Does Technology Reduce Social Isolation?

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/does-technology-reduce-social-isolation/

By Stefanie Olsen
Americans are more isolated than ever, but don't blame the technology, says a new Pew study. It suggests that the Internet and cellphones actually expand our social networks

Cool study by the Pew Research Center on our social networks, physical and digital.

Some Early Attempts at Multimedia Story Telling

While these are not documentary projects, I think they do a great job of creating an aesthetic and telling a story utilizing new media. Also, they work to create a cultural precedent for multimedia storytelling, documentary or otherwise. Might be worth a glance. The first is Stuart moulthrop's Color of Television. He really launched the hypertext medium. These multimedia stories frequently utilize a fragmented aesthetic and the hyperlinkability of the web. At once these pieces are a celebration of cybernetic life and the web as medium. I even took a few stabs at one point.

The second is the collaboration, 99 Rooms. It uses a lot of industrial photography and sound to create a wonderful experience with some loose narrative elements. I don't know if these will actually be useful, but they may provide 15 minutes of diversion/entertainment.

Is It a Day to Be Happy? Check the Index

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/technology/internet/12link.html

An anonymous Facebook study about words used in status updates to determine the "Happy Index."

Even YouTube does research

Found this post in my RSS of all things online video today.

YouTube Grows to Embrace (and Maybe Apply) User Research

They had user groups use an interesting method to generate the data. The users were given magnets with various potential parts of a YouTube website to "build" their ideal page layout.




The actual YouTube post can be found here.

Question 5 Discussion Post

Question 5: How Can Qualitative Researchers Produce Work That Is Meaningful Across Time, Space, And Culture

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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:
  
  
  1. Make the object of research situated in relation to other people places and things.
  
  
  2. 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.

Discussion Questions:


1. What does global sensibility vs. global scope mean or entail in research?


2. How would one go about othering one’s own approach and locale?


3. How does creativity factor into research outside of pure methodology? (i.e. not simply what tools to use for research)


4. 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?

Is Online Privacy a Generational Issue?

Posting over at Wired.com with some numbers and some ideas for possible research or issues to consider in regard to method?

http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/10/is-online-privacy-a-generational-issue/

Two-Thirds Oppose Being Tracked on the Internet

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/business/media/30adco.html

Interesting study done by the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Berkeley about Internet privacy.

"ABOUT two-thirds of Americans object to online tracking by advertisers — and that number rises once they learn the different ways marketers are following their online movements."