Lynn Clark Wednesday

Lynn Clark is coming to class on Wednesday to talk about her research and the methods she uses. I'm emailing a chapter of her forthcoming book to Parenting in a Digital Age.

Please come to class prepared with questions and comments about her work.

Free Market Groups Urge Congress to Update U.S. Privacy Laws

If you store sensitive files on your personal computer which law enforcement authorities wish to examine, they generally cannot do so without first obtaining a search warrant based upon probable cause. But what if you store personal information online—say, in your Gmail account, or on Dropbox? What if you’re a business owner who uses Salesforce CRM or Windows Azure? How secure is your data from unwarranted governmental access?

Link

Question Five

How can qualitative researchers produce work that is meaningful across time, space, and culture?

Question five looks at the fact that any researcher, research subject, or reader of research findings "is situated within a particular locale as well point of view (p. 133)." Most of the chapter focuses on the concept of "global" vs. "local" and suggests that "building reflexivity into one's research design can help situate one's work, internally and externally (p.134)." Of particular importance in the introduction is an explicit explanation of the specific use of the following terms:

-Research: "both the process and product of inquiry";

-Situated: "located in a particular historical, local, and political place";

-Internally and externally: "those factors influencing the design, process, and write-up of the study, as well as those elements that link the specific cultural study to larger contexts of meaning, whether physical, theoretical, or cultural.

-Reflexive processes: "the method of looking recursively and critically at the self in relation to the object, context, and process of inquiry."

Markham goes on to discuss the notion presented in the opening quote by Burawoy (p. 131), basically the idea that any sense of the "global" or macro is actually an aggregate of many "local" or micro agencies or perspectives. Further, "Given the primary strength of qualitative research as studying human social behavior using close, inductive interpretive methods, it is appropriate to strive to approach research in a more global manner" (p. 140). Markham suggests that in trying to make research "global" in its scope, three questions should be continually asked:

1. What does the term "global" mean, anyway?

2. How can qualitative methods by used to address global concerns?

3: How can qualitative researchers produce research that is meaningful and relevant to a global audience?

The section "Operationalizing the term 'Global'" examines the wide variety of definitions and uses for the term "global", suggesting that while no definition is wrong, the researcher must be clear about what he or she means when using the term and should qualify their use of it rather than assuming that the term will automatically be mutually understood.

I think the crux of this chapter is in the section titled, "Global as the manner versus scope of research" (p .139). Markham posits that to use qualitative research on a global scale is to cultivate "global sensibilities" (p. 140), to adopt a critical perspective that constantly seeks to reveal the boundaries of any "situated" inquiry and call into question revealed assumptions. In so doing, the voice of the "local" is able to contribute to the "global" without (ideally) being re-cast through the situated lens of the researcher. If left unexamined (and even when examined) this situatedness influences the methods, directions and presentations of research findings. As Markham suggests, "...our research theories, methods, and interpretations are bounded by particular and situated rationalities (p.134)."

The remainder of the chapter focuses on the idea of reflexivity as a tool for examining the situatedness of ourselves as researchers, of our research subjects, and of our intended audiences. Markham says, "To even begin thinking 'outside the box,' it is necessary to grapple with the notion that, because we live and work within invisible frameworks, we are to a certain extent foreign to ourselves" (p. 141). Markham suggests that reflexivity can be used both analytically during the research phase and rhetorically during the presentation phase, providing a series of questions as "...opportunities for situated reflexivity throughout the research project (p. 142)."

Markham further discusses the value and need for reflexivity by pointing out three "lessons" she learned in the process of research collaboration with a Dominican student, lessons that can be broadly applied to ethnographic and qualitative research.

Lesson 1: Even the simplest descriptive details are filtered through the researchers' localized understandings.

Lesson 2: Our cultural assumptions will influence our interpretation.

Lesson 3: Culturally specific understandings of power and authority influence the interpretive lens.

Continuing to expand on the utility of reflexive inquiry, Markham proceeds to outline a series of questions that can help one situate their research findings within a more global sensibility.

Markham concludes by pointing out that while no research project or product will ever be able to adequately represent all perspectives or avenues, "reflexive analysis of one's own boundaries is an ethically powerful way of identifying for the self and for others those limitations and factors influencing one's research choices. (p. 152)".

