Help?

Hello everyone, I hope that the research goes well. Mine currently inspires that awkward internet face :S.

I was wondering if anyone could direct me to some articles that breaks down post-colonial theory. My undergrad was sadly lacking in theory and I find myself wanting to use it but with no real direction.

Thanks!

Laura

AhHA!

First I want to point out how much I appreciate this week. Up until now I felt that I was being given a handful of puzzle pieces but I had never really been told what the picture looked like. This weeks readings felt like the: "so we threw all this at you, let us simplify and hold your hand for a second". I know that I should be able to sludge through it on my own and I really want the independent ability to think through the problems of my research proposal, but sometimes I just want my mom to hold my hand when I cross the street (outside of this horrid metaphor, my mom is actually a superhero ninja disguised as a cute little greying accountant so I like her help all the time).

I'm a little lost on what to comment on because I threw "Harvarding" out the window and read over this week with a fine tooth comb. I think I'll be SMART about it (and ask you to forgive me for over-tired brains excuses at humor this week). Knight laid out SMART as: Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely. Looking at my research this was it truly forces me to build my fences and define what is in my study to access the 'achievable, realistic and timely' aspects of SMART - ie. ART. Luker also seemed to have walked me through a similar set of requirements in chapter 7. Reflecting on my proposal I believe that I need to reconsider by I picked my specific cases and if I made the research harder on myself than necessary and potentially unattainable. For instance I chose to study a exhibit at a museum in Ottawa but I never considered the ROM as an alternative. I am likely not going to be able to go to Ottawa due to work reasons, so would this choice make my research unachievable and if so, would the ROM serve a similar purpose or does it not fit my study?

Ethics

Research with humans is a daunting task to me. Perhaps it stems from the fact that the majority of my interests are in areas that are difficult to access (Children, race, sexuality and trama). It is also the reason that I didn't take a MA in the program I had initially wanted. I think I will draw back to my comments during ethnography and state that so much can go wrong when the researcher goes in for information and doesn't recognize impact and harm that can come from it. Currently, I do not believe that I am able to conduct a human-participant research project in a manner that I would be confident with.

From the conversation of ethics, I would like to highlight areas that I find particularly important. First and formost is the concept of setting up a research model that is not harmful. This is particularly difficult when we are asking participants to talk about trama. In that case is it better to limit harm or to follow the research to the end? If the participants signed up with the knowledge that they are going to relive (through verbal story telling) a trama, then is it okay to fully explore their feelings during the research? This can be balanced by the inclusion of of agency and the recognition that agency exists but researchers also can influence it. The tricky bit is how to negotiate the sticky place between wanting something from out participants but setting up personal boundaries and also allowing them to decide personal boundaries and comfort levels.

Week 11 - ETHICS

children's input

I apologize in advance for this not being under the proper heading but in an attempt to 'get-ahead' on work (as if that is even possible lol) I'm posting wicked early:

So since I'm not planning on doing human research for my project I wanted to get into readings that were less technical and more enlightening in terms of realms of discourse I am unfamiliar with (I had to take a research ethics workshop in my undergrad due to a "research methods" for communication studies...) I ended up really enjoyed the Druin article, “what children can teach us,” mostly because I hadn’t ever dealt with ideas about children’s literature/libraries before

I think the article brings out a lot of innovative ways that we can change how things are searched/presented in the children’s section of the library.

First off, since researchers “reported that children suggested such search terms as “dinosaurs,” “dragons,” and “princesses,” children’s libraries can innovate and change to meet children’s needs by adopting different Boolean operators. I wonder how this would work: maybe research their search terms and input it into the system but have it be in a separate “kids search” section of the catalogue/website?

Secondly, based on the research finding “that children looked primarily at the book’s cover, pictures, and title when selecting books from a shelf and used these as selection criteria,” this suggests that children’s libraries could develop a different way of shelving these sections altogether. I envision rather than showing spines of a book, having frontal display units. I imagine that we would run into problems in terms of how much we could put on display but perhaps a rotation would peak kids’ interests in things other than what is hot/relevant?

It’s unfortunate that “despite children’s diverse and enthusiastic use of technology, they are a marginalized user group.” Reasons for this include: security reasons, impose restraints to achieve a uniform Web design, complexities of intellectual property and the rights of children to have access to information. I found the last one very interesting since things become even more complicated since when you add in the restrictions to access of information based on their age (for their protection) this can call in to question accessibility issues.

I’d like to finish off by playing Devil’s advocate (this will be a serious leap based on all the changes I’ve just suggested based on children’s inputs): the article states:

“The question of what materials are appropriate to be included in a collection is not new to librarians. What is new for digital collections is the diversity of materials that can be considered. Curatorial policies need to be reexamined in light of what is now possible in the digital realm… What has not changed is the concerns of children. Children still want more copies of books in better condition and more books for entertainment.”

Therefore, if children’s concerns are constant and are clearly outlined here, why do they need to be involved in the development of new digital libraries? Why don’t we get books in better condition and more books for entertainment? I’m sure there is a librarian with young children that can inform the collections development people what his/her kids are interested in based on what they see them doing (they may not even have to ask their kids!)…

The does article suggests a rebuttal and I Whole Heartedly agree BUT is it possible to not include them an still have a well-rounded kid’s section… ?

Offline/Online

I found Orgad’s discussion of offline and online data fascinating. I had not really gone so far as consider separating the research of the internet in that manner but Orgad’s makes a great argument for it. I am immediately drawn to online data collection because online behavior is often bizarre and extraordinary in comparison to what we expect out of citizens of our society. The space that it creates by promoting (physical?) distance between people participating in interactions also allows for a difference in presentation of self during these interactions. This is where the possibility of offline fascinates me. The possibility to have face-to-face conversations changes the dynamic and limits the 'acceptable' within confines of society norms. An interesting example could be looking at the new trend of internet vigilantism and talking to the people ‘unmasked’. The current Canadian example would be: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2011/11/16/bc-teen-vigilante-predator-superhero-costumes.html.

Week Ten

Week Nine

No class/readings for week eight.

Week 7 - Content and Critical Discourse Analysis

Knight enables easy appreciation of the potential for contested understanding surrounding attempts at claims making based on image type artifacts. The author's summary of concerns on page 104 would seem to serve as a sound basis for a researcher's self-assessment; that is the list including reactivity, "getting access", "sampling", and framing.

The section on "post-empirical" research also resonated versus past readings; in particular, Luker's reference to "data cropping" as a means to leverage past data collection efforts while pursuing theory based, interpretive study. I similarly took note of Knight's reference to "research-as-thinking" as a serious realm of inquiry along side "research-as-data-creation".

Suffice to say, the tone of grievance so prominent in the van Dijk reading on critical discourse analysis, made engagement on my part a challenge. While the notion of social cognition was made easy to grasp as a framework to appreciate the dynamic influencing perceptions of the “talk and text” dialogue among those in society who predominantly consume versus shape that dialogue, I would prefer a less partisan discussion.

In stark contrast, I very much enjoyed the Thomas reading. From among many passages I highlighted, I’ll mention two, both from page 694.

First, the suggestion that text analysis absent an explicit effort toward systematic measurement is prone to “the possibility, if not the tendency, to build the desired case. “ Thomas continues, “I have been forced to abandon several investigations when the actual codings turned out not to substantiate my initially strong, but casual, observations.”

Second, the observation that “objective” content analysis is premised on an overt effort to articulate the foundation of assumptions upon which study related “sampling and analytic” decisions rest.

Michael Watchorn

Week Seven

Post for week seven here please!

A personal reflection on my patch work undergrad

In my bachelors I was a bit of an academic slut - or flighty could be the polite term - but it was called both ways by many an academic friend (we feminists seem to like to reclaim words, I turned several shades of red the first time it was said to me and then slowly accepted it as a large bit true). I was a honors double major in Classical Studies and First Nations Studies with a minor in Women’s Studies and Feminist Research. It started because I couldn’t decide what I wanted to study and then ended with me deciding that I wasn’t going to choose. While my many disciplines did didn’t get along on much, they all seemed to LOVE content analysis with a health dose of text analysis to help it out.

