Qualitative 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 MoreInteraction in digital contexts: persistent characteristics
How does digital media influence the enactment of self, the interplay of self and other, and the construction of meaning in context? This is a key question in thinking about the dramaturgy of digital experience, which is also the title of a chapter I’m working on for the revised Handbook of Dramaturgy, edited by Charles Edgley. I’m not a dramaturgical scholar by training, but I have a lot of background in symbolic interactionism, which is a strong foundation of the dramaturgical approach. I also happen to have studied Kenneth Burke in grad school, who, with Erving Goffman, are credited as key founders of Dramaturgy. Big question, but here, I focus on the starting point: certain persistent characteristics of Internet for communication[1] and...
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 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?