How can we study New Media?

After our studio session this week--while I may not have spent much time using my new media tool-- I learned that the social aspect of working with new media is essential.
Before moving on, I would like to thank Jeffrey for his help debugging my imovie/iphoto importing process. It is with this assistance that I have found new media to be a bonding experience, not only with others but with certain new media as well. Now with a smoother process of importing movies, I can go about my business with greater ease--whereas before I was so frustrated I denied the program any attention. I know Jeffrey and I are not buddy-buddy, but there is greater appreciation for his talents (whatever simple task it was for him to fix my problem).
Now to see how this social interaction with new media can be studied--first, it would have to be through observation (to catch all the interaction details); and second, it would be through a possible debrief with both parties, or even those around us to show the effects of our debugging process. I would hope that these forms of data collection would capture the way we revolved around this one piece of new media and how it not only changed how we may work with each other in the future, but how we may interact with imovie as well.
This post seems to be too structured, but this week's studio really reinforced how important it is to work in a mini-community to ensure there are interactions amongst the constituents. We rearranged the tables this week into little pods, and maybe the way we were configured ourselves is what lent the interaction and new found faith in this new media. Julie and I had great ideas flowing, even though we were working on separate programs. But I think the sense of smaller communities within a larger one, and even larger one of IU made it more comfortable to share out and ask for assistance--so that could be investigated as well... Oh an Idea for Proposal...