RESPONSE 1, Elaine Lally

Lally concisely summarizes and illustrates Markham's arguments by relating her experience as a researcher situated in Australia, addressing 3 specific points (p.156):

The location you do research from is as important to any consideration of the local and the global as the location you do research in

Definitions of "global" may be quite different for people who are differently positioned with respect to mainstream Wester modes, and a focus on globalization, as a process with attendantpolitical and economic structures of privilege, can be more useful than looking at the global in terms of unifying perspectives through comparative research.

Our situatedness gives us a sense of feeling at home in particular places and times, but as researchers we have a responsibility to use research practices that are dialogical and creative and that stretch our comfort zones.

Most of this echoes what Markham has already posited, but there are a couple of things that I think add to the discussion:

The idea of framing research not in terms of "global", but in terms of "globalizing" and "globalization", the former implying a shared and unified whole and the latter stressing the effects of globalization on the local.

The examination of reflexive analysis as a fundamentally creative process. "Through creative activity we combine and recombine symbolic resources in novel way, so that they tell us something we haven't heard before or had only dimly recognized (p. 163)." I think that this is important because if reflexive analysis becomes overly codified or methodized, it may lose its ability to shock one into the kind of "aha" moment where preconceptions and assumptions become readily apparent.

Of particular interest to me was the discussion of heterogeneity among, as Lally says, "people who may be geographically near, but culturally far (p.158)". This really drives home the idea that deep investigation of the local can give great insight into the global. It is easy for me to think about the value of investigating the differences between myself and my location and someone somewhere in East Asia, but not so easy to recognize that the same inquiry is relevant to my neighbors.

Another thing that was helpful was the framing of Markham's dialogic reflexivity as a process of maieutic or socratic inquiry.

RESPONSE 2, Ramesh Srinivasan

Srinivasan's response also focuses heavily on reflexivity, reminding us of the position of power of ethnographic researchers. Stressing the value of participatory forms of research (citing the Tribal Peace project), Srinivasan further argues for the importance of deep local investigation to understand the global aspect of the internet, that it is "...multi-sited, multi-authored, and multiply received and acted upon" (p.166).

Suggesting that "physical space is best understood in terms of its placement within a network" and that "Globalization is [...] best understood by looking at movements within the network (p.167)," Srinivasan urges an examination of the trans-national aspects of a locale to be researched. To balance the local investigation in terms of its place in the larger network, Srinivasan suggests examining the trans-national influences and extensions of and on the local.

Using her own work with the South Asian network as a model, she outlines an approach that "combines globally derived social network surveys with multi-sited local ethnographies (p.169)." By giving the community agency to develop social networking paradigms that are relevant to their situatedness, a more authentic sense of its usefulness within the particular local context is yielded than by simply imposing an existing utility (like Myspace) that likewise emerged from a particular context.

As an extension of this idea Srinivasan presents the idea of "folksonomies" as a possible to answer to the question posed by Turnbull, "How can differing knowledge traditions, differing ways of mapping be enabled to work together without subsumption into one common or universal ontology? (p. 170)"

Srinivasan primarily agrees with Markham, and urges researchers to focus on four particular strategies:

1. Using trans-national methods that allow focus on the movements, flows, and socially distinct uses of information, multi- sited ethnographies, and textual analysis of virtual worlds

2. Considering scalability of results through multi-method triangulation and sense-making

3. Focusing on the networks:glocal social network studies

4. Building collaborative digital spaces for knowledge: focusing on Web 2.0 technologies that integrate diverse knowledge systems and traditions.

Question 6: Quality in Qualitative Internet Research

A chapter after my my own heart...

Overview
In this chapter of the book, Nancy Baym takes a swing at one of the hardest issues facing any researcher: "How do I know when my work is 'good', and how do I know that I've presented the work in a useful way?" Her approach is to question the concept of pure standards (which don't exist) and to provide some basic guidelines for developing quality research. The sub-headers within this chapter provide some insight on her suggestions:

- ... Balance Tensions
- Connect to History
- Focus
- Be Practical
- Anticipate Counter-Arguments
- Develop Compelling Explanations

Perhaps the most interesting detail is given in the section labeled "Qualitative Researchers Must Continuously Balance Tensions", where she points to the creation and expansion of dialectic perspectives, where two opposing concepts are pursued, with the conflict leading to interesting and new views on the subject at hand. She quotes Montgomery and Baxter (1998) as having useful examples: "rigor and imagination, fact and value, precision and richness, elegance and applicability, and vivication and verification".

