27th November

My Research Methods

Following on from the research methods session last week, here is a revised list of research methods for my project, in order of importance (imo):

1. "Desk research" - literature
2. TV/film watching
3. Social media research
4. Screenings + focus groups

My logic for the order is as follows: the desk research and viewing the TV and films in question is, I would say, the part of my research that I really can't do without. If I haven't researched societal atittudes related to sex and romance and I haven't looked at the actual depictions of asexuality/aromanticism themselves... well, I don't really have a project, do I? Emma did also agree during the workshop that my project is probably going to be very desk research-heavy compared to Miles and Amelia's. Which works for me. I love desks. Anyway, the social media research is an important complement to the work of theorists, but isn't as necessary. And then finally, while I am very committed to doing the focus groups, they are kind of the least important part. I think I would be missing a lot if I didn't get people's opinions on depictions of asexuality/aromanticism, but I could theoretically do the project without them.

Rearranging the methods in chronological order, it looks more like this:

1. "Desk research" - literature
2. Social media research
3. TV/film watching
4. Screenings + focus groups

Obviously a lot of these are gonna overlap, but I think the main takeaway is clear. Isabel stop fucking watching TV and figure out how to do the social media research.

Researching the Research

Yeah, we're getting meta here. The next step for me was to start researching how to use these research methods, especially methods for using social media in research, because I had absolutely 0 clue how to go about that. Again, I am five seconds away from becoming a Luddite at any given time. I decided to look at Get Your Data From Social Media by Nicola Thomas, part of SAGE's Little Quick Fix series. These guys seem to know what they're talking about when it comes to research methods, so I was hoping this would be a good overview of stuff to keep in mind! Main points:

• First of all, need to decide why I'm actually looking at social media in the first place: am I looking at online phenomena (e.g. "how people construct online identities"), offline phenomena (e.g. "investigating the spread of diseases by analysing online reported symptoms") or platform phenomena (e.g."how social media platform(s) shape and influence people") (p.17) - I would say that looking at attitudes to asexuality and aromanticism online kind of combines the first two
• Should I use quantitative or qualitative methods? I would say that for my topic, qualitative seems like it would be more helpful - this can include qualitative content analysis, discourse analysis, online ethnography etc. (p.19)
• Important point the book makes: I should check the legal terms of any platforms I look at - "It is important you consult these terms to make sure the access and data you want is permitted" (p.31)
• Questions to determine if the data you want is public: "Is the data you wish to gather from an open platform, such as Twitter?" "Does the platform allow the user to control the amount of data that is publicly available?", "Does the data you need already exist? In other words, has the data already been user generated, rather than elicited directly by you" - if the answer to all these questions is yes, then the data can be considered public - ok to use in research! (p.33)
• As always I should remember that I am actually dealing with sensitive data - sensitive data includes "data concerning a person's sex life or sexual orientation" (p.37)
• If data is considered public, then you don't need to get informed consent from the people who created the data. However there are still steps to take into account to make sure you're being ethical (p.39)
• The book recommends removing "identifiable features, including user handles and profile pictures, from your dataset" (p.40), storing data securely (p.41), and not publishing "social media data extracts" if you want to publish data publicly - can instead "aggregate data" or "without losing context, paraphrase extracts" (p.42) - I am curious how this works with citing, will have to check with Emma and Willem about that
• Next consideration: What's the scope of my research? I'm assuming either meso-level ("group level phenomena" e.g. a specific online community) or macro-level ("large-scale phenomena [...] at a network or population level") (p.50)
• What platforms will I be looking at? Will I choose just one? Does the phenomenon I'm looking at "manifest on a particular platform or several?" - god this sucks I hate all social media platforms (p.54)
• Some interesting questions to consider: "Can your units of observation (e.g. likes, hashtags, conversations) be easily compared at a cross-platform level? Do they behave the same or differently on different platforms?" "Do the cultural norms that govern practices on one platform differ from another?" (p.55)
• The issue of geography is one I also hadn't considered: If I'm looking at a specific part of the world for my research, how can I determine that the data I'm looking at is from the right location? E.g. geo-tagged posts, profile references from users (p.56), information about location in posts, or can you infer location from people's posts? (p.57)
• What population am I looking at? Book gives examples of different populations e.g. University student Instagram active users, video game online communities etc. (p.73)
• Fortunately for me qualitative research doesn't always require a pre-determined sample size! "Qualitative research takes a more flexible, iterative approach to sampling". Basically "quantitative research seeks statistical generizability" while "qualitative research seeks analytical generalizability" (p.77)
• Possible sampling approaches for qualitative research:
• Convenience sampling "involves selecting accessible people, cases or objects" (p.79)
• Judgement/purposive sampling "carefully selects cases from either a wide range, or extreme or special cases" (p.79)
• Theoretical sampling can be used "when our sampling is theory-driven" - involves selecting "more cases as our findings emerge to iteratively build theory" (p.79)
• I will most likely be using "extant" data - data that already exists "without any direct contact from the researcher" (p.90)
• How can I extract data? If the sample size is small enough I can just extract manually e.g. copying and pasting or taking screenshots (p.93)
• Other options: data repositories of online social media datasets, NCapture - browser extension that can capture data from lots of different social media websites, COSMOS software - free for academic institutions, offers a lot of tools to collect and visualize social media data but is limited to Twitter (p.95)
• Data collection plan needs to include: Your research question and a set of focused research objectives (p.106), your sampling strategy (p.110), how you will collect the data (p.114), and how you will comply with research ethics (p.118)

