Main | We were in the (campus) news before we were online »

January 27, 2005

Tracking pro and anti-Americanism in the world through a group-blog

Felt all over the world, America's power and influence fascinate, and trigger opposite reactions of love and hate, often at the same time, often within the same person. To this date there is no satisfactory instrument to gauge how these sentiments manifest themselves, how they evolve in parallel or in diverging manner according to locations and places. Nevertheless, many people think that such a tool would be very useful for Americans who want to know how they are perceived, and for every one interested in understanding today's world challenges.
Conceived as a first step in a longer term effort, this independent study project will create a group blog that will track manifestations of America related sentiments in a selected number of countries. The chosen countries will depend on the languages read by the participants, but we will try to track at least one country in each of the main world regions.

• Phase one - 8 weeks of blogging tracking manifestation of pro and anti-Americanism in a limited number of countries, and what is said about American related sentiments worldwide in some US media.
• Phase two - A 5 weeks experiment "in real space" with contributors in different parts of the world. According to the world situation at the moment of the experiment we will try to focus on reactions to one question. If this was to happen today, for instance, we might focus on what people are expecting of Bush's second term or on what is said at Davos and Porto Alegre.
• Phase three - We will round this up with a three weeks evaluation period in which we will elaborate a document summarizing the achievements and questions raised for further work (including some elements for a research agenda).

Posted January 27, 2005 03:43 PM

Comments

Post a comment