Date:

12/13/2016

Project Title:

Comparative Chronology of Social Media Use, Toward a Theory of Extra-Structural Development of

New Media Rules

Principle Investigator:

David Austin Shilts

Research Rationale
Mills (in Im Making it Different to the Book: Transmediation in Young Childrens Multimodal and

Digital Texts) conceptualizes a system wherein actors are constantly transforming their content to

make it fit within the constraints of whatever system they are working under. A story produced through

video will necessarily have different features than one re-told through text message, so what is

emphasized in the story changes based on the medium used.

However, her work overlooks something which must be significant for New Media Literacy:

participation (as defined by Lin et al. in Understanding New Media Literacy: An Explorative

Theoretical Framework) is often markedly different among systems that allow for the production of

nearly identical works. That is, there are rules for transforming meaning that are not based strictly in

the limits/allowances of the system it is transformed in.

Elements which might influence a systems extra-structural rules include the size of the userbase, the

amount of time a particular system has been around, and who the systems users might expect to be

communicating with. More than likely each of these elements is influenced by structural designs of the

system to some degree, but it seems overly eager to attribute the differences in how Tumblr and

Instagram (for example) are used entirely on interface.

In order to get a better understanding of what influences how systems develop their particular modes of

transforming meaning, the field must look at how works have been produced in them over time.

Properly interpreted and with enough data, this should give future researchers a starting point in

determining what rules determine how people interact on and with new media.
Research Method
Research will be conducted by pulling 20 accounts each from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and

Tumblr. Each account will be at least three years old. Every post from each account will be looked at

and placed along a timeline, with particular attention being payed to posts that seem innovative for

their timeframe. The research team will then attempt to discern patterns that show up between times

and within particular systems, as well as contrasts between systems.

Recruitment of Subjects / Domain /Protocol

The broad goal of the research project (to attempt to find some foundation for how communities

determine the rules for communicating in a new media system) means that any arbitrary restrictions

may be placed on subject recruitment without compromising the research, but less restricted subject

groups may yield more general results. For this particular study, the subjects will be those who identify

as being 20-30 years old and residents of the United States. Care will be taken to ensure that each

subject has at least one degree of separation between themselves and any other subject, in order to

minimize the likelihood of finding patterns local to a particular area and/or social group. The format of

the relevant systems allows easy researcher-subject communication for requesting consent, after which

contact will only take the form of typical (but decidedly more in-depth than usual) browsing of the

subjects user pages.

Research Benefits
Hopefully, this research will be used as a stepping stone to building a full understanding of the

dynamic, social process which creates each new media systems rules for communication. The benefits

for businesses and online community leaders are enormous: if the processes which mold how a

community determines how it speaks are understood, they could be influenced which influence is

almost always one of the largest problems businesses and online community leaders encounter.
Supporting Documents:
Mills, Kathy. IM Making It Different to the Book: Transmediation in Young Childrens

Multimodaland Digital Texts. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood 36.3 (Sept. 2011): 56

65.

Lee, Ling, et al. Understanding New Media Literacy: The Development of a Measuring

Instrument.Computers & Education 85. (July 2015): 8493.