Anna M. Martinson

Current Title(s)

• Doctoral Candidate in the PhD Program in Information Science at Indiana University

Curriculum Vitae

• Biography
• Teaching Philosophy
• Research Statement

Dissertation

• Research Committee:
  • Chair: Susan C. Herring
  • Additional SLIS Representative and Methodological Specialist: John C. Paolillo
  • Outside Minor (Sociology) Representative: Donna Eder
  • Outside Topic and Methodological Specialist (Feminist Media Studies): Radhika Parameswaran

• Dissertation: Identifying Gender Ideology in Web Content: Debates about Feminism (links to a MS Word document)
  • Abstract: With the burgeoning quantity of content published on the Web, there is a corresponding need for critical evaluation of the quality of Web content.
    This is especially true in the case of political discourse as it is frequently infused with ideological overtones. In an 'information society,' it is important to
    recognize the connections between information and ideology. The proposed study seeks to contribute to the development of a critical approach to the use of
    language and images on the Web. In so doing, it draws on theory and methods from the fields of Computer-Mediated Communication, Discourse Analysis, and
    Feminist Media Studies. Sites reflecting a broad spectrum of political views are available on the Web. Critical discourse analysts make the case that ideology is
    evident through verbal discourse and visual representations. The critical discourse analysis (CDA) approach may be usefully be applied to Websites, which
    typically contain both text and images. The primary research question to be addressed in this study is: What are the textual and visual discourse features that
    indicate particular ideological positions in Web sites addressing two controversial issues: abortion and domestic violence. Of interest is
    the identification of patterns, or discourse features that provide the ability to distinguish systematically between sites with differing ideologies. The textual
    features of the selected sites were analyzed utilizing methods of Computer-Mediated Discourse Analysis (CMDA) grounded in the research tradition of CDA.
    
  • Defense Slides

Publications

• Susan C. Herring and Anna Martinson (2004). Assessing gender authenticity in computer-mediated language use: evidence from an identity game.
  Journal of Language and Social Psychology 23(4):397-423.
• Anna M. Martinson (2003). Ecofeminist perspectives on technology in the science fiction of Marge Piercy.
  Extrapolation 44(1):50-68.
• Anna M. Martinson, Nancy Schwartz, and Misha Walker Vaughan (2002). Women's experiences of leisure: implications for the design of new technologies.
  New Media & Society 4(1):25-45.
• Susan C. Herring, Anna M. Martinson, and Rebecca Scheckler (2002). Designing for community: the effects of gender representation in videos on a Web site.
  Proceedings of the 35th Hawai'i International Conference on System Sciences. Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE.
  • Awarded Best Paper in the Digital Documents Track
• Blaise Cronin, Herb Snyder, Howard Rosenbaum, Anna Martinson, and Ewa Callahan (1998). Invoked on the web.
  Journal for the American Society for Information Science 49(14):1319-1328.
• Blaise Cronin, Elizabeth Davenport, and Anna Martinson (1997). Women's studies: bibliometric and content analysis of the formative years.
  Journal of Documentation 53(2):123-33.

Research Projects

• Areas of interest include:
  • Gender, Discourse, and Information Technology
  • Intersections between Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Social Informatics (SI) and Feminist Theory
  • Gender, Information Technology, and Leisure

• Gender and Emergent Computer Mediated Communication Technologies. Working with Professor Susan C. Herring in the School of Library and Information Science.
  
  • Ongoing projects:
    • Ideological debates about feminism on the web (Dissertation)
  • Completed projects:
    • Gender and the design of the Inquiry Learning Forum (ILF)
    • An analysis of the gender identity games played at The Turing Game website
• Coherence in Chat. Working with Jennifer Stromer-Galley. This project combines Jennifer's interest in political communication with my interest in computer-mediated discourse analysis.
  • Coherence in Chat: Comparing Topics in Chat (Note: links to a MS Word document). Manuscript submitted to The Pragmatics of Computer-Mediated Communication being edited
    by Susan Herring, Dieter Stein, and Tuija Virtanen.
    • Abstract: Does political talk online promote healthy political discussion? There is a general perception that political chat is fragmented and incoherent.
      This study aims to better understand how focused political chat is in comparison with three other chat topics. Discourse Analysis and Dynamic Topic
      Analysis were applied to two hours of chat devoted to each of four topics: politics, auto racing, entertainment, and cancer support. Findings demonstrate
      that topic may have an effect on the coherency of chat, with discussion in the politics chat room being more coherent than in the other rooms. This research
      suggests that chat technology may not be an inherently problematic medium for engaged political discourse.
• Gender, Information Technology, and Leisure
  • Completed projects:
    • Women's experiences of leisure and technology
    • Satisfaction and enjoyment of computer games (working with Misha Walker Vaughan and Melissa Federoff)
    Ongiong projects:
    • Gender and computer games

Other Work

• Qualifying paper (MS Word file) Feminist Perspectives on Gender and Information Technology
• Working Papers (MS Word files)
  • Identifying Gender Ideology in Linking Practices on Websites about Domestic Violence. Early draft of paper analyzing dissertation data, August, 2005.

  • Domestic Violence on the Web: Is There a Digital Divide Between Theory and Practice? Draft of a paper presented at the Sustainable Feminisms conference held at Macalester College in 2003 and served as a partial pilot test for my dissertation research.

  • Gender, Information Technology and Leisure. Early draft of a conference paper for the Popular Culture Association / American Culture Association, April, 2003.

  • Is there a Place for a Feminist Theory of Space? Draft of paper for Professor Thomas Gieryn's course on the sociology of place. Traces patterns in physical space, intellectual space, and information space utilizing the fear of rape as the primary analytical lens.

Planning my homepage at the Great Wall in 1984.