Accio Data

Hello again everyone,
I have been quite busy collecting data for the analysis portion of the Pottermore.com project. So, what I have chosen to show you all is a set of data from the Gryffindor House homepage. For those of you unfamiliar with the Pottermore.com site, there is a chat feed as well as two leaders boards: one for dueling leaders and the other for house points leaders. There are other features as well such as quotes from your house ghost and other such Harry Potter trivia related the the house. The overall goal of the game is to earn house points and to win the House Cup from the other three rival houses at Hogwarts.

So here is my data sample (a slice of chat feed from the Gryffindor House with pseudonyms in place of actual players' game names):

RubySky12345: "Good-Sea God"
2 minutes ago Report this Like

InkSpell67890: "Hey how was everybody's day - Hagrid"
4 minutes ago Report this Like

OwlPotion2843: "Sorry...do, not di"
5 minutes ago Report this Like

OwlPotion2843: "Where di I go next?"
5 minutes ago Report this Like

CentaurSickle2468: "Please read below"
5 minutes ago Report this Like

CentaurSickle2468: "Suggestion to the pottermore creators but maybe friends can have private chat boxes. Which you can monitor."
5 minutes ago Report this Like
1 person likes this

SilverSpell30167: "How to add friends?"
6 minutes ago Report this Like

OwlPotion2843: "I just got sorted...hi, everybody!"
6 minutes ago Report this Like

YewWand55679: "Thank you for reporting me. It just made my day :)"
7 minutes ago Report this Like

SnakeSpell33248: "OmG my obssesion with Harry Potter Im actually writing a book about this world following J K Rowlings every rule and every history ."
8 minutes ago Report this Like

So there it is. This particular data sample is helpful in understanding what kinds of interactions this particular game allows the players. Since Pottermore.com is primarily a one person game there is an interesting relationship that can be researched from this chat feed. There are other ways to interact with other players but it is very limited (duels which you can challenge other house players to and your friends; status updates much like Facebook). I liked this piece of data because it shows the variation in ability (?) of the players who use this site. It also demonstrates some of the digital language that we are seeing more frequently in online environments, as well as it works in real time and allows the "students" to help each other accomplish the one-player game tasks.

I think this was an interesting demonstration of David Bawden's (18) concept of digital literacy and how multiple formats interact to create a digital world which the individual needs to be able to navigate. I particularly liked how this linked with Bawden's list of skills for digital literacy (20):

• "knowledge assembly," building a "reliable information hoard" from diverse sources
• retrieval skills, plus "critical thinking" for making informed judgements about retrieved information, with wariness about the validity and completeness of internet sources
• reading and understanding non-sequential and dynamic material
• awareness of the value of traditional tools in conjunction with net-worked media
• awareness of "people networks" as sources of advice and help
• using filters and agents to manage incoming information
• being comfortable with publishing and communicating information, as well as accessing it

For future data collection and analysis of Pottermore.com, I have decided to focus further on the phenomenon of how players create an identity for themselves in a space which dictates much of how others perceive you as a player.


Until next time...
 

Works Cited

Bawden, David. "Origins and Concepts of Digital Literacy." (?). PDF file. 
http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~dbawden/digital%20literacy%20chapter.pdf

Data set taken from Pottermore.com on 10/3/2013 (Pseudonyms have been used to replace actual player names in the site)