Herding cats: The collection, classification and analysis of web-based content for online researchers

Abstract

As human interactions take place in online environments, researchers are examining web-based communicative artefacts with increasing attention. One emerging area of interest is the construction of web based texts, such as blogs, by young children. The analysis of such texts presents novel challenges and opportunities for researchers. Unlike hard copy texts, blogs by their very nature change over time, presenting themselves as 'moving targets' for analysis. Analysing blogs is akin to herding cats, which is a feat notoriously difficult to accomplish. Fortunately, blog data is electronic and web-based, which allows for new cataloguing and data management solutions to emerge, and better methods to sort and store large amounts of data. This paper explores the difficulties encountered in capturing online blog data. In doing so, it also showcases a number of solutions for the collection, storage, classification and analysis of electronic, web-based artefacts in general.