ZackZaban.com

Twitter API and I are becoming the best of friends.

Words do no justice in explaining what I’m working on for my senior honor’s thesis at the moment. For the past few days, I’ve researched the Twitter API resource center to figure out what’s feasible for data archiving. For those who don’t know what an API is, this link explains the concept (much better than I can).

A few things that I’ve learned over the past few hours:

1. Programmers do not have the same grammar and editing skills as journalists. I found about 17 errors per page on the API site.
2. For social media data mining, you’re probably going to find someone online who has created an application that will suit your needs. I eventually came across The Archivist and believe it has the functions necessary to complete my research (sidenote: I’ll probably spend many hours in Excel analyzing the data that I receive from The Archivist. You will hear about this in the future.)
3. Don’t stress out about technology. At first, I wanted to break down and cry when I looked at this Twitter programming language. Google, in all its information indexing glory, worked like a charm and with a few different searches, I pulled up a few SlideShare presentations that broke down API terms into simple concepts that a high school student could comprehend.

It’s almost 1 am and I’m sitting at Memorial library with a cluster of pens/highlighters and a cup of coffee from Espresso Royale.

Why am I writing at the moment? Well, to tell you the truth, I need to write to stay on top of my thesis and be proactive in my research.

The past week has been, for a lack of a better word, cumbersome. I was confronted with 3 long assignments that drove Microsoft Office and the UW-Madison library system to become my two best friends.

Still, I found time to figure out, in part, what I would like to do for my senior honors thesis. The topic : Twitter. The focus: 24 hours in crisis communication.

I’ll spare you the boring details about the project for the time being.

I’m happy that I pushed myself to take an additional class in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. The class, Communication Research Methods, is beyond helpful when understanding and designing research methods. It’s challenging, but worth the reward. If you want to know what I’m talking about, just visit the course website for more information.

But back to the thesis…

Both my book for the journalism class and a book I purchased for my senior honors thesis are helpful. The later of the books would be beneficial for any student who is or will eventually write a thesis in the near future. The book image on the right will take you to the Amazon website for details about the book.

OK, I actually need to get to bed.

Hi Everyone.

If have 3 different guesses as to why you are at this blog:

1. You know about my upcoming year long project.
2. You know me and managed to stumble upon my blog from a link at a different social media outlet like my Twitter account or Face.
3. You DON’T know me and somehow found this blogs on the series of tubes that some people like to call the Internet.

In any case, I welcome you to my (oh, if you don’t know me, my name is Zack Zaban) blog regarding my senior honors thesis project. Currently, I am a senior in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin- Madison (UW-SJMC for short). To graduate with “Honors in the Major” I need to complete a comprehensive thesis that encompasses two semesters worth of research and writing.

Right now, I’m in the early stage (we’re talking “zygote”) of research. I’m trying to figure out what I want to research. I know of two components so far: health communication and internet communication. Besides that, nothing is set in stone and I need to browse through many scholarly articles.

Luckily, I just received my How To Write A BA Thesis book in the mail, so I have a better understanding of what I actually need to accomplish.

Alrighty. Back to homework.