Doing study on magicians and Internet at Finnish university

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Juha-Matti
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Joined: March 25th, 2009, 8:46 am
Location: Finland, Lapland
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Doing study on magicians and Internet at Finnish university

Postby Juha-Matti » March 25th, 2009, 9:02 am

Dear fellow Magicians


First of all, I would like to apologize because this subject doesnt have anything to do with the Genii magazine, but it seems that most of the post on this part of the forum dont either.


My name is Juha-Matti Ristiharju and I am Finnish magician. I have been interested in magic for almost 20 years. I am just semi-professional at the moment and when I am not performing, I am studying at the University of Lapland. My major is media education and I should graduate this spring. I have already completed my bachelor's degree in which I studied different materials used by magicians to learn magic tricks.


I am currently working on my masters thesis. My goal is to study the role of Internet and Internet communities in magicians lives and try to understand how Internet can help magicians in learning magic.


This enquiry is my way to gather up the material to my study. For the subjects of this study my goal is to find around 100 magicians, around the world, to fill in this questionnaire. I have posted this enquiry to most big magicians web communities I am a member of. Filling this shouldnt take more than 15 minutes and it would help me tremendously in my study.

There are very few scientific studies made on magic on the University level. These studies have possibility to make our art more respected and more known in the future.

The results should be available in Finnish in the may 2009. Possibly short synopsis in English might also be posted on most big magic forums and is available from me sometime at summer as well.

All answers will be handled personally by me. No one else will see the contents of the answers so your opinions and identities are safe and they wont come out in the results.

The study is done with webropol enviroment. If you feel that you use Internet in your magic hobby quite a lot, preferaply at least once every few days I would love to hear from you. The questionnaire will open up with the following link:

https://www.webropol.com/P.aspx?id=314083&cid=73208403


If you have any questions regarding this study, feel free to email me at jristiha@ulapland.fi


Juha-Matti Ristiharju
Ratakatu 10 a5
96100 Rovaniemi
Suomi/Finland
jristiha@ulapland.fi
"For every magic DVD you watch, read at least 3 magic books"

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Tom Stone
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Re: Doing study on magicians and Internet at Finnish university

Postby Tom Stone » March 25th, 2009, 9:45 am

Juha-Matti wrote:My goal is to study the role of Internet and Internet communities in magicians lives and try to understand how Internet can help magicians in learning magic.
...
I have posted this enquiry to most big magicians web communities I am a member of.
...
If you feel that you use Internet in your magic hobby quite a lot, preferaply at least once every few days I would love to hear from you.

Isn't your thesis in danger of becoming rejected, because of a very biased sampling of magicians?

If you are going to study the role of Internet and Internet communities in magicians lives, and only ask magicians who obviously are active on the net, the variable of magicians not using internet is omitted, causing the result to become very skewed.

This is not meant as critizism, just a small concern.

Juha-Matti
Posts: 9
Joined: March 25th, 2009, 8:46 am
Location: Finland, Lapland
Contact:

Re: Doing study on magicians and Internet at Finnish university

Postby Juha-Matti » March 25th, 2009, 4:24 pm

It was conscious decision to limit the test sample to only magicians, who use the Internet a lot.

I already did my bachelors thesis on What materials Finnish magicians use when learning magic tricks alone In the study I also asked them to rate the pros and cons of different materials when learning magic tricks. This study was geared to all levels of Finnish magicians. However the Internet didnt come up too much in the results of that study. One reason for this was that the study in the end was answered mainly by the older generations of magicians (over 30 years old).

I felt that the Internet had to have much bigger role for magicians. Especially to the younger magicians, because it is so hard to find good quality material to learn magic, when you are starting out. Because of this, most magicians these days get their first contact with magic from the Internet.

Also the Internet already has huge role in the lives of people in general and therefore it also affects a lot of magicians. Especially those who live in places, where there is no other magicians around, seem to spend a lot of time, just browsing around the forums and youtube and so on, looking for anything magic related.

The main topics of my thesis are to study the magicians opinions if it is possible learning magic tricks from the Internet and also study the learning process that happens in the web communities. Some key concepts of the study come from the media pedagogy. To mention a few "sense of community", "shared expertise" and so on.

Of course the introduction to the enquiry doesnt tell my goals too carefully, and I sadly cant reveal them anymore than this here either, because this might have affect on the answers I will receive. My study is guided by a Lector of media pedagogy, and he has approved my enquiry form and he is aware of my goals in the study, so I am not concerned that my thesis would be rejected. It is very common in all thesis level studies to have rather strict group of research subjects. This is not doctors Phd after all.

That said, I am extremely grateful on all opinions. Also on this one.

Juha-Matti
"For every magic DVD you watch, read at least 3 magic books"

Juha-Matti
Posts: 9
Joined: March 25th, 2009, 8:46 am
Location: Finland, Lapland
Contact:

Re: Doing study on magicians and Internet at Finnish university

Postby Juha-Matti » March 27th, 2009, 11:53 am

Hmmm... Over 120 views and under 10 answers from here... Starts to seem like Nielsen was right with his 90-9-1 formula ;) Meaning 90% of the users in web communities just browse around and under 10% partisipates. Come one people. Answering doesnt take more than 10-15minutes :) I am lacking about 20 answers

Juha-Matti
"For every magic DVD you watch, read at least 3 magic books"


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