Throughout the remainder of her essay, Baym presents ways to use this approach to hone the ideas that a research may have about the material into useful and interesting - but not trite - presentations. Having the strength of conviction to state "Be Practical" (when skeptics are quick to point out missing pieces of the puzzle) helps the new researcher understand that not everything is possible; but limiting the scope does not mean that research is invalid.

I really appreciated this essay, since it helped me understand how I might be able to approach the research necessary for a thesis without becoming horribly depressed or inadequate. Much needed!

As for the response by Annette Markham - they mainly centered around a dialectic approach being too minimal. While it's true that almost any perspective has more than two sides, I believe that Baym's contraction into simplicity actually is a useful model for stimulating interesting thought on one's subject of research, and can help bust through "Researcher's Block" that can easily paralyze anyone.

Of course, a good researcher wouldn't reduce every subject to a two-sided see-saw, but I think that Baym is most interested in providing her colleagues with tools for actual production.

Some potentially useful links:

Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln - The Discipline and Practice of Qualitative Research; Denzin seems to be one of the most sited individuals on Qualitative Research Practices.

Clive Seale - Quality in Qualitative Research (A pretty tough read, but drops almost every researching buzzword possible available in 1999!)

Barbera Hall - How to Do Ethnographic Research: A Simplified Guide; as it states, a simplified walk-through of the process of creating an Ethnographic paper. A neat view of the process, with good examples throughout. Pretty focused on location ethnography, but a useful overview of good practices.

Example book reviews

Here are a few reviews of academic books to to check out:

Here is a review of Modernity at Large by Arjun Appaduri, the author who writes about "scapes," which I mentioned on the first day of class when Andrew was talking about scapes of self.

Many of you might find the work of Richard Sennett relevant. Here is a review of The Craftsman.

Here is a review in New Media and Society comparing International Blogging, a book I edited, with a book many of you have read Digital Media and Democracy.

And here is a review of Yochai Benkler's The Wealth of Networks.

Question 3 addresses a "new area of research":

How to focus on social and cultural aspects of the environments we find on the internet so that we can properly safeguard individual's rights and privacy.

BASIC IDEAS

- as social researchers, safeguards must be implemented to protect individuals rights to privacy online

- each individual should have the right to decide for themselves what and how much others get to know about them

- the type of information people want to keep for themselves differs from culture to culture

- in the US personal information is to be held very privately as to not reveal information that can lead to loss of money and/or property as opposed citizens in other countries who instead find it crucial to safeguard political activities or sexual orientation

Ethical Guidelines

- Obtaining consent is a central aspect of most existing guidelines for research ethics

- Swedish Research Council

1. "the informational requirement stating that the researcher shall, at least in sensitive situations, inform those affected about is or her activity

2. "the requirement of consent, stating that the participants should have the right to decide whether for how long and under what conditions they will take part

- The internet makes us reconsider these initial guidelines on how social life is to be studied especially when it takes place online. It is often impossible for researchers to even contact the users whose contributions they are analyzing.

- The Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) was founded at the end of the 1990s to be an international resource and support network promoting critical and scholarly internet research independent from traditional disciplines and existing across academic boarders.

- Due to the rapid growth of the internet it is "difficult to foresee all possible situations a researcher might encounter online…makes it virtual impossible to create guidelines that will adequately cover all aspects of internet research.

My Thoughts...

This is a common thread throughout out the document which begs the question: What is ethically sound when obtaining research via the internet?

Inevitably the answer is always some variation of: it depends.

DEFINING PUBLIC AND PRIVATE

- "From the mid-sixteenth century on, 'public' came increasingly to mean activity or authority that was related to or derived from the state while private referred to those activities for spheres of like that were excluded or separated from it."

- The author suggests that public and private not be considered a dichotomy but "rather a continuum."

- Different degrees of private and public:

1. A public environment

2. A semi- public environment is one that is available for most people

3. A semi private environment is one that is available only to some people, perhaps a membership is required

4. Private online environments

- Researchers then have to define wether an environment is "public enough" to study without proper consent.

- Public and private as a perception, Not a Fact: "The fuzzy boundaries between private and public parts of online environments may make if difficult for users to grasp the gradual transition between private and public spaces"

It should be noted that even if a internet environment is admittedly public it may not carry over to the users of the site, who feel more intimate about the users involved.

My Thoughts...

