Thesis proposal
Written at 10:32, on Wednesday 4 July 2007. Tags: c-md .
My pre-master year at C-MD was succesfully concluded on the 25th of june with a presentation of my thesis proposal. My ideas have shifted quite a bit and my proposal evolved with it.
Initially, I wanted to explore the possibilities of Web 2.0 for police research, by building on the police’s initial steps on the web with politieonderzoeken.nl. However, this was too narrow, although I worked out some ideas in a study course on creative design. Brainstorming more about using the web for crime solving gave me the idea of a murder game, and with this idea in mind I found World Without Oil a great inspiration. This concept had all the ingredients: a mix of reality and fiction, community building, collective intelligence, user-generated content and cross-media story telling.
World Without Oil is a so-called “Alternate Reality Game”, and as such, a great example of how the web can be used to narrate, perform and collaborate on social issues that are too big for any one individual to solve. This would become my subject for my thesis proposal as I presented it:
“How can the Alternate Reality Game be used to make the world a better place?”
Due to the many exams we had in June I wasn’t able to further refine my research question, as it is still way too broad. When college starts again in September, I’ll have a couple of weeks to tweak it and turn it into something that’s measurable and executable within a year. I’ll probably work out one specific aspect which interests me, for example to investigate how game elements can be used in community building to increase the participation ratio.
In any case, if you’re interested, my research proposal can be found in the articles: Everything is a game. Feel free to comment on it!
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