28th November

On Tuesday we had our peer review session for our contextual review drafts - I was a bit nervous about it, considering that the last peer review session.... well, I didn't handle it super well. But it actually went pretty well! Admittedly a lot of the discussion of my draft got sidetracked explaining asexuality and aromanticism and related terminology to my coursemates, however in a way this was also useful! Being ace and aro myself, I think it's quite easy for me to forget that a lot of people don't know what this stuff means, and this was a good indication of the kind of stuff I will need to actually define in my contextual review. As the classic xkcd comic puts it:

That's me. That's me talking about asexuality and aromanticism.

Anywhere here are the other key points from the peer review session:

• The main problem with my draft that we identified was that I was going way too in-depth applying the ideas I've been researching, instead of just explaining the context I'm working within. In particular, the section on depictions of asexuality and aromanticism is way too long and in-depth, and most of it feels like it would belong more in the main thesis.
• Miles advised restructuring this section as just a list with one or two basic points about each depiction I mention, which is similar to how he's been trying to structure his discussion of different podcasts - the two of us are truly battling the same demons
• Another thing that the others recommended was more discussion of the different models of media impact, and as Miles put it "clowning on the bad ones"
• Miles, my brother in knowing too much about aspec terminology, also suggested I should discuss the concept of relationship anarchy. Frankly I don't know why I didn't think of this myself. And if you're curious what that means STAY TUNED FOR NEXT WEEK'S RESEARCH JOURNAL FOR MY DISCUSSION.
• Also just generally would be good to expand on definitions
• People enjoyed the anecdote from American Hookup about how the majority of students are interested in serious romantic relationships but assume that everyone else isn't.

After the peer review session, and me and Miles going on a mission to buy mould spray for our mouldy house (sorry I've been telling everyone I talk to for five seconds about our black moud this week. It's becoming a problem), we had a workshop on how to write an effective research proposal with Julia Kotula. She talked about important features of a successful proposal e.g. a research proposal should be original and timely, should have wider applications, should show awareness of current scholarship etc.

It was interesting to think about the strengths and weaknesses of my own current proposal - I think the main strength is there is a lot of discussion of why I think this project is important, while I need to improve in terms of adding in a brief literature review, explaining specific research questions, and discussing research methods and ethics. I've also now started thinking about what I could use for the title of my thesis - the one I came up with is "A Critical Analysis of Depictions of Asexuality and Aromanticism in TV from 2010 to Present", which is long and kind of sucks. But it's a start I guess. Basically a good title usually has two parts: a first part that gives a snappy overview, and a second part with specific info about methodology, time period, location, the group of people you're looking at etc.

29th November

In addition to the peer review, I also got feedback from Emma and Willem on the draft. Some of the main points they brought up were:

• Bad news gang the whole noir detective story framing did not go over well. Now I must admit that this is not super unexpected seeing as I didn't put a huge amount of thought into how the framing device actually connects to my essay - I was kind of just doing it because it was fun. Willem pointed out that it felt unmotivated and felt a bit distracting from the contextual review, so I'll definitely be at least cutting it down if not outright scrapping it.
• The research question and any explanation of methods and ethics should be introduced at the end of the review - another thing to talk to Louise about
• Include more about broader context - gender, queer theory, more recent sources on media and society - this is something I definitely noticed while writing the draft - it was easy for me to find quotes and sources about asexuality and aromanticism but I quickly realised that I didn't have a lot of more general sources to talk about other than Croteau and Hoynes.
• Also needs more discussion of why I think this research is important - as mentioned I do have a lot of this in the original research proposal so at least it shouldn't be too difficult to add that in
• We also had some discussion of methods for identifying societal attitudes e.g. surveys, interviews, I like the idea of doing some kind of survey/focus group before a screening and then one after to see if people's knowledge or opinions change
• Willem suggested I could try including images in the review - we were both unsure if it would actually add anything but it would potentially be worth trying
• The review would be easier to follow if I divided up the sections further and also had an intro paragraph at the start of each main section

I've had a lot of thoughts on my use of focus groups after this tutorial. I really liked Willem's suggestion of holding a screening and asking questions before and after. I think this could be a really useful way to start determining the extent to which certain depictions match up with existing ideas about asexuality/aromanticism. For example, I could have a brief focus group style discussion before a screening asking people about their understanding of asexuality/aromanticism, then have a screening, and then follow that up by asking people if the depiction surprised them, matched their expectations, taught them something new etc.

Another issue I've been thinking about is how to split focus group up into different groups. I think it would be beneficial to have one group for ace/aro people and one for non ace/aro people, to see how people respond differently. This would also have the benefit that ace/aro people would hopefully feel more comfortable sharing their experiences, if they're in a group with only other aro/ace people. Theoretically, I could achieve this by asking people if they identify on the asexual or aromantic spectrums when they sign up for the focus group, and then putting people who say yes into one group and people who say no into the other. If I split this into two separate questions, this could also be helpful for getting a good mix of people who are both asexual and aromantic, people who are only asexual, and people who are only aromantic. Obviously, the main issue this presents is what I'd do with people who do not wish to disclose.

Another issue I've been thinking about is the difficulty of interviewing/surveying non-ace/aro people about their understanding of these orientations. While this is just a hypothesis, I feel like ace/aro people would be more comfortable talking about their own experiences (people love talking about themselves after all) than non-ace/aro people. I worry that people might be reluctant to share their actual beliefs/understanding/etc. because they're afraid of looking stupid and wrong and offending people. I need to think about how to combat this - maybe the best way is just to create a very casual and non-judgemental atmosphere?

3rd December

I've finally finished reading all the books I've been looking at on research methods!! (For now.... I do now want to check out the book on Thematic Analysis Miles has been reading.... curses....) Some notes on the methods in question!!

• First I read some more of Research Methods: The Basics, now looking at methods of qualitative data analysis
• The first discussed method is "interrogative insertion" - which involves "devising and inserting implied questions into the text for which the text provides the answers. In this way, you can uncover the logic (or lack of it) of the discourse and the direction and emphasis of the argument as made by the author" (p.190)
• Another method is "membership categorization", which "analyses the way people, both writers and readers, perceive commonly held views on social organization, how people are expected to behave, how they relate to each other and what they do in different social situations" - as I'm sure you can imagine, this is very relevant to me. Importantly, these assumptions will often not be "made explicit in the text. By highlighting what is regarded as normal, assumptions and pre-judgements may be revealed and an understanding of typical characterization can be gained" (p.191)
• Then there's "rhetorical analysis", which analyses "the use of language and argument to persuade the listener or reader to believe the author" - this is generally more applicable to things like political speeches, but could potentially be relevant to some of the depictions I've looked at, especially the more didactic ones like Sex Education and House. (p.191) In particular, an important aspect of this kind of analysis is the concept of "credibility markers - signals that indicate the 'rightness' of the author and the 'wrongness' of others, such as assertions about the 'correct' moral position, claims of privileged understanding and dismissal of alternatives as unbelievable" - am I overthinking in applying this to the House episode? Perhaps? (p.192)
• Perhaps more relevantly we have "narrative analysis" - a "form of analysis" that is "aimed at extracting themes, structures, interactions and performances from stories or accounts that people use to explain their past" - so this is more relevant to non fiction accounts but some of the principles could perhaps be applied to fictional narratives? (p.192)
• "Semiotics" is the so-called "science of signs" and is "used to examine visual and other media as well as written texts" - it "attempts to gain a deep understanding of meanings by the interpretation of single elements of text or visual units" (p.192)
• The final method brought up in this book is "discourse analysis" - which "studies the way that people communicate with each other through language within a social setting", though this can potentially be applied to forms of 'communication' other than a simple conversation, such as TV and film, for example. Two key themes in this type of analysis are: "the interpretive context in which the discourse is set, and the rhetorical organization of the discourse. The former concentrates on analysing the social context, for example the (p.193) power relations between the speakers [...] or the type of occasion where the discourse takes place [...] The latter investigates the style and scheme of the argument in the discourse; for example a sermon will aim to convince the listener in a very different way from a lawyer's presentation in court" (p.194)
• The next source I went on to look at was The SAGE Dictionary of Social Research Methods by Victor Jupp, which defines and explains many different research methods in a bit more detail than the last book, as well as discussing their limitations, so this was a very useful source!
• This book, of course, also discusses content analysis! It explains it a method that "uses quantitative measures of the frequency of appearance of particular elements in the text. The number of times that a particular item is used, and the number of contexts in which it appears, are used as measures of the significance of particular ideas or meanings" (p.40)
• This kind of analysis can be used for "any kind of documentary source" - so perhaps less useful for analysing fiction? (p.40)
• "Categories in content analysis will, therefore, include such diverse things as positive, negative, and neutral expressions concerning political parties, women, medical treatment, asylum seekers, God and street crime. Very often, the aim is to devise cateogries that grasp favourable or unfavourable attitudes or representations of these. For each category, the particular words, phrases or images that exemplify it must then be specified. The researcher takes the frequency with (p.40) which the words, phrases and images appear as indicators of the salience of the category of meaning" (p.41)
• Lists criteria for these categories: "comprehensiveness, exhaustiveness, mutual exclusiveness and independence." Basically the set of categories must "allow every relevant item to be classified into one of the categories", and it should not be possible "to classify any item into more than one category" - basically content analysis is very unambiguous (p.41)
• Limits of content analysis: Despite being based on "objective and reliable procedures", its conclusions are still "no more unambiguous than those of more qualitative approaches. The meaning of a particular word, pharse, or image depends upon its context" (p.41)
• Another limitation is that "the actually received messages among readers and audiences may be very different from the message disclosed by a piece of content analysis. Content analysis may disclose the range of possible received messages, rather than specifying any one as the message." (p.41)
• Content analysis also can't give "a completely valid picture of the intended message." (p.41)
• Discourse analysis is defined as a "detailed exploration of political, personal, media or academic 'talk' and 'writing' about a subject, designed to reveal how knowledges are organized, carried and reproduced in particular ways and through particular institutional practices" (p.74)
• "In short, it focuses upon the meaning and structure (whether overt or hidden) of acts of communication in context" (p.74)
