Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Week Ten

12 comments:

  1. I found the two readings for this week quite interesting and complementary. I particularly enjoyed Orgad’s discussion of online and offline data collection, and how the two are equally (in most studies) important in ethnographic studies of the Internet and Internet communities. This connected, I felt, quite well with Hine’s assumption that the Internet is ‘a tool, a place, and a way of being’. Thus, when attempting to study Internet communities,
    discussion patterns, etc., one needs to be aware that the ways in which we use the Internet (as a tool) are socially constructed.
    Online and offline data analyses are important, for they allow us to bring to the surface issues regarding the social construction of the Internet, how societal forces outside the Internet influence use, and also how factors such as anonymity influence use. Consider an inquiry targeted at elucidating how seniors in a rural community use the Internet. If the researcher was to simply analyze online data, they may find that few seniors use the Internet for discussion or information retrieval. However, if the researcher was to dig deeper, interviewing seniors to obtain offline data, they may find that few seniors use the Internet because reception is lacking, not that knowledge of the Internet is lacking. Conclusions drawn from retrieving and analyzing online data only would be incorrect, and may lead to the installment of policy that is ill suited to the problem (i.e. policy that mandates the teaching of seniors how to use the Internet).

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  2. Does anyone find these studies lazy? More specifically, do you find the researchers who look at online data only as being lazy in their research goals/pursuits? If I were to write a program to collect online data, would this be considered research? I truly doubt it! But call yourself a social scientist and then do the same thing, all of a sudden you've got research! But both of these people will end up missing a huge part of what is going on. I truly feel that the Internet is so deeply embedded in our society that to study only the online aspect is ineffectual. So, are they lazy by only looking to the digital realm and not the physical? Or are they attempting to carve out a piece of this enormous landscape and understand just a bit? But does this minuscule understanding truly add anything at all?!

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  3. I think it's more a matter of what they are studying and what question they're trying to answer. Are researchers who do textual analysis or artifact analysis lazy because they aren't tracking down the authors/creators and interviewing them? does every research question demand that type of data? for instance, would a study that revealed that a huge percentage of the comments posted to news stories on online news websites contain insults and simplistic readings of the story content add something to our understanding of the alleged "democratization of news" that comment tools allow? can respondents always account for these behaviors (esp. aggregate or trends) or understand what they mean? All good questions!!!!

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  4. *not sure where to post*

    OnLiNe/OffLiNe Data!

    Where to start, when to stop! Research is bounded by what can be achieved, by funding, by the topic itself. In this article Hines explores ethnography of the internet and the avenues she pursues: production and use, online vs. offline, internet as a social construction and social conduit. I found it particularly interesting how Hines chose to move outside of her realm to look at other material culture in order to help understand internet culture. She did so by visiting other collections (ie. insect collections etc.) in order to explore beliefs about how objects are owned, stored, ordered and other applicable qualities. This idea opened my eyes to how one might leave the current study to explore other related areas outside of the study and how this might uncover valuable information about the current study (through contrast and comparison). Though ethnographic research may not be comprehensive it still holds value if it says something interesting or advances debate.

    I do believe that online and offline social relations and interactions are meaningful but I also believe that the value they hold is inherently different. I actually have a real life practical experience that I can use to relate to this week’s readings!! I am particularly interested in this week’s readings because I just recently left Facebook (for good this time, lol) and practically everyone I have told has asked me why. I have been trying to understand my drive to do so, while also coming up with a precise and to the point response for those who ask. It’s interesting because I found it difficult to embrace online relationships. With Hines in mind, I can see how I have used my offline relationships to determine the value of my online relationships. In the end I found online relationships unfulfilling, superficial and I also found that interactions online were too much on the surface level. I prefer fewer and more in depth relationships. It helped to have an offline framework for relationships to work with in order to assess my discontent with those I held online. Orgad speaks of the difficulty of separating online from offline activity/interaction. I can agree here: Many of my close friends with whom I interacted offline were also friends on Facebook. This blurred the line because it wasn’t so easy to separate or make distinctions between my online/offline interactions with them. Perhaps I jumped the gun by deleting my account, especially since online activity is tied with offline activity these days. I will no longer get the chance to be invited to events posted on facebook and this might have a negative impact on my ability to develop stronger offline ties with those individuals. Because interaction occurs both online and offline, it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish between the value of online and offline interaction; they often occur simultaneously and are interdependent. I can therefore sympathize with Orgad’s dilemma of how to integrate the two. I will agree that online and offline data can complement each other, but may also complicate research if they contradict one another. Perhaps individuals in a study might perceive online in a different way and thus provide different kinds of responses. Perhaps individuals provide more authentic responses online or offline. Finally it is important for researchers to decide whether it is appropriate to differentiate between online and offline data or whether to present them as a coherent set. It all depends on the context of the study and the implications that either might have for the study as a whole!!

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  5. ok, my post is missing :( Must rewrite....

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  6. For my proposed research I was hoping to use surveys. However, after this week’s readings and class discussions, I now realize that I have more to think about than just designing the appropriate questions to ask! How I choose to distribute the survey - online, in person (or how about in person but through a computer?) will also be important. This is because everyone exhibits different personas, based on the situation that they are currently in. I now have to think about under which scenarios I would most likely get the most honest results from my participants. This will, of course, depend on the survey questions that I design.

