November 24, 2009
Donate your text messages to science
A Université de Montréal researcher has a special request for Canadian texters: "Everyone young and old, students and workers, artists and business people, no matter who you are, send me your text messages," says Patrick Drouin, a linguistics professor at the Université de Montréal who is overseeing the North-American leg of the international research project called Texto4Science.
In recent years, texting as a means of communication has become a genuine societal phenomenon," says Drouin. "These messages, also known as SMS, are of a limited length and can be sent or received with a cell phone. This growing phenomenon is the source of great debate especially with regards to language. There is also great creativity stemming from the need to communicate succinctly and quickly, which is what my team plans to study.
The Texto4Sciencee project will be led by the Université de Montréal in collaboration with the University of Ottawa and Simon Fraser University. The research team hopes to collect 300,000 French text messages between November 2009 and April 30, 2010. To reach this target, participants are asked to forward text messages that they have sent to other cell phones to a short code number: 202202. Texters can then complete the online form at www.texto4science.ca.
Data collection for the Texto4Science will allow texters to actively contribute to a Canadian science project while being eligible to win prizes. Collected information will be analyzed and stored in a database. Phase two of the project, which will study English text messages, begins in 2010.
[via EurekaAlert Press Release]
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