• Discourse analysis is also heavily based on Foucault's "'archaeology' of the knowledges" - Foucault "used the concept of discourse" to "identify the mechanisms whereby some versions of 'truth' come to be accepted and internalized" (p.75)
• Important questions to ask during discourse analysis: "What are the conditions out of which this text emerged? What are the social, cultural and political conditions which made this text possible?" "What traces of other texts (intertextuality) are evident in the text?" "How consistent, contradictory or coherent is the text?" "How are people, objects and thought categorized? Who and what are included/excluded?" "Who and what are viewed as normal, natural and common sense?" "Are there any gaps, silences or 'absent presences'?" "What is prsented as legitimate/illegitimate?" "Who are assumed to be the primary readers of the text? What assumptions are being made about the audience?" "What are the likely social effects of the text?" "What alternative readings might be made by different social groups?" (p.75)
• "Importantly this does not simply end at a level of identifying multiple interpretations but in gaining insights into how some discourses come to be taken as more legitimate than others" (p.75)
• Not particularly usefully, the book admits that it is not actually easy to "identify and describe the formal processes of actually carrying out such research" - compared to something like content analysis it's more "intuitive and reflexive" (p.75)
• The book covers a lot of different types of interviews, including "elite interviewing", which is "the use of interviews to study those at the 'top' of any stratification system, be it in sport, academia, social status, religion, beauty or whatever" - it tends to focus "mainly on political or economic notables" - so this style of interview is not super relevant to me! (p.85)
• Perhaps more relevant is "ethnographic interviewing" - "a form of interviewing conducted in the context of a relationship with interviewees with whom the researcher has, through an ongoing presence, established relations of rapport and respect sufficient for a genuine 'meeting of minds' and that enable a mutual exploration of the meanings the interviewee applies to their social world" - so sort of similar-ish to what I'm intending to do with my focus groups (p.99)
• These kind of interviews are "normally conducted in unstructured, in-depth format with those from a particular culture, or who share particular experiences" (p.99)
• Where it becomes less relevant is "the centrality of rapport based on relatively long-term contact" (p.99) - this is a lot less feasible to me
• "A key feature is the idea that the researcher is there to learn from the respondent rather than impose an external frame of reference" (p.100)
• "The early practice of ethnographic interviewing was premised on the 'naturalistic' convention that, if rapport was achieved, full and frank response would be forthcoming. There was also an assumption that research subjects had unique insight into their own culture" - feels like there's overlap with focus groups (p.100)
• Issues with this style of interview often revolve around "the relationship between researcher and research 'subjects'" (p.100)
• Speaking of focus groups, the dictionary defines a focus group as consisting of "a tape-recorded discussion among six to eight participants who are interviewed by a moderator" (p.121)
• They "emphasize learning about the thoughts and experience of others" so "the most effective focus groups consist of participants who are just as interested in the topic as the researchers are, which helps to produce a free-flowing exchange" - the best focus groups also "not only provide data on what the participants think but also explicit insights into why they think the way they do."(p.121)
• "One particularly powerful strategy in focus group research is to bring together participants with a common background with regard to the discussion topic. This homogeneous group composition makes it easier for the participants to engage in sharing and comparing, especially on topics that may involve what others consider to be deviant behaviour" - a good argument for having two separate focus groups (p.121)
• "Homogenous focus groups" like this (p.121) are common for research on "sexual behaviour" - so y'know. that thing I do (p.122)
• The other advantage of these homogenous gropus is "an increased ability to carry on their own conversation, with less active guidance from the moderator" - this is especially useful for "exploratory research where the goal is to learn the participants' perspectives" (p.122)
• "The process of sharing and comparing in focus groups often leads the participants themselves to to explore the topic in ways that the researcher did not anticipate. Compared to particpant observation as a means of collecting qualitative data, focus groups have the advantage of providing concentrated observations on the topics that are of most interest to the researcher" (p.122)
• Some discussion of one-on-one interviews vs focus groups: "Individual rather than group interviews would be preferable when there is a need for greater depth and detail about personal experiences or beliefs, because one-on-one conversations allow more time to generate richer narratives" (p.122)
• Hermeneutics is "the study of how we understand the communications, actions and products of other human beings - especially those of past times and other cultures" (p.133)
• The general article on interviews explains that "interviews are typically associated with both quantitative and qualitative social research and are often used alongside other methods" (p.157)
• A lot of different types of interview: can be "informal, unstructured, naturalistic, in-depth discussions" or "very structured formats with answers offered from a prescribed list in a questionnaire or standardized interview schedule" (p.157)
• Different types of interview have their own advantages and disadvantages: "unstructured interviews where the respondent talks freely around a topic can produce rich grounded data but can be very time-consuming to analyse and the potential for bias on behalf of the interviewer might be increased. The more guided or focused the interview, generally speaking, the less time-consuming and less problematic (p.157) is the analysis [...] However, in opting for the latter form of interview there is generally an increased likelihood that the researcher might not be asking the most significant questions or unduly structuring responses" (p.158)
• "People belonging to different social groups might also require particular or different interview techniques and skills that might deter the use of this method." (p.158)
