Primary Research

When thinking about gaining primary research I decided to gain knowledge around the subject of online anonymity.  I chose to use the website Reddit. Reddit is commonly used as a forum-based website whereby users post talking points and things that they find interesting in order to engage with other online users and hopefully find common ideas between people. You can also post questions which anyone is free to answer without leaving your full name or any personal details. I decided to ask the question ‘What conversation would you have with your 10 year old self?’ I thought this would be appropriate to the project as it is a rather personal question which still recieved a large amount of responses which I probably would not have recieved if I had asked these questions to strangers face-to-face. Some responses were more personal than others touching upon childhood issues and things that they may have found inspiring at the time with hindsight. 

After receiving a few comments from my first question I decided to try again with the question;  ‘Why is it so wrong to break up with someone via text message?’ I thought this again would be relevant as it connects the themes of people and relationships and also the theme of the ability to hide behind a screen and somehow feel less responsibility. The replies I recieved were exactly what I expected and gave off the general feeling that it is incredibly disrespectful to do this to someone. This however begs the question; Why? So many of our relationships these days are based around instant messaging and social media so why can we not discuss the starting and ending of relationships through this media?

I also came across the website Omegle which is slightly controversial. It has a webcam feature which allows strangers to connect from all over the world in a face-to-face scenario. Naturally this results in some content which is NSFW to say the least however I came across a feature whereby I could anonymously ask a question and watch two strangers discuss it on my screen. Again I chose to ask a really personally question in order to hopefully show how people may be more comfortable to discuss said topics without embarassment or responsibility. 

I have presented just one of my responses above which touches upon personal issues experienced by these strangers and how their experiences may have the ability to bring them together. I personally found this incredibly interesting and started to think about how strange and completely differently these conversations would unfold in a real-life scenario. This again highlights how people are ultimately more comfortable behind a screen than they may be in person.