Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 2.
Conversation Map interface for Archive 2.
cluding www.deja.com. The staff at DejaNews was kind enough to provide us
with the two archives discussed here.
The X-files
is a weekly show produced by Twentieth Century Television in
association with Fox Broadcasting Company. The show has two main char-
acters, FBI Agents Dana Scully and Fox Mulder (played by actors Gillian An-
derson and David Duchovny, respectively), who investigate cases reported to
involve extraterrestrials, paranormal phenomena, and government conspiracy.
It is an award winning television show now in its sixth season. More informa-
tion about the show and short descriptions of the episodes can be found at the
official
X-files
website: http://www.thex-files.com/.
Message Archive 1
: These messages were exchanged during the week follow-
ing the airing of the episode entitled “Quagmire” (4 May 1996 - 10 May 1996).
In the “Quagmire” episode a Loch Ness monster-like creature is suspected of
killing several people. About 700 participants posted over 1900 messages to the
Usenet newsgroup alt.tv.x-files during this week after this episode was shown.
A sketch of the analyzed messages from this archive can be seen in Figure 1.
Message Archive 2
: These messages were exchanged during the week follow-
ing the airing of the episode entitled “Hell Money” (30 March 1996 - 5 April
1996). The “Hell Money” episode concerns a high-stakes gambling game in
which the players risk their own organs (e.g., their eyes and kidneys). Approx-
imately 900 participants posted 2400 messages to the Usenet newsgroup after
this episode. Figure 2 shows the Conversation Map automatically generated
from the analysis of messages posted that week.