• "Life history interviewing" is "an approach that uses a form of individual interview directed to documenting the respondent's life, or an aspect of it that has developed over the life course" - there is usually "a stronger emphasis on non-directiveness" with "researchers adopting the posture of the good listener, seeking interviewees' own interpretations of their experience" (p.159)
• There are ethical issues with this - "concern about exploiting rapport for research purposes" (p.160)
• Media analysis is "the examination, interpretation and critique of both the material content of the channels of media of communication and the structure, composition and operations of corporations that either own or control those media" (p.169)
• Typically it will focus on media that has "the potential for disseminating influential ideas" such as books, newspapers, radio, TV, film, and advertising (p.169)
• Narrative analysis is "a family of approaches to diverse kinds of texts, which have in common a storied form" - "storytelling interprets the world and experience in it. Narratives are storied ways of knowing and communicating" (p.186)
• Narrative analysis generally focuses on "oral narratives of personal experience" - could be useful for focus groups? (p.186)
• Many different types of narrative analysis: thematic analysis emphasises "the content of a text, 'what' is said more than 'how it is said" (p.186) - it is "useful for theorizing across a number of cases - finding common thematic elements across research participants and the events they report" but it can be argued that it risks ignoring the context the narrative exists in (p.187)
• Another form of narrative analysis is structural analysis, which focuses on "the telling, the way a story is told" (p.187)
- this is "not suitable for large numbers, but can be very useful for detailed case studies and comparison of several narrative accounts" (p.187)
• The last relevant type discussed is interactional analysis, which emphasises "the dialogic process between teller and listener" (p.187) - emphasis is on "storytelling as a process of co-construction, where teller and listener create meaning collaboratively" - overlap with Croteau and Hoynes' discussion of different models of interpretation (p.188)
• A related concept is "narrative interviewing" - "a form of interviewing that involves the generation of detailed 'stories' of experience, not generalized descriptions" - "the question and answer (stimulus/response) model gives way to viewing the interview as a discursive accomplishment" (p.189)
• "When the interview is viewed as a conversation - a discourse between speakers - rules of everyday conversation apply: turn-taking, relevancy, entrance and exit talk" - this approach also requires the interviewer "to give up some control" (p.190)
• "In general, less structure in interview schedules gives greater control to research participants" (p.190)
• Interesting example of a study by Wendy Luttrell which used a similar approach but ended up having particpants use art to express their personal narratives instead (p.190)
• Finally we have textual analysis: "a method of analysing the contents of documents that uses qualitative procedures for assessing the significance of particular ideas or meanings in the document" (p.297)
• Heavily influenced by hermeneutic philosophy, paricularly the philosophy that "the interpretation of a text must always be undertaken from the reader's particular standpoint. The inference of meaning is possible only by relating the text to some other frame of reference and entering into a dialogue with the text" (p.297)
• "A message that goes beyond mere denotation and is structured around connotative meanings to convey a particular message is, for Barthes, a 'myth', a term that he uses in preference to the Marxian term 'ideology'. A myth is a form of communication in which cultural meanings are structured in such a way as to convey a particular message to those who see, hear, or read it. It is 'distorted' by the demands of the underlying power relations. Barthes's analysis of myth is extended to non-linguistic forms of discourse, such as paintings, films, photographs and objects of consumption" (p.297)
• One of the main aims of textual analysis is "to uncover power relations through disclosing these distortions, demonstrating whether any particular myth reflects the position of the oppressor or the oppressed" (p.298)
• One advantage of textual analysis is that it's more sensitive "to cultural context" compared to content analysis, but it is also a lot more subjective (p.298)
• FINALLY I read some essays from the collection Research Methods for Cultural Studies by Michael Pickering
• The Introduction mentions a few different techniques, including "close reading", which is something I might want to try (p.1)
• Michael Pickering's essay Experience and the Social World discusses the field's capacity to "make space for otherwise silent or marginalised voices to be heard" - which seems at least a little like what I'm doing! (p.19)
• Pickering argues that developing "relations between researchers and researched on a subject/subject basis rather than attempting to adopt a position of spurious detachment from an isolated object of research" as an important part of this (p.19)
• Warns against the risk of viewing first-hand experience "in an essentialist way" and treating it as "unimpeachably self-validating" (p.21)
• "These differences are indicative of the problems involved in representation, which arise because of the gap between knowledge and experience" (p.22)
• Also an interesting section on the danger of treating experience as necessarily equating to knowledge - "one of the illusions of relativism" (p.22)
• "Cultural studies has proved appealing to some members of oppressed or marginalised groups because it allows a space for the articulation of their experience where this is not available in more conventional or established academic disciplines" (p.22)
• Also argues that "privileging category-based experience may not only lead back into essentialism but also neglect the intersections of gender, ethnicity and social class, and so confines questions of identity and representation to whatever is held to be specific to the self-legitimated experience" - a trap I need to avoid falling into (p.22)
• "Though it needs to be properly addressed in any investigation and analysis of the experience of particular social grups, the difficulties it creates do not negate the value of attending to the experience of hitherto neglected, concealed, or misrepresented groups outside of the social mainstream. The main reason for this is the contribution it can make to cultural democratisation" - can't wait to help democratise culture(p.23)
• It is important to "understand the bearings which any expressive cultural form has on socially and historically specific experience" e.g. pop culture (p.24)