Having said all that, I think I was doing it badly all along. I have never actually seen content analysis separated out the way that the Thomas did it. The more that I look back at the undergrad approach, the more I realize that methods were more or less stumbled into rather than selected with a specific aim. To see what the aim and benefits and the problems and pit falls of this method makes me pause to reconsider much of my work. The field of Classics is truly a field of interpretation. It is based on translation of primary source text from ancient - and often dead - languages and plays connect to dots with archaeological finds. The aspect of First Nations Studies and Gender Studies that I focused on was film and pop culture representation and its relationship to government policy (exciting I know). Both of these seem to happily lead to content analysis but I worry about many of the ways I built research and arguments outside of a methods foundation. Prior to this class I think that I viewed methods a bit like the title page; something to come back to and think about after you had finished it. Now I think I might want to date a couple of methods and treat them to a drink or two.

A picture is worth a thousand words?

From this week’s readings, I was particularly interested in the image-based research method that was mentioned in Knight. The description was very brief, so I decided to Google the topic to learn more about it. This led me to a posting in the INF1240 blog from last year, where Professor Grimes posted some additional links about image-based research.

One of these links (Centre for Visual Methodologies and Social Change) brought me to photovoice, an image-based research method, which I thought was really interesting. Photovoice is a participatory research method, where participants take photographs to document their experiences. This method is generally used in research concerning marginalized groups, as it allows for these groups to represent their own experiences instead of having their experiences described and reshaped by others. So much is up to interpretation when it comes to research, therefore, what better way is there to gather data than from (literally) a participant’s point of view?

Image / Documentary Analysis

I found Knight’s descriptions of image-based research and documentary analysis to be very helpful in terms of my own research. It is likely as a result of my undergraduate work in History, but I was drawn to these two types of research from the beginning. It may have also partly been because I was nervous to try something new, actually interacting with people rather than locking myself away in some corner of the library nesting in a pile of documents; but I do really enjoy the interpretive nature of this type of research. As Knight says, “it is more about different ways of reading the same texts than it s with unearthing new ones” (Knight 110). My initial research has confirmed Knight’s observation that with newspaper archives becoming available online (usually with search engine features), research is cheap and fast.

It was helpful for Knight to point out the areas where these types of research methods are flawed. Specifically, how image-based research should include theories of ‘sign’ (Knight 103) that will not necessarily confirm what is in print (102) and that they are difficult to systematically analyze (102). The second point about it not confirming what is in print is important since I plan on doing both image and document analysis and so I should plan for them to not necessarily have supportive interpretations. His suggestion to face-to-face work with typical informants’ understanding of the images I select will be something I will consider, perhaps even as a way of breaking out and doing interactive human research!

Critical Discourse Analysis

In the Dijk (1993) article, he discusses how the managing of the ‘mind of others is essentially a function of talk and text’. This presupposes an ontological statement regarding the legitimacy of the dominant group’s management over the masses. Groups may enact legitimate power over others, manipulating their minds in ways that are beneficial and necessary for the submissive group to function. Or, the dominant group may enact illegitimate power, manipulating and managing the group in a way that makes them entirely submissive and at the mercy of the dominant group. The function of a critical discourse analysis is to enact significant social change, Dijk even discusses that this metric is used to measure the success of a CDA project. But how are we to untangle what power or dominance is legitimate, and which are illegitimate? Also, how can we enact social change when we’re not sure of the function of the power relation?

Consider a news channel that broadcasts horrifying images of a war (this is a Completely and hypothetical News Network). We as CD analysts may view this as having power over the populace, managing their minds, and imposing dominance over them. However, if we unpacked this belief a little more, we may begin to see that these images are used to ‘rally the troops’, or to garner nationalism- which may hold significant value in an unsteady world. The news network may indeed hold power over the masses, and yes, they may even illegitimately manipulate the minds of the masses, but if we don’t understand the subtending goal of the news network – to promote nationalism – our goal of enacting social change may cause serious disruption to society.

Further, the notion of global communication channels was not addressed, and I feel these are of extreme importance to a discussion on discourses. Text and talk can travel instantly across the globe, but the values and meanings of these discourses do not travel similarly. How are we to enact social change when we a) need to figure out both the legitimacy of the power dynamic, and the ways in which the power dynamic functions, and b) how this discourse proliferates across the globe, and whether we would be creating injustices by projecting locally valid assumptions onto the ways of addressing those involved in these international flows.

Hi Everyone! And welcome to our new members!
This past week’s readings on ethnography were really very interesting to me. Although understanding some (very) basic elements to ethnography in anthropological terms, I had never quite thought about it in relation to any of my own research, partly because I assumed that it was something left for those anthropological folks to do!

I realise now that even if you are only doing a survey, or interview, etc, that there is most likely to be ethnographical elements to your research that need to be considered. To make my point, my research interest revolves around resettled coastal/ island communities in Newfoundland, formalized collecting institutions (such as museums and archives), and representation of these now extinct communities in their holdings. A component of the research would involve surveying resettled individuals because they are now remote and living no longer as a community unit (some remained in Newfoundland while others have gone to different parts of Canada). So, I am not dealing in a research environment that is bound to 1 geographical place, however the notion of being accepted by these communities now in diaspora is of great importance to me. Without their trust, I will not be able to gain a holistic picture of how they remember or want to remember their lost homes, and whether contemporary collecting practices in formal institutions is reflective of their culture/ traditions.... My approach to even structuring (both in format and tone) the survey, and follow-up interviews, is changing and my approach to accessing these individuals will have to be thought out very differently.

Week 6 – Interviews, Focus Groups, and Observation

Truth be told, I knew from the get-go that my sensibilities would predispose me to research questions suggesting a fit with canonical based methods of inquiry and analysis. That said, I read portions of this week’s reading list with an easy sense of appreciation and empathy.

While Luker’s discussion concerning the refinement of an interview schedule (question clumps, turn signals, and “cool down” questions), the need to create “slots” as a means to test schedule related relevance and breath, and the need to be mindful of one’s appearance was of general interest, I felt a greater sense of engagement in the follow-up discussion concerning focus groups; for example, the comment (p. 183) concerning their capacity to enable an abundance of “slots” leading to a rich flow of data and very likely, a satisfying experience for the researcher (p. 187). I also found useful the comment concerning content analysis as a means to recognize “discursive shifts” – those times when an alternate frame of reference underpinning a particular dialogue becomes the norm (p. 189).

The effort to stay engaged with the Shaffir and Stebbins readings was, as a function of the illustrations (faith, football, and baseball) also an easy effort. I found myself easily absorbed in the balancing act each described while working to build trust and a credible projection of competency concerning subject-relevant knowledge, versus the understanding that sound research necessitates discernible detachment.

Michael Watchorn

Interviewing

Maybe it was just me being a little naive, but I never thought that there would be so much prep work that goes into using interviews as a research method! This may be because the only type of “interviews” (operationalization!) that I have had experience with are those of the job and volunteer positions variety. For these types of interviews, it seems that they have a rigid interview structure, consisting of questions and a predefined list of suitable answers. In this way, it is not at all similar to interviews used for research, where it is often valuable for the interviewer to discover something new and unheard of.

On the other hand, “fitting in” is something that can be applied to both types of interviews. When interviewing for a volunteer position, it is important to establish a connection with those who you will be working with. When it comes to conducting research, being able to fit in is essential in gaining the trust of participants so that the interviewer can hopefully extract the most honest responses from them.

Week Six

Week Five

Week five posts here please!

Week Four

Post comments for week four here please!

Week Three

In the Luker and Knight texts, the comparison between journalism and social science research was made. I find it very interesting that this comparison is even discussed, as it seems to cheapen sociological research. Social science research is by no means new-- the systematic study of society has been performed for hundreds of years. Why are we still justifying its presence?

I feel that social scientists should forgo these claims and justifications, for if we as social scientists don't deem our own field as legitimate, how is anyone else to?

I understand that there is 'bad' social science research out there, and additionally know that we are all in a way 'social scientists'. Is this perhaps the reason we need to justify our claims and research?

Tamara

Week One

In class today, a question was posed regarding our upcoming research proposals, and what we were all planning to do. I had mentioned that I wanted to look into user-centered design - specifically design elements that make websites successful. I too am wondering what everyone else was thinking of doing.

- Tamara