The Romance Genre on the Web Researching online romance genre communities and their perspectives

About this research project		Links
I'm Bronwyn Clarke, a PhD candidate in the School of English Communication and Theatre at the University of New England in Armidale, NSW, Australia. My research project title is: Online communities of romance readers and writers and their perspectives on the genre. Through this project, I am exploring the nature and scope of romance readers' and writers' participation in online communities, and their perspectives on key issues and themes within the genre. This project has been approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee of the University of New England. HREC approval number is: HE07/022. Because the research project is exploring online communities of romance readers and writers, I am using several online methodologies: an online survey - which ran from March to October, 2007, and is now closed a research blog online focus groups and interviews - in the second stage of the project, in 2008. As far as I'm aware, this is the first major research into online romance genre communities, and I'm excited and looking forward to finding out YOUR perspectives and views about the romance genre, and how your participation in online communities influences how you read and write the genre. In accordance with the University of New England's Research Ethics policy, there is an Information for Participants page for each activity, which explains about how data will be collected, how it will be used, and the arrangements for your privacy. If you have any questions about the research project, please don't hesitate to contact me. If you have questions or concerns you'd like to discuss with someone other than me, each of the Information for Participants pages has contact details for my supervisor, Dr Leonie Rutherford, and for the Research Office at the University of New England.		Research blog Bronwyn's home page