• "The relationship between situated and mediated experience is interactive. This means that in making experience a focus of enquiry and attending to how the social world is experienced on its everyday ground, we have to recognise that the media are an intrinsic, regularly experienced feature of that ground, influencing how people see the local world around them and interpret events on their own doorstep, as well as their views of cultural difference and their sense of global interconnectedness" (p.25)
• Important to note: "Certain definitions of experience have power over other definitions, as for instance in the way they may universalise what is socially and hisotrically particular to, say, the self-presentation of white men or Western women" (p.25)
• Good quote from Ann Gray (1997): "The extent to which the intellectual is prepared to investigate his/her positionality is what is at stake for a genuinely reflexive and radical use of the category of 'experience'" (p.26)
• "How experience is expressed has always to be questioned, but questioning experience is different from using our positionality and way of knowing about the world to displace other people's accounts of their experience, or from misusing an assumed intellectual authority to dismiss such accounts as falsely conscious and politically compromised, seeking certainty in theory instead" (p.26)
• Relevant point to aspec: "It is particularly at the point of experience as process that definite, and at times quite subtle, qualitative features of social and cultural life are felt, sometimes instensely, regardless of whether they have achieved any conventional cultural expression" (p.27)
• Important to remember that "people are self-interpreting, and how they understand their experience of and in the social world is fundamental to cultural analysis" (p.28)
• "Attending to experience as process and product is nevertheless of enormous importance in telling us how social worlds are inhabited and understood, in a forwards and backwards motion between what has happened and what is made of it" (p.28)
• "Experience is thus structured around expectations and breaks with those expectations in ways directly relevant to what we want to derive from research" (p.30)
• Steph Lawler's essay Stories and the Social World discusses how "social actors" use stories to "make sense of the world, of their place within it, and of their own identities" - "Narrative is a key means through which people understand and make sense of their social world, and of their place within it" (p.33)
• Defines narrative as "an account which has three elements: characters (human or non-human), action (movement through time) and plot" (p.34)
• "If the social world is always-already storied, it puts constraints on the stories we produce" - uses the example of an interview about a woman's relationship with her mum, which "only makes sense in a time and place in which we understand mothering as significant" - IN CONCLUSION stories are made comprehensible by social attitudes (p.38)
• While this essay focuses on non fiction stories, some of the insights could perhaps be applied to fiction - "Stories are not 'fictions' in the sense of being 'made up'. Rather, narratives are devices to produce certain kinds of meaning. I try to use stories to teell what I think is the truth - a located, embodied, contingent and therefore real truth" (p.41)
• "An important insight of hermeneutic approaches is that the interpretation can go beyond the initial interpretation of the author" (p.46)
• "The third stage in narrative research - the production of a research narrative - is also important. In this, the researcher's own account of how the analysis 'came to be the way it is', clarity, reflexivity and openness are crucial" (p.47)
• Aeron Davis' essay Investigating Cultural Producers discusses approaches to researching cultural production, as the title suggests
• The "political economy" approach investigates this production "on the macro level as an industry. Here it is assumed that the conditions of production shape cultural content" (p.53)
• In this approach "cultural production is investigated indirectly. The focus is not on those individuals who produces culture but on the structures, external factors and high-level decision-makers which come to influence and shape mass-produced culture" (p.54)
• In contrast, a "textual analysis" approach seeks to "highlight the common codes, terms, ideologies, discourses and individuals that come to dominate cultural outputs" (p.56)
• First step is "to obtain and select the texts to be analysed" - consider if they're recorded, if there are enough texts available etc. (p.57)
• Then there's the question of sampling method: "How many texts should be analysed? How, if there are many to choose from, should a sample be selected?" (p.57)
• Options of qualitative vs quantitative analysis: "Qualitative forms of textual or discourse analysis tend to look at far fewer texts but in more depth. Quantitative analyses usually generate large amounts of simple, numerical data from many more units" (p.57)
• Main considerations: "(1) the selection should be a representative sample of the texts under consideration - enough to support any wider conclusions; (2) the quantity is, in part, dictated by the amount of time and writing space needed per tet; and, (3) in part, by the amount of texts available. Time spans, media formats, numbers of competing cultural products and key words can all be used to increase or decrease the sample number accordingly" (p.57)
• One of the main limitations is that "textual analysis often assumes rather more than it should about the conditions of cultural production and consumption. In the past rather grand claims about material and cultural relations have been deduced from limited and unrepresentative selections of texts" (p.58)
• "Textual analysis also investigates cultural production indirectly. Analysis is used to make deduction about specific, local or wider, social conditions in which cultural production takes place" (p.66)
• Some good points about interviewing: "The parameters of the research, its focus and hypotheses dictate the type and number of participants selected" "How initial contact is made is critical [...] Most have to be persuaded with a careful and thought-out approach that encourages and allays fears" "Patient and detailed preparation for interviews are essential" (p.66) "Do what you can to make the interviewee comfortable and to build a rapport" (p.67)
• Anneke Meyer's essay Investigating Cultural Consumers was really useful for its guidance on focus group
• Defines "cultural consumer" as "those who consume cultural texts or engage in cultural practices involving consumption" (p.68)
• "Cultural studies' conceptualisation of cultural products and practices as texts emphasises their polysemic nature, which means they contain various meanings and can be interpreted in different ways" - Meyer argues that cultural studies has generally focused on cultural products themselves, but has recently become "increasingly interested in cultural consumers, and it often uses qualitative methods to study processes such as attitude formation or meaning attribution" (p.69)