Again, the author undeniable answer to such a query is that: it depends…

USING OFFLINE GUIDELINE FOR ONLINE RESEARCH

Another way to establish proper guidelines in internet research is to look at charachteristcs of OFF line environments.:

1. A public environment - offline equivalent: streets, shopping malls

2. A semi- public environment - offline equivalent: libraries, schools, and hospitals

3. A semi private environment - offline equivalent: clubs and companies

4. Private environment - offline equivalent: private home

CONSIDERING BOTH CONTEXT AND CONTENT

- "We have to consider not only whether the places we wish to study are public or private but also if the content of the communication is public or private."

My Thoughts...

This consideration begins with a seemingly simple question: What kind of content can be considered public enough to be studied without informed consent? Again, the author begs the answer: it depends.

For instance the in today's growing number of reality shows. People personal lives are exposed through out a variety of media and the distinction of private vs. public and sensitive vs. nonsensitive continues to blur.

People sharing their private problems in an online environment tend to feel a sense of camaraderie. Comforted by other people with similar problems to their own. As well as the urge to seek attentions from others even with in a virtual environment There for what may seem private/ sensitive to an observer is not necessarily apprehended so by the individual who exposed it in the first place. This can also work in reverse when it comes to research methods, that is to say, what may be seen to the researcher as non-private and not sensitive may be sensitive to people who use the online environment. So in a nut shell, this Question addresses the proper use of research methods when applied to internet environments and provides the inevitable conclusion of: it depends.

Ironically we are becoming more and more guarded in our "off line" life by being careful not to get caught doing something embarrassing in public and having it caught on a mobile camera phone and them plastered all over the web. But at that same time some are so addicted to their Facebook status that their using that same phone to tell everyone they have a bad case of heart burn…? Again the lines of privacy are constantly blurred..

"We are longer afraid of Big Brother, but we instead have come to fear an infinite number of little brothers, who spy on us and make their findings known to others such as parents and teachers, but perhaps more annoyingly to our friends and lovers and people we would like to impress."

Question Three, Internet Privacy and Qualitative Research

Question three discusses issues of privacy in regards to methodological approaches to online research. Although privacy and informed consent have always been an important issue when conducting research, it has become increasingly complicated with online communication. Svenginsson address this issue by by discussing what makes content public or private in online spaces and what strategies researchers can use when deciding when informed consent is necessary.

Sveningsson begins by discussing ethical research guidelines for conducting offline research. However, she quickly notes that these guidelines cannot apply to internet inquiry because of the complicated nature of online public spaces. In order to help define what is public and private, Svenginsson provides a framework which views privacy as a continuum, rather then a dichotomy. The continuum is broken into four categories:

1. Public: open and available for everyone who has internet access. (chat rooms, web pages)

2. Semi- Public: one that is available to most people but requires membership and registration. (myspace, facebook)

3. Semi-private: available only to some people. (company intranets)

4. Private- hidden or unavailable to most people. (private chat rooms, photo albums)

Although these four categories can help researchers decide when informed consent is necessary, the perception of the user and viewer also needs to be considered. For example, a myspace account may fall under the category of semi-public but the user may be unaware that his actions are in a public space. This negligence must be taken into consideration when deciding if informed consent is necessary. The content and context of the online communication must also be considered because users may be well aware their online activity is in a public space but still may not feel comfortable with their communications being taken out of context and used in a research study.

Svenginsoon concludes by discussing how there cannot be a concrete model or set of guidelines when dealing with issues of privacy on the internet. Rather, each research project requires an examination of the material being studied and how the user may perceive his online actions. This can be a very difficult task for researchers because they may perceive privacy different then the users they are studying.

The end of the chapter also briefly mentions that instead of focusing on what is public and private a researcher can instead decide if they are inflicting harm to the people they are researching. I think this is a good guideline that can be used when researchers are making decisions about ambiguous areas of online communication. I also thought Susan's suggestion of using pilot studies to be a good approach for researchers when trying to understand how certain online groups perceive issues of privacy. This method not only allows the researcher to gain insight into how certain people perceive online privacy, but also allows them to do so without affecting the potential research group.

While reading these chapters I also found myself thinking about the research I read for my literature review and what methodological approaches were used for these studies. Many of the research projects consisted of viewing hundreds of myspace profiles and looking for patterns of behavior in certain demographic areas. In these studies specific information about each profile was not disclosed, but rather, overarching themes and behavioral patterns were identified and analyzed. I think in these cases the users were not harmed, personal information was not disclosed and informed consent was not necessary.

http://aoir.org/

http://aoir.org/reports/ethics.pdf

Question 4: Gender and Sexuality

Question four proposes that while sexuality is often ignored in ethnography, it is such an integral part of human social dynamics that it cannot be ignored. Gender and sexual desire help to build the structure and hierarchy of any given culture, and if we ignore this aspect "We are also refusing to reproduce one of the mightiest vocabularies in the human language" (pg 100).

Yet if an ethnographer is to write truthfully about her studied culture, she needs to include her own sexual attractions and experiences. This aspect of the researcher's experiences is often left out of the study, and Kendall feels that this is painting an incomplete picture. She confesses, however, that there is a difficulty, especially for a female, in being seen as unbiased and retaining objective prestige if ones own sexual feelings are put on the table. She feels that this can be balanced if the personal sexual content adds analytical and ethical gains.

She spends time analyzing what role sexuality plays in online relationships. She observes how the idealized obsession, or limerance phase of a relationship is prolonged in online textual relationships. The limited social cues in the online environment allow the imagination to build up the other longer than they would in non-digital life.

Kendall also puts forward that in starting a traditional field study, the new environment will stimulate ones senses and awareness, allowing for seeing things with fresh eyes. Yet the physicality of her field site was her own house and computer, so her sexual attraction to online informants was important for keeping her senses engaged.

She then discusses how her area of study consisted of a primary male group, with females exhibiting behaviors similar to non digital patriarchal cultures. Few females were playing into traditional feminine roles, the ones who did gaining some types of power through male sexual attention, while still remaining an object of desire rather than a key hierarchal figure. Most women would pride themselves in being one of the guys, citing interests in classically male hobbies, allowing for some of the male dominated prestige. Yet these women would often end up marrying other males from the culture, having to play this one of the guys but not one of the guys role. Anyone left in between these two ends would often fall to the bottom of the social ladder.

-gender stereotypes and second life
-digital sex workers

For the most part, Sunden's response agrees with Kendall. She disagrees however that the online experience is a mostly physical one, sitting at a desk and typing. She feels that online attractions can by "highly physical affairs" and that "if the virtual can be erotically charged" than this "highlights the fragility of the limit between body and text in online encounters" (pg 121). We need to rethink what it means to do physical work in a field that relies on "intense mediated bodies." In these moments of the ecstatic, especially in cybersex, the line between textual and corporeal are so obviously fragile.

She concedes that the gap between fingers, computer keys, and online space does distance the participant from interaction somewhat, but that this gap allows a researcher for thoughtful reflection, a clean buffer that might not be present non-digitally.

In Campbell's response he puts forward the importance of homosexual sexuality in online culture. Sexual minority members were early adopters of computer mediated communication technologies, and the fact that this has been left out of the majority of online cultural studies risks the "symbolic annihilation" of people who do not conform to the dominant sexual paradigm.

Quoting Bell and Valentine, He states that researches are never sexually objective in ethnographic studies, and to leave out sexuality puts forth a false front of objectivity. He highlights the dangers of studying a group that one has a close personal common frame of reference and shared community, and the difficulty in making the familiar strange.

All three researches in this section divulged personal information about themselves that would normally be left out of a study. Campbell recognizes the importance of this "confessional tale" as part of a larger cultural moment in which knowledge is taken as historically situated, partial, and incomplete. That these aren't narcissistic practices, but a way of maintaining an open channel of communication with the reader.

-a majority of online gamers switched gender while playing
-world of warcraft sexual subculture
-this is a little explicit, but relevant to art, gender, sexuality, cybersex, etc
-furry digital gender swap

Can Videogames Be Journalism?

In July, 2009, Wired magazine waded into the ongoing coverage of Somalian pirate raids with an eight-page visual feature called "Cutthroat Capitalism." The piece was accompanied by an online game, which, besides being fun to play, also served a journalistic purpose, writes videogame professor Dr. Ian Bogost in a new book on gaming as journalism.

http://bit.ly/dytMii

Photo Ethnographies

Just expanding on a comment in class and sharing some freakin' amazing images. I commented how I saw journalism in terms of ethnography when done with depth. I know that may have been puzzling, as a 500-word article from the Associated Press on a statement by the White House, of a 30-second report on CNN is far from a study of culture.

