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Foundation Commissions $50 Million Online Study

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the participation-gap dept.

PreacherTom writes, "It's not a stretch to say that kids use the Internet to play World of Warcraft and to tweak their MySpace pages. Still, the MacArthur Foundation doesn't think that is quite specific enough. The private, grant-making institution is commissioning a $50 million, five-year study to investigate precisely how and why young people use the Net. $10 million in grants is going to to individuals and organizations to work on projects that stimulate research in digital media. Sign me up."

7 of 70 comments (clear)

  1. Odds are the results will be less than useful by ScrewMaster · · Score: 3, Insightful

    since all of these technologies are relatively young and constantly changing, and any conclusions they may draw will likely be obsolete by the time they're published.

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    The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
  2. I'd settle for $25 million... by parasonic · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ...and I know that I wouldn't get it. But here's your sad end result: porn.

    Now if they would now divert their attention elsewhere with that $50 million. Case closed!

  3. 5 Years?? by HeXetic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A *5-year long* study about the Internet? Come on, by the time the study is complete, it'll be irrelevant as peoples' internet usage habits will have changed.

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    http://www.chmodoplusr.com/
  4. Generator sites by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I think 'generator sites' and stuff like YTMND or Objection! would be useful to investigate because there's a big cross section of users and influences all coming together to create wild and varied (well... maybe just wild then) content.

  5. Usage by hadhad69 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    #4 Plagiarism

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    If you can read this, it's already too late.
  6. OK kids, it's not funny anymore by sootman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Can someone write a greasemonkey thingie so I never have to see 'itsatrap' again? And maybe strip out 'fud, notfud' as well?

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  7. Alright.. by l0cust · · Score: 2, Insightful

    There are so many carbon copy (WOW,MySpace,AIM) comments, which will be repeated by some other clueless bums trying to act smart. So we can safely say that Adults use internet to try to find one amusing statement/quote and repeat it over and over again till everyone is sick of it, then they move on to the next one.

    Seriously, whats with the negative remarks. Don't you think just maybe some other purpose behind the study apart from which sites 'young' people like to visit and what they use to kill their bandwidth. If the question was more general "What do people use net for?" then the first comment would have been "Porn" - which although amusing and not entirely incorrect, would have been far from the complete picture.

    For example: Most of the people hate seeing ads (targeted or otherwise) but there is a reason why websites have come to realise that putting huge blinking Flash ads on the pages is a bad idea and have started to move away from the stupid idea (Google ads anyone?). Online usage research can be productive if put to good use.

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    Politicians and Pedophiles: Two groups of exploitive bastards who are most dangerous when they're thinking of children.