• Difference between interviews and focus groups: "Interviews involve an interviewer and an interviewee engaging in face-to-face conversation, with the interviewer guiding the conversation by posing quesitions related to particular topics". Within interviews, "research participants are seen as active meaning makers rather than passive information providers, and interviews offer a unique opportunity to study these processes of meaning production directly" (p.70). Meanwhile "focus groups involve an interviewer (moderator) and interviewees (participants) in a face-to-face situation in which the moderator asks questions relating to a particular issue in order to gain better understanding" (p.71)
• Focus groups are "very popular with media researchers, in particular those interested in media 'effects' who combine textual analysis with focus groups of relevant consumers" - AKA WHAT I'M DOING (p.71)
• "By the 1940s media effects research ahd arguably generated a particular kind of 'focused interview' (Merton and Kendal 1946) in which research participants need to have been involved in a particular situation or practice, such as having watched a particular television programme, about which they can subsequently be interviewed" (p.71) - useful strategy for me!
• Limitations of the focus group approach: "not suitable for many facets of cultural consumer research" - however this mostly applies to very inflammatory topics like pedophilia (p.71)
• "Texts both reflect and generate certain representations; they create and reproduce culture" "Similarly, cultural consumers both consume and produce meanings" (p.72)
• "As both the media and consumers are not homogenous groupings, there is never one unified message or response [...] In the media we find a range of interpretations depending on factors such as a political orientation or target audience" (p.72)
• A potentially useful framework is that of discourse: "which refers to a series of sanctioned statemetns that are circulated around an issue and used to make sense of it" (p.72)
• Important to keep in mind that "Due to the diversity of the media and their consumers, any results regarding media impacts are limited to the groups researched, even though they may be treated as suggestivve for other media or consumer groups if sufficient similarity criteria are fulfilled" (p.73)
• Research should be "aware of (1) the limitations and benefits of different methods, (2) the complexity of the subject matter, and (3) the need to ask broader yet more qualified questions about the relationships between media and consumer discourses" (p.73)
• "Both interviews and focus groups can produce in-depth, detailed and complex data on attitudes, practices and experiences of cultural consumers, as well as the discourses and motivations behind their meaning-making processes" (p.73)
• "Focus groups fundamentally differ from interviews by involving a group situation in which data are produced through debates and interactive dynamics between participants" - this makes them "useful for research into motivations and discourses behind attitudes and practices of cultural consumers because in discussions participants have to explain, justify and argue for their opinions" (p.73)
• "Focus groups can specifically set up for inter-group comparisons. Practically, the groups would be kept homogenous apart from specific break variables to compare and contrast the impact of these variables on cultural consumers" - so for me this could be one group of aspec people and one group of non-aspec people - I'm also considering maybe splitting that second group into people who have aspec peers and people who don't know SHIT, but idk how feasible that is (p.74)
• "Focus groups are a particularly useful method for researching attitudes, experiences and understandings of cultural consumers because meaning production is a social and shared process" (p.74)
• Another important point to consider: Meyer argues that "interviews are well suited to exploring issues that are sensitive, emotive or controversial. Focus groups should not be ruled out per se because some individuals openly share personal experiences, but others may be inhibited by the presence of a group, fearing judgement, ridicule or question" - this is something I'm especially concerned about with regards to the non-aspec focus group - what if people feel inhibited by not wanting to make a fool of themselves? (p.77)
• Qualitative research projects are very different to quantitative ones in terms of sampling - "A key question concerns who qualifies as a participant. There are topics where respondents need to fulfil certain criteria in terms of possessing specialist knowledge or engaging in certain activities [...] In this case the researcher adopts a purposive sampling strategy which is driven by finding those who fulfil those criteria" (p.78)
• The "ideal" number of participants for focus groups is "between six and twelve" which is "large enough to yield a discussion and small enough to allow for significant individual contributions" (p.79)
• "The usefulness of break variables depends on how interested the researcher is in (1) the role of a specific variable, and (2) comparisons between different groups of consumers" (p.80)
• Three types of interview styles: structured - "a list of set questions which must be covered" - and semi-structured - "a list of topics to be covered, with some suggested questions" - and unstructured - "a list of very few rough areas" (p.80)
• "It is important for interviewers and moderators to create an atmosphere where respondents feel safe and talk freely; this includes building a rapport and going along with the flow of the conversation, gently steering rather than domineering. Any issues which are not raised during conversations can be directly brought up at the end" (p.81)
• Unstructured and semi structured interviews need "open-ended" questions "to invite elaboration and avoid yes/no answers" (p.81)
• "The more structured the interview, the more direct and interventionist the interviewer's role becomes, both in terms of asking questions and steering respondents back onto research topics. As a general rule, interrupting or cutting off respondents should be avoided as this interrupts the communicative flow and has the potential to intimidate respondents and suggest that not all their experiences are valuable. Additionally, the moderator has to manage a group situation, which produces extra challenges such as domineering participants or heated atmospheres" - it's the moderator's job to "steer debates along the desired path, maintain a friendly atmosphere and keep participants involved" (p.81)
