Plan for the Week

TO DO THIS WEEK:

• FINISH ALL THOSE DOCUMENTARIES - IN PROGRESS
• Finish reading Thematic Analysis - IN PROGRESS
• Apply interview structure research to rough plan
• Finish participant information sheet and consent form - IN PROGRESS
• Watch The Imperfects - IN PROGRESS
• Respond to thesis feedback - IN PROGRESS
• Transcribe Heartbreak High season 2 - IN PROGRESS
• Do focus group test run
• SELECT CASE STUDIES FOR FOCUS GROUP DO THIS ISABEL IT'S VERY IMPORTANT
• Get thesis word count up to 7400

Looking at my time plan and realising how close I am to the summative review and final hand-in deadlines. Guys I hate to see this but it's actually so over.

Happy Tutorial Tuesday (again)

Had my tutorial with Colin this week! Main points:

• Overall thesis is looking really interesting! Said he felt like he was learning a lot from it!
• Focus group tips - Let yourself relax and this will help everyone else relax
• Ideas to think about for thesis - Lacan's concept of desire and its use in feminist/queer theory, normative ideas of (heterosexual) desire, societal obsession with desire, Mulvey's notion of destroying male desire + replacing it with new desire, expanding on idea of pathologisation, Louis Althusser's influential work developing the idea of ideology - cinema and TV are "screens that mask reality", apparatus theory
• Look at Sara Ahmed - Feminist Killjoys
• Look at primary sources for feminist arguments about media influence - don't want to be too influenced by Van Zoonen
• Maybe look at Jack Halberstam's essay on Boys Don't Cry
• Discussed my position in relation to the debates I talk about - possible to agree with just certain aspects of a theory, talked about how a lot of ideas of media influence are too simplistic and don't take into account other things that can influence our perceptions
• Issue of broadcast TV vs streaming - Colin mentioned how they can bleed into each other e.g. broadcast channels have online versions, but they have different audiences, streaming is more global, overall he recommended not dividing up the shows or just focusing on streaming (which I'd been debating) but instead looking at it show by show - after all a lot of streaming trends like targeted demographics originate in traditional broadcast TV, so they are certainly comparable
• Also consider overlap of digital realm of streaming and of TV discussion with digital realm of a-spec discussion - a kind of "a-spec public realm"
• For thesis include more theory discussion e.g. including more of Foucault and looking at Sara Ahmed
• Also backed up Emma's point about how I should discuss history of a-spec identities and how these discourses form

The last point is the one I've probably done the most work on this week - it's actually relatively easy to find sources for the history of asexuality as a concept, since a lot of the books I've looked at discuss it. Finding sources for aromanticism is harder and I've had to look outside of academia - I found a good source for history of aromanticism as a concept here

Further Adventures in the Methodology Cave

I'm a big enough person to admit I'm currently panicking quite a lot about getting everything done on time. But such is life and I must plough on and hope for the best I fear. So, getting stuck back into Thematic Analysis by Braun and Clarke. Notes from this week:

• "Phase 3: Generating initial themes. Here, you aim to start identifying shared patterned meaning across the dataset. You compile clusters of codes that seem to share a core idea or concept, and which might provide a meaningful ‘answer’ to your research question. [...] Where codes typically capture a specific or a particular meaning, themes describe broader, shared meanings. Once you’ve identified potential or candidate themes that you feel capture the data and address your research question, you collate all coded data relevