What is Remix? A research method oriented sketch
[this post continues discussion from previous posts:] Remix as a lens for qualitative methods Complications of social (research) contexts in the 21st Century Remix is a term that came into usage in the late 20th century to refer to the practice and product of taking samples form audio tracks and putting them together in new and creative ways. The history of remix is most often linked to the music form of Jamaican Dub, represented well by artist King Tubby. King Tubby–whose work influenced generations of hip hop artists engaged in dub, scratch, rap, and DJ–began deconstructing and reconstructing musical tracks in the late 60s. We’re now very familiar with the way songs are remixed in ways that extend or reinterpret them for different...
Read MoreRemix as a Lens for Interpretive Qualitative Methods
In early 2011, I started getting all of my news of the world exclusively through my social media networks, specifically Twitter and Facebook. I wanted to immerse myself in the premise that “while people using media are simultaneously and instantaneously connected with large and multiple groups and networks, they are also increasingly ascribed with a deeply individualized and self-centered value system” (Deuze, Blank, & Speers, 2011, para 28). ‘Homophily’, a concept describing the way people tend to flock toward similar others, is one way to describe how our understandings of the world are idiosyncratic, narrowly channeled through our social networks, and therefore polarized. Not only did I experience homophily, but very soon, I found myself saturated...
Read MoreQualitative Analysis as Sensory Performance
I am reading about synaesthesia, the blending or blurring of senses that happens when one becomes particularly attenuated to a way of knowing that eludes a single sense. I’ve been thinking about this for years, actually, drawing inspiration from naturalist writers like David Abrams or Diane Ackerman, who invoke Merleau-Ponty to describe our perception of the natural world. I’m most intrigued by how synaesthesia relates to the process of interpretation, particularly in social research. We are bodies in motion, constantly sorting out our experiences through our senses. In online contexts, this can become more evident through the absence of certain perceptual filters. I’ve written about this in regards to interviewing and participant...
Read MoreDeconstructing the term “Fieldwork”
I’ve been thinking a lot about how we use “Fieldwork” as an umbrella term, sometimes without really reflecting on what this means, or might not mean. Particularly in digital contexts, the activities of fieldwork must be so radically adjusted, they hardly resemble fieldwork anymore. How much do we have to shave the square peg of ‘participant observation’ to fit it into the round hole of Twitter? And how can I take seriously someone who doesn’t problematize this practice or the outcomes? I’d like to debunk, or maybe deconstruct the term. My desire to do this emerges from another quest; to help qualitative researchers embrace innovation and invention without constantly reinventing the wheel or embracing the...
Read MoreSymbolic Interaction, Network Analysis, and Social Media
Simon Lindgren and I have finally finished a draft of a new article. Forthcoming, after revisions, in Studies in Symbolic Interaction, volume 39 (anticipated 2012). Any comments welcome! Here’s a PDF of the draft copy. Abstract Below: In spite of the seeming incompatibility of network analysis and a symbolic interaction approach, we have both been drawn to some of the possibilities offered by a network sensibility. When the tools are separated from the disciplinary parameters for which they were developed (primarily Social Network Analysis, or SNA), a network sensibility offers a beguiling method for extending certain approaches, such as grounded theory, symbolic interactionism, or ethnography, and specifying other approaches, such as actor network theory...
Read MoreDramaturgical Approach: What’s different about digital experience?
I’m working on a chapter on Dramaturgy and Digital Experience and I’m working out how to structure the frame for the piece. I thought it might be useful to brainstorm here, as well as talk about the key question for me, which is: What makes digital experience different from everyday life in the 21st Century? Frankly, this would have been an easier chapter to write twenty years ago, when performative aspects of digital experience were more novel, more on the screen, and involved more virtuality. Now, of course, the digital is interwoven into everyday life through a range of devices and interfaces. As Turkle aptly noted back in 1995, what might have been called “life on the screen” has been thoroughly transformed into “life in...
Read MorePart IV: From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern
(From network analysis to network sensibilities: Part IV) Part I Part II Part III Part IV here The study of networks is not just the study of how things are connected. It is a way of rethinking what we identify as the object of analysis. Breaking it down to such a level may seem to oversimplify network analysis, but from a methodological perspective, this actually enables us to build the framework pragmatically from the ground up. Arguably, social media are changing the way we experience the world. What we consider self, structure, and ‘the social’ are far more temporal and ad hoc than fixed. Whether or not this is the case or anything radically new, social media help us see how our research contexts are not pre-existing milieus but an assemblage of elements...
Read MorePart III: Moving beyond the discrete to study the space of flows
(From network analysis to network sensibilities: Part III) Part I Part II Part III here Moving beyond the discrete to study the space of flows Consider some of the persistent notions that arise in multiple disciplines over the past few decades: That what we consider an organization is a momentary freezing of flux and transformation (Morgan, 1986), which we can only identify through retrospective sensemaking (Weick, 1969); that space is the crystallization of time (Castells, 1996, p. 411); that the ‘individual,’ far from being a universal concept (e.g., Strathern, 1992), is one that is only understood in terms of relation and interaction (e.g., Blumer, 1969); or that both micro or macro elements of ‘the social,’ such as individuals and institutions,...
Read MorePart II: Network Sensibilities as Generative Tool
(From network analysis to network sensibilities: Part II) Part I Part II here Part III Network Sensibilities as Generative Tool Most directly, network analysis strategies promote visual mapping of key elements (nodes), connections between them, and the overall structure of the system. This type of visualization can be used in generative ways throughout a study. By generative, I include the processes of generating data, generating organizational strategies for one’s data, generating multiple analytic coding schemes or categories, and generating links between levels such as local/global, relational/structural, and so forth. While the focus may be primarily directed toward the phenomenon, it is equally beneficial to use network sensibilities to map one’s own...
Read MoreFrom Network Analysis to Network Sensibilities: Part I
(First of a four-part essay on my recent thoughts about using a network perspective in qualitative studies of internet-related contexts) Maybe it’s the pretty pictures generated by big data. Maybe it’s the impulse to unfocus the analytic gaze from location to locomotion. Whatever. The question that prompted me to start thinking about network analysis went something like this: “Could network analysis offer something that another method or lens couldn’t?” My immediate response was to answer simply: “No.” As a tool for identifying elements of a system, network analysis works well. As a method for understanding meaning in context, it has always been inadequate, at best. From an interpretive or poststructuralist ethnographic standpoint,...
Read Moretwitter feed
- listening to fab talk on collage as qualitative analysis at #ICQI13 by Teri Holbrook. Wish network was better-i'd tweet pithy quotes
- listening to fabulous talk on collage as qualitative analysis at #ICQI by Teri Holbrook. Wish network was better--i'd tweet pithy quotes
- wow, not much tweets of #ICQI13 --maybe a different hashtag? or just not a twitter-ish conference?