• Some points about recording focus gropus - should be "tape recorded and transcribed" (bit out of date lol) and the transcription "can then be analysed" - transcripts will need to be tidied up to convey "characteristics of verbal speech" (p.82)
• "Meanings are condensed into summarising statements in the margins of the transcript and categorised, as long statements or passages of speech are reduced to simple categories" - useful technique I could use! (p.82)
• "Once categories have been identified, the researcher can assign all (relevant) chunks of text and use a form of coding to mark where text passages belong" - another possibly useful technique (p.82)
• "Focus groups have to include an analysis of the group dynamics in conjunction with thematic interpretations. Both group talk and interaction constitute research data, and the two are deeply connected" (p.83) - this seems especially important if I'm comparing different groups
• On a tangential note, one of the examples Meyer discusses has a pretty great question format: "Does the public understand paedophilia through the same discourses as the media?" - I could probably adapt this into a good research question to include in my project (p.83)
• David Deacon's essay Why Counting Counts discusses the lack of use of quantitative analysis in cultural studies and what benefits he believes quantitative research can bring
• He points out that a lot of cultural studies research uses "quasi-quantification" e.g. phrases like "the majority of", "almost all the interviewees" - he argues that this demonstrates an "acceptance that in political, analytical and rhetorical terms, 'frequency of occurrence' does count - even when it is not counted" (p.95) He's so iconic I love him
• Mentions Gerbner's work as "the only comprehensive body of research to have systematically demonstrated that television plays a clearly defined hegemonic role in contemporary culture" - god I still need to read Gerbner (p.96)
• "It is widely recognised within the public society literature that the identification, naming and categorisation of marginalised social groups is an essential precondition for them to receive appropriate support, resources and respect" (p.97) - FEELS RELEVANT TO ME
• Also points out that in some examples, the lack of specific quantification leads to analysis that seems contradictory - can be avoided by being specific about actual amounts(p.99)
• "We cannot ignore the pervasive belief that numbers have greater (p.99) scientific rigour and objectivity than other kinds of evidence, however much we might want to challenge it" (p.100)
• "A third restrictive implication of avoiding quantification is that it disengages cultural studies from wider public policy debates" (p.100)
• Quoting Paradigm Wars (Oakley (1999)): "Women and other minority groups, above all, need 'quantitative' research, because without this it is difficult to distinguish between personal experience and collective oppression" (p.101)
• Sarah Pink's essay Analysing Visual Experience makes some useful points about the development of "visual cultural studies" - which concerns "the many moments within the cycle of production, circulation and consumption of the image through which meanings accumulate, slip and shift" (p.130, quoting Seeing Beyond Belief by Lister and Wells) - is this what I'm doing?
• Also some useful examples of how to present visual research, for example through "photographic representations" (p.143), "video representations" (p.144), and "hypermedia" such as this very website! (p.146)
• The last essay I looked at was Martin Barker's essay Analysing Discourse - it discusses some of the limitations of discourse analysis so far, particular its assumption that "power" is "the central 'given' of discourse" (p.152)
• I found some of the examples of discourse analysis useful for illuminating what this kind of analysis actually involves, such as an analysis of a CIA Credo that analyses "the recurrent use of 'we' and the self-attributions this implies" - big focus on language used (p.155) - another example looks at self-help books and picks out things like "near-didactic organisation" and "their constant 'prompts, suggestions, encouragement'" (p.157)
• Barker's argument is that a lot of discourse analysis fails to consider the audience and their possible motivation for looking at a certain text, and how this impacts how they might be affected (p.156)
• The presumptions Barker identifies as cropping up in a lot of discourse analysis are "premises concerning unity and coherence" (assuming that readers will "not see important distinctions" between examples of a "genre"), "premises concerning persuasiveness" (assuming that the message of the text will be effective on the audience) (p.158), and "premises concerning investigative completeness and testability" (assuming that their claims don't need to be tested) (p.159)
• Argues that a lot of discourse analysis assumes that the "rhetorical moves" they analyse cannot possibly fail (p.160)
• "In the absence of other kinds of testing investigation, we simply do not know how far, or for whom, this kind of talk might be disempowering" - discourse analysis doesn't actually tell us much unless we combine it with ways of testing audience response (p.161)
• The key issues identified are "the problem of the unity and coherence of the 'research object'", "presumptions about persuasiveness and associated concepts of power", and "issues of investigative completeness and testability" (p.163)
• Martin affirms his icon statement with the sentence "Researchers should back off from this kind of talk, and take some responsibility for spelling out how such claims might be tested" (p.163) - again you need to be able to prove that certain discourse has the impact on people you say it does
• Goes on to explain his advice for selecting a "corpus" to be studied in a discourse analysis - there need to be "defensible grounds for its selection" beyond just convenience (p.164)
• "It is arguable (I would argue it) that all analyses of texts and discourses will inevitably make some substantive claims about things beyond themselves" - Barker argues researchers need to "take responsibility for implied claims" like this (p.166)

Possible further reading:

• Feminist Encounters by C.T. Mohanty - discussion of essentialism
• On Stories by Richard Kearney - discussion of fiction vs non fiction and truth vs falsehood
• Reading Television by Fiske and Hartley
• Orientalism by Edward Said - example of textual analysis
• Reading Ads Socially by Goldman - example of textual analysis
• Manufacturing Consent by Herman and Chomsky - example of textual analysis
• Talk on Television by Livingstone and Lunt
• Applied Discourse Analysis by Carla Willig - examples of discourse analysis, particularly the essays on police interviews and marriage

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