But that's not all that journalism does. By contrast, much of my career has centered around long-term project work examining subcultures both from inside the culture and out -- ie 10 years on rodeo cowboys and the mostly mythical culture they constantly invent, to seven years with Latin pentecostals and how they are upending the dominant cultures where they operate.

I was simply amazed by the reading and how the concerns and goals coincide with that kind of long-form work -- from the need to define a field, to examining carefully your own part in the culture, to having to figure out when to stop. I might have to rip off Boyd's list for my long-form photo essay course at CU.

Here are a few of the examples I picked up in my youth that have influenced my whole career since. Sorry they are mostly images out of the context of the work as a whole, including text:

Bruce Davidson's immersive photo essay on a Brooklyn street gang, 1959

Danny Lyon's immersive photo essay on a Chicago biker gang, 1967

Mary Ellen Mark's immersive essay on life in a maximum-security mental ward, 1975

An aside, anyway…

K

The web is dead

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_webrip/all/1

Here is the article we discussed in class

Adam

Online Vs Offline Data

The first section in chapter two really is examining our use of online vs offline date, and when is appropriate to do so. The two main questions asked were:

Can we need offline information to adequately account for online meaning and experiences. and If we consider the internet to simply be a means of communication that is used in every day social context, can it be studied as such, with no online information?

Maria Bakardjieva further insisted that online vs offline data cannot be determined until you know what or who is being studied, and what research questions arise.

Radhika Gajjala was more concerned with Ograd’s descriptions of online vs offline was assuming that both states were physical. Examining how we define online and offline makes it difficult to see it any other way. But Gajjala believes that they are each state of beings. Do we every truly leave online, and do we leave the entire offline world behind when we log on?

Being invested in the online world, i don’t have to be convinced twice the two are undoubtedly connected. While the second question in this book examines the why vs when, i am much more interested in the “what?” What type of media is closing the gap between online vs offline. Furthermore, i am concerned that there was always a one-way communication model used that our offline live impacted our online lives, whereas i am under the firm impression that our online lives are going to set the conditions and context of how we engage offine. Its not that the text argues against, but i empathize with Gajjala in thinking that the verbiage that we use, no matter how widely accepted it is, will start to define how we research and perceive the internet. ftf-cmc (face to face computer mediated communication) is the new lens that is demolishing online vs offline. (based on my informal research)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTZsYumUYUw

I’m currently looking for more links outside of YouTube....apologies

New Media and Ethnography

Here are some findings regarding new media ethnography.

The Ethnographic Approaches to New Media blog entry briefly reviews E. Gabriella Coleman's article of the same name, citing three broad categories of research. It also includes links to a couple online bibliographies (including one by an author in Chapter 1).

Network Ethnography and the Hypermedia Organization is a paper in which Philip N. Howard "[uses] social network analysis to justify case selection for ethnography, [proposing] 'network ethnography' as a synergistic research design for the study of the organizational forms built around new media." He argues that while qualitative methods are great for describing human interaction, they "can be unwieldy" when looking at the distances often covered by new media.

An entry on Kowski's Diary blog discusses multi-sited ethnography, which Hine discusses extensively in her argument in Chapter 1. And just for fun, I found this article on Sage Journals about following global poker as a means to study multi-sited, emergent communities.

And finally, I thought of Kevin when I found Making Online News, a new ethnography "bring[ing] the rich tradition of new production sociology to investigate the production of online journalism."

Qualitative Research Methods

I reading through the intro and Question 1 so far of Internet Inquiry I found myself out of the loop on what qualitative research was exactly. Context collapse is following me.

I dug around a bit, looking through lengthy and dry PDFs from university sites and ended up getting the most satisfaction in the shortest time from, you guessed it, Wikipedia.

So, if you were in my boat with a bit of "What the..." here it is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualitative_research

Data Visualization

This is for Amy and anyone else interested in data visualization. I stumbled across the books Beautiful Data and Beautiful Visualization when I was looking for something else. Edward Tufte is also a great reference and inspiration. Also, Visualizing Data by Ben Fry, the guy who wrote Processing.

Research Innovations

Welcome to Digital Media Research Methods!

Digital media is inspiring many researchers to rethink how to study media. Here are some superstar researchers explaining their theoretical and methodological approaches.

Mimi Ito on peer-based learning:



Mike Wesch and his ethnography of YouTube:



Art Lab's approach to young people and how they understand their mediaworlds: