about the Canberra Raiders and Wests Tigers semi-final game. (This moved chapter 8 and chapter 9 back.)

December 24: Did some minor rewording tweaks to the introduction to clarify exactly what I will be researching. Got numbering right my definitions. Moved tables around in the Anna Meares chapter. Compared Meares’s performance on Twitter to two other athletes. Did some editing to the Joel Monaghan chapter.

December 25: Edited the Joel Monaghan chapter some more. Tried to rewrite the conclusion to make it more clear. Trying to format table and figure headings but massive case of fail.

December 26: Added a new chapter about Greg Inglis code switching controversy. Currently up to around 38,750 words.

December 27: Re-ordered chapters: Demons/Power/Google, Akermanis, Gillard. This better reflects the timeline that these articles were written.

December 28: Changed table in Anna Meares chapter to only refer to female cyclists in Australia. Made some wording tweaks to the introduction. Added headers to NRL Semi-Final: Raiders Fandom versus Tigers Fandom in Canberra.

December 29: In the Joel Monaghan paper, moved a section in the conclusion to the introduction. Reworded parts of the introduction. Edited conclusion again for clarity. Edited the World Cup checkins chapter to improve clarity of the purpose. Edited the conclusion of the World Cup Foursquare Checkins chapter.

December 30: (Not uploaded yet) Made minor wording changes to Anna Meares chapter.

December 31: Made minor wording changes to the introduction. Made some minor wording tweaks to the Greg Inglis chapter. Made some wording changes to the Joel Monaghan chapter. Rewrote the conclusion for Monaghan paper.

January 4: Attached the St Kilda Saints Nude Photo Controversy to dissertation. Made edits to the Julia Gillard chapter. Made a few minor wording changes to the introduction chapter. Made a few more edits to the Raiders versus Tigers chapter.

January 14: Fixed the tables in the Jason Akermanis chapter so the tables are actual Word tables, not images.  Fixed some of the captions in the chapter to be more APA formatted.  Added a section on soccer, rugby league and cycling to the sport history of fandom section to lit review.  Added a section on sport journalism as an expression of fandom to lit review.  Rewrote introduction bit to explain what is found in the review of literature.

January 15: Fixed a time zone discrepancy of AEST vs AEDT in the St Kilda chapter.  Added a microchapter on Brendan Fevola.

January 16: Made some small grammatical changes and wording changes to the methodology chapter.  Added a 1,000 word chapter looking at the relative popularity of sport in Australia using Australian federal electorates and Twitter data.  Edited lit review to include references to the Barassi-line in the AFL and NRL sections.

January 17: Made some minor grammatical changes to the chapter on sport by electorate.  Added a chapter about Derryn Hinch.

January 18: (Not uploaded) Made some minor grammatical changes and word choice changes to the Melbourne Storm chapter.  Integrated comments on the article into the article.  Changed introduction to be more clear on exactly what can be found in the chapter. Modified the conclusion.  Tweaked some of the table and figure captions to better conform with APA style guide.

January 19: Fixed last paragraph in dissertation to further rationalize the study of online sport fandom.  Fixed the lit review intro some to explain why sport fandom needs to be defined.  Made some minor wording changes and added some additional information to the Google chapter.

January 23: Wrote conclusion. Made small edits to the methodology chapter.

January 31: Made a few small grammatical fixes to the Greg Inglis chapter.

February 17: (not uploaded) Minor wording changes made to Jason Akermanis chapter. Citation added. Figure formatting changed. Made some minor wording changes to the Julia Gillard chapter.  Rewrote parts of the conclusion for the Anna Meares chapter.  Added a bit to the introduction to the Brendan Fevloa.  Added a sentence to the conclusion.  Made a wording change to the lit review.

February 18: (not uploaded) Fixed a some one/someone in the Brendan Fevola chapter.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/ANYPWFYQMNG7NRB55Q7C3PR6C4 Adelaide La Blanche-Dupont

    Today [2 February] was the first opportunity I had to see the Conclusion.

    Most of the conclusions followed through and gave insights (whether familiar or not). Most of the insights were testable.

    A testing ground is definitely GEOLOCATION, which is a great assistance to a population study, even though it might not have been designed for that purpose first. It can be applied, especially Gowalla and Foursquare.

    I see that (many) Australian sports fandoms online are strongly motivated around controversies, though they may not necessarily take action to directly help or harm the club [for example: Storm and St Kilda]. “Australian fans are prepared to reward excellence”: and the Meares example is a great one. Some of the grand finals could have tended to support this, though it was good you went off left-field in the NRL analysis of the Raiders and West Tigers.

    Some of the table and figure references are a bit off in the sport by electorate chapter. I needed previous knowledge of the electorates to follow anomalous patterns in sport support. (There was no figure 9 or 10, even though there may have been in the paper on which the dissertation chapter was based!)

    With the Julia Gillard chapter: maybe give it context with number 1 ticket holders, especially past and present politicians. This phenomenon seems to have special relevance with the Fremantle Dockers (Carmen Lawrence and Damien Drum), as well as other Victorian and interstate teams. It may also be relevant with NRL: if it isn’t a little elitist! (It’s meant to be egiltarian too).

    • http://www.fanhistory.com LauraH

      There is currently an issue with figure and table numbering. It is one of my goals to fix this. (I apparently have about 15 months to do that. At some point, I’m going to feel the need to write new chapters that won’t go in this dissertation.) I have about five papers that I could basically pull from my blog and put into a secondary dissertation of sorts. (Which is something I may end up doing if I am thus motivated.)

      I’ve got the geolocation related data. It is just an issue of how to use it. There are some interesting insights buried in there that I haven’t explored… like how the percentage of games with checkins appears larger for the WNBL but the NBL when it does get checkins appears to be larger. The Australian Open had a huge number of checkins on Foursquare. It could be interesting to compare checkins from last season to this season in the AFL. (I don’t have NRL data lined up for foursquare yet. Not scheduling far out is a hassle.)

      The “left field” analysis was mostly because my supervisor asked me to put something together that the local paper might be interested in. That’s why there is the focus on Canberra. :)

      • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/ANYPWFYQMNG7NRB55Q7C3PR6C4 Adelaide La Blanche-Dupont

        Australian Open attendance was slightly fewer people: 640,000 [~] as opposed to 2010′s 650,000. I hoped that the attendance would go up, similiar to other years. People move around Melbourne Park regularly and do things like go to Garden Square and eat.

        Hope you do get the NRL foursquare data soon.

        Boris Starrs wrote an interesting paper called Publish and Graduate which strongly indicated [in 2007] that University of Canberra was one of the stricter institutions for publishing papers as a dissertation. It mostly applied to film auteur studies as this was Starrs’s field.

        Would be interested in seeing more about basketball. Probably something to do with a sense of ocassion.

        Great way to attract the local paper. If there’s any interest…