How Can Qualitative Researchers Produce Work That is Meaningful Across Time, Space, and Culture?
Markham says that "the product of our research is several times removed from experience" and that "our theory about how the world works is bounded by invisible frames" that we can not control or ever really grasp and define.
She argues against the question of the chapter, that it's not really possible to do given the invisible frames.
Markham offers reflexivity as a way to offset these frames. Researchers should think about where they are coming from in order to interpret other information, even going so far as "othering" themselves.
Defining the term "global" is important because it is an all encompassing term.
She says that "any study of communication will be both local and global (glocal), but the power of qualitative approaches is most aptly realized at the local level." Meaning you cannot really think globally until you think locally, then apply that knowledge to a global context.
Basically, think about who you are, why you have the views that you do about the research you are conducting, about all the categories of human you fall under, class, nationality, gender, sex, marital status, omnivore, vegetarian, age, etc. before you start to think about what all of it might mean. Talking to people, peers, mentors, research subjects, and conducting writing exercises might help. It could confuse you more and change your questions, but you need to embrace change and just go for it.
Questions:
1. What do you think, is it pointless to really try to do research globally, even if you do try to define "global?"
2. What do you think about "glocal?" Is the internet breaking down enough walls to have this hybrid.
Showing posts with label internet inquiry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label internet inquiry. Show all posts
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Question 5 Discussion Post
Question 5: How Can Qualitative Researchers Produce Work That Is Meaningful Across Time, Space, And Culture
Markham reiterates the chapters question: “Is it posible to make one’s research more global and meaningful across time and cultural boundaries? […] should this be a primary goal?”
- Markham purports that global scope and universal mutual understanding are impossible.
- The author argues that no matter what, our research is grounded in cultural frameworks, invisible to us.
- Global scale does not entail global understanding.
- Markham suggests that key “global” ethnographies advocate work that is local in scale, and global in sensibility not scope.
- She asserts that the best we can hope for in our research is similar shared experience transcending audience and trans-cultural compatibility.
Markham advocates a deeply reflexive research process that locates the self in research, and searches for incompatibilities with other audiences.
- She argues that Internet research involves what is always intrinsically a local socio-cultural phenomenon. She continues that local contexts illuminate larger contexts.
- Internet Research:
Local Social Phenomenon vs. Research with global sensibilities
- Research reflexivity includes an understanding of what “global operation” one is hoping to achieve. (See the muddy list of global operationalizations on p. 137-138)
- The author also proposes praxis of othering one’s self (and locale) to gain clarity on personal location.
- Reflexivity as a defining force methodologically and rhetorically includes:
- Make the object of research situated in relation to other people places and things.
- Make work as accessible and meaningful to other cultures and locations as possible knowing that complete trans-cultural understanding is impossible
- Markham spends the rest of the chapter laying out valuable questions to help frame your research reflexibly with global sensibility.
Lally’s Response:
- We need to find rhetorical “tricks” to bring our preconceptions to the foreground
- Research is a creative process
Srinivasan’s Response:
- The personage of the researcher embodies a meaning, which is culturally and contextually created outside and in lieu of research
- Internet research must maintain its trans-nationality (global quantity) without sacrificing local reflexivity.
- We should consider trans-national 3rd spaces, social networks, and virtual worlds as part of the Internet global and local to understand the cultural context of phenomena.
- Srinivasan proposes that some aspects of research method building be participatory with users/audiences.
- What does global sensibility vs. global scope mean or entail in research?
- How would one go about othering one’s own approach and locale?
- How does creativity factor into research outside of pure methodology? (i.e. not simply what tools to use for research)
- What would participatory research method construction look like? How would this be implemented? How would this refine the researcher’s perception of self, local(e) and global?
Discussion Questions:
Internet Inquiry - Question Six
Chapter Summary: Internet Inquiry, Question 6
Baym, who is one of the editors of the book, concludes the book with a summary of each chapter and her own synthesis of the material and issues covered.
Her concern is with the overarching consideration of “quality” as it is framed within internet research and more generally in any kind of research.
She initializes the dialog by stating, “doing qualitative research well is a matter of finding practical and defensible balancing points between opposing tensions”. She then offers some guidelines for conducting good research, referring to the examples within the book.
This idea of balancing tension is explored in great detail. She suggests researchers employ a dialectic approach, as this method allows one to approach relationships as a dynamic process. In this framework she indicates that the goal of qualitative research is “not to catalog the definitive set of contractions in personal relationships but to understand… how couples deal with dialectical tensions”. The importance is placed on understanding processes for dealing with these tensions.
She sets up the dialogic approach with a series of “methodological dialectics”:
1. Rigor and imagination
2. Fact and value
3. Precision and richness
4. Elegance and applicability
5. Vivification and verification
Baym then reviews the dialectics that are attended to in the book:
1. Tidiness and messiness
2. Depth and breadth
3. Local and global
4. Risk and comfort
Some general points she makes:
With regard to depth and breadth she indicates that one has no choice but to bound a project, create tidy interpretations of a modest slice of the field bypassing other interesting avenues along the way. Generalizability is neither relevant nor possible. She claims that it more important that one can offer analyses that can be coordinated with others. With regards to comfort she says, “Intellectual benefits are often accrued through taking practical, intellectual, logistical and emotional risks”.