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  7. Further Down the Rabbit Hole, or Where to Start and Stop a Study

    This question is really another way of talking about framing a study, and our group has been all over that concept for some time. I found it intriguing that Hine warns that you can’t decide where to start and stop beforehand – the right path emerges, after one follows “a trail”. This very much called to mind Luker and her constant theme of letting things evolve in response to events as they unfold. Hine makes a great argument for not having too rigid ideas and definitions up front, but doesn’t this run counter to the imperative to operationalize terms? I suppose what we need are “working definitions” that we are prepared to change at a moment’s notice.

    Both articles this week causes me to fret anew about the shape of my research study, which will be to study newcomers’ online facility with a library website, in a one-on-one, ethnographic way – observing and interacting as they negotiate (or fail to negotiate) the site for crucial information they need. In fact, I’m hoping to do it in a “contextual inquiry” sort of way, having been inspired by Glen Farrelly’s talk. It seems each new reading introduces a new concern – now it’s online versus offline methods. I’ll be sitting with my participants (observer as participant!) as they do their online searches. So tell me, is this online or offline research, or a combination of the two? Though I want the session to be as open-ended as possible, I can see from reading Hine that I also have to consider the bounds of the exercise, and to be prepared to guide or structure the flow of events, at least somewhat.

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  8. In Hine's article, I like the way that she acknowledges Appadurai (1996) notion of
    'scapes' to problematize the idea of society as a coherent, bounded unit. With
    computer-mediated communication, boundaries of space and time are informed by global
    networks and connections. No more can the ethnographer “land” on an isolated island to
    study the “other”, but researchers must make sense of the fluid contexts that make up
    postmodern, Western relationships and interactions.

    The reflection in Orgad about the “invaluable significance” of face-to-face interaction
    with an online study participant shows the importance of meaning-making and the ability
    to negotiate and understand the nuances of information. She points out that the
    discussion led her to consider new data as relevant as a result of new questions.
    Obviously real-time, person-to-person interaction will yield much more meaningful
    information…consider the research on information seeking and information behaviour. What
    if reference interviews were reduced to online interaction only? There is a wealth of
    subtleties about information needs and communication practices that would be lost if we
    had to rely only on textual or online communication. Anyone who has barrelled into a
    long-winded email response to a question only to realize that the answer completely
    missed the intent of the query will relate!

    keeps disappearing!!

    Posted by AMR to Dangerous Methods at November 16, 2011 6:24 PM

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  9. I like the idea, from Hines and earlier from Luker, of letting the research guide itself to a degree. It's kind of like Leonardo Da Vinci or whichever Renaissance sculptor it was who spoke of the sculpture already existing inside a lump of rock, just waiting for the sculptor to chisel it out. Like the researcher, the sculptor does decide when the sculpture is 'done,' but this decision is informed by something inherent in the sculpture/research itself, its coherence and completeness (also like the sculptor, the researcher wisely pawns a lot of the grunt work off on assistants, saving his or her own time and energy for the finer work and finishing touches).

    On another point, I have to disagree with Tamara that the online and offline worlds are always necessarily linked with one another. Many people develop specific online personas, think of something like SecondLife--whatever it is--but also online gaming or social networking, that may or may not correspond in attitudes or behaviours of the physical person. Online-only research looking only at these virtual people are arguably just as valid as real world studies that look at physical people. It's a whole other world, and perhaps one that requires research methods all its own.

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  10. As someone much more easily disposed to empirical study, I found this week’s readings a challenge. Concerning useful insights, the “Question One” article served to reinforce the notion that those engaged in ethnographic pursuits, as suggested by the author on page 6, tend to “study social situations on their own terms”; that it is appropriate to immerse one’s self in a social setting, not for the purposes of testing a “pre-formed” research question, but rather to acquire insight into a social setting, rationalizing such efforts on a perceived suggestion of a problem or an issue of interest. I also took note of the author’s basis for suggesting a “claim of adequacy”: that it advance policy or academic debate, or support practical action. Hopefully, the two are seen as being equally valuable.

    Concerning the “Question Two” reading, I was most struck by the observation that researchers should attempt to use the “online” and “offline” data as “mutually contextualizing”, rather than to presuppose the role of offline data as being the means to make sense of the online data.

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  11. Although my research question doesn’t involve the internet or the study of it in any capacity, I found this week’s readings really useful. I am always trying to flex the articles into my own research and adapt the concept to it. In this case, the definition of Orgad’s online and offline data (p. 35) is kind of interesting to think of beyond just the internet environment. In my research question, part of the method is to do document analysis – specifically a policy review. Well in my mind I knew that I would need to develop a rubric towards assessing the policies equally – let’s call the data retrieved from this review as the “online” data. However, I had never considered the environment outside of the document itself – e.g. the staff who wrote the policy, the staff who implement the policy, the groups/ individuals who are affected by the policy being executed. This arena could be considered the “offline” data. Now, depending on the nature of my research perhaps this comparison isn’t really necessary (because I am not completely interested in the application of the policy) but it certainly opened my eyes to the possibility of what lays beyond the immediate scope of the specific research task that I have identified as a priority to my research question.
    - Catherine Richards

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