ROME: 5th January 2006 -- Most readers would be aware
that in the course of the past year, some fairly sophisticated content
analysis software has been applied, with useful and interesting
results, to some important material - the total set of responses to the
Brother's Questionnaire in preparation for the 2006 Assembly in the
Region, for example (this analysis can be downloaded and read from the
Brother's page on Bosconet). The same process was actually
applied here at the Pisana to the complicated set of responses given by
60+ community members to their community project. It certainly
helped the process to clarify the key ideas and people's 'drift'.
So, I thought I would apply the same software to
austraLasia, the full set of items for the year 2005, to see if we are
anywhere near meeting our stated aim which is to provide news from/for
and create bonds amongst the far-flung entities, circumscriptions and
more importantly, people belonging to the Salesian Family in our
Region. Herewith some results.
Firstly some basic statistics: there were 391
editions of austraLasia in 2005. One doesn't need to be Mandrake
to work out that this offers a frequency of one a day and a teeny bit
more. It seems to be a good frequency to maintain. It is
possible to tell exactly what these items applied to - if we go by
province or similar grouping, here's how it looks: Between the two
Philippines provinces plus Pakistan - 43; Thailand-Cambodia - 42;
Vietnam-Mongolia - 31; Japan - 29; Australia-Samoa-Fiji - 26;
China-Taiwan - 25; Papua New Guinea-Solomon Islands - 22;
Indonesia-East Timor - 19; Korea - 16; in addition to our own area,
South Asia recorded 51 items (the provinces of India plus Myanmar), and
a further 106 had no particular application to a place but were general
news items, 'Salesian' general - 80, and other general (as distinct
from Mother General!) - 26. That all adds up to a little over 400
- some of the items applied to more than one place so were recorded in
both, some items referred to specific entities within the Salesian
Family rather than an SDB province.
Altogether I have noted 43 correspondents who have
provided at least one item in the course of the year. I may have
missed a couple along the way. 10 of those are quite regular and have
adopted a pattern of one new item (or more) per month. This seems
to be a winning formula and I would encourage others to consider
it. It results in a good overall flow of news and views.
In terms of content anlaysis, it is not possible
here to go into the details available, but it is an interesting
picture, a scattergram, if you like, showing not only frequency of
concepts but relationships and inter-relationships. It can be
viewed from several angles. One of these turns up 6 main concept
clusters: Salesian (which includes young people, confreres,
work, community, the RM, Salesian Family); school (which also
includes parish, children, home, studies and - I haven't yet worked out
why - novitiate house!); news - news is news, enough said; life
(includes mission, group); then a cluster of time and place
locators (province, region, world, day, year...); finally - English,
which probably reflects a fascination of the coordinator, but also the
fact that this language has been chosen as the lingua franca of
the region. Another angle on this identified Salesian,
Community, Region as the three key concepts around which the rest
clustered. Yet another way of seeing all the above was to
identify a Salesian-young people-work pattern, a Don
Bosco-life-world-community pattern, and a students-school-English-group
pattern. Over to you to determine whether or not all the above
adequately reflects Salesian Life and Mission in the psyche and the
reality of our readers and contributors!
In the course of 2005 austraLasia introduced several
improvements: most significant was RSS, which enables people to be more
selective and discerning in reading choice. Another was the
occasional introduction of a glossary for difficult or unusual words -
which many have commented on as helpful. A third was the listing
of all items in Bosconet under their various province groupings, so
readers can gain the kind of overall picture I have just outlined
above. austraLasia also links in neatly enough with other similar
Salesian e-letter distribution networks like Rualink, Boscolink, BIS,
and of course ANS which it feeds into almost daily. This
makes for a powerful set of connections in the English-speaking
Salesian world. Occasionally this 'power' is discernible in other
ways. Within three hours of the most recent austraLasia on the
B&W Don Bosco DVD, Ireland had received orders for nine
copies. What a pity we are not in this game for filthy lucre!!
VOCABLULARY
filthy lucre: money
____________________
AustraLasia is an email
service
for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions
as an
agency for ANS based in Rome. For RSS feeds, subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/rssala.xml