Baym then discusses the very possibility of whether there can even be standards for quality in a worked of multiple social meanings. And then makes some concrete recommendations.
Baym revisits what we have been noticing in all of our class discussion, with the reduction of the analyses always settling into a solid statement of “it depends”. However she does take great pains to clarify that just because there “are no right or wrong methods” does not mean that all research is equally as useful or relevant. She bemoans the condition within which researchers struggle that has resulted in the foundations of methodology becoming so unstable that the rigor and value of the research is open to challenge by critics.
In a climate where judgment criteria are always open to reinterpretation Baym argues that there are still strategies that yield better or worse results. She states that just because “there is no direct access to truth does not mean that all studies are equally compelling”
Baym lays out a list of criteria that she believes contribute to successful internet studies:
1. Grounded in theory and data
2. Demonstrate rigor in data collection and analysis
3. Use multiple strategies to collect data
4. Takes into account perspective of participants
5. Demonstrates awareness and self-reflexivity regarding process
6. Considers interconnectiveness between internet and “life-world”
Baym then lays out a concrete explicit program that includes:
1. Connect to History
2. Focus
3. Be Practical
4. Anticipate Counter-Arguments
Baym concludes by restating the aim of qualitative research being “not to find a single explanatory element but to reveal the complexity of our subject.” She returns to her claim that qualitative internet research should be considered as a process of managing dialectical tensions. In so doing we create the possibility of adding a thorough, grounded, trustworthy voice that adds to a meaningful conversation, and that others can build on.
Questions:
Baym, who is one of the editors of the book, concludes the book with a summary of each chapter and her own synthesis of the material and issues covered.
Her concern is with the overarching consideration of “quality” as it is framed within internet research and more generally in any kind of research.
She initializes the dialog by stating, “doing qualitative research well is a matter of finding practical and defensible balancing points between opposing tensions”. She then offers some guidelines for conducting good research, referring to the examples within the book.
This idea of balancing tension is explored in great detail. She suggests researchers employ a dialectic approach, as this method allows one to approach relationships as a dynamic process. In this framework she indicates that the goal of qualitative research is “not to catalog the definitive set of contractions in personal relationships but to understand… how couples deal with dialectical tensions”. The importance is placed on understanding processes for dealing with these tensions.
She sets up the dialogic approach with a series of “methodological dialectics”:
1. Rigor and imagination
2. Fact and value
3. Precision and richness
4. Elegance and applicability
5. Vivification and verification
Baym then reviews the dialectics that are attended to in the book:
1. Tidiness and messiness
2. Depth and breadth
3. Local and global
4. Risk and comfort
Some general points she makes:
With regard to depth and breadth she indicates that one has no choice but to bound a project, create tidy interpretations of a modest slice of the field bypassing other interesting avenues along the way. Generalizability is neither relevant nor possible. She claims that it more important that one can offer analyses that can be coordinated with others. With regards to comfort she says, “Intellectual benefits are often accrued through taking practical, intellectual, logistical and emotional risks”.
Baym then discusses the very possibility of whether there can even be standards for quality in a worked of multiple social meanings. And then makes some concrete recommendations.
Baym revisits what we have been noticing in all of our class discussion, with the reduction of the analyses always settling into a solid statement of “it depends”. However she does take great pains to clarify that just because there “are no right or wrong methods” does not mean that all research is equally as useful or relevant. She bemoans the condition within which researchers struggle that has resulted in the foundations of methodology becoming so unstable that the rigor and value of the research is open to challenge by critics.
In a climate where judgment criteria are always open to reinterpretation Baym argues that there are still strategies that yield better or worse results. She states that just because “there is no direct access to truth does not mean that all studies are equally compelling”
Baym lays out a list of criteria that she believes contribute to successful internet studies:
1. Grounded in theory and data
2. Demonstrate rigor in data collection and analysis
3. Use multiple strategies to collect data
4. Takes into account perspective of participants
5. Demonstrates awareness and self-reflexivity regarding process
6. Considers interconnectiveness between internet and “life-world”
Baym then lays out a concrete explicit program that includes:
1. Connect to History
2. Focus
3. Be Practical
4. Anticipate Counter-Arguments
- a. Problematize Core Concepts
- b. Listen to Participants
- c. Attend to Context
- d. Attend to Yourself
- e. Seek Contrasts in the Data
- f. Limit your Claims
- g. Document your Research Process
- h. Frame the Study for Diverse Readers
Baym concludes by restating the aim of qualitative research being “not to find a single explanatory element but to reveal the complexity of our subject.” She returns to her claim that qualitative internet research should be considered as a process of managing dialectical tensions. In so doing we create the possibility of adding a thorough, grounded, trustworthy voice that adds to a meaningful conversation, and that others can build on.
Questions:
- Is the dialectical framework that Baym suggests too simplistic, flat and 2-dimensional?
- Is Baym’s list of criteria appropriate for a study that hopes to question methodological convention?
- Does the pre-emptive practice of preparing for criticism of one’s methodology place the researcher in an unnecessarily defensive position and begin to alter the nature of the inquiry (i.e. structuring the questions so as to make them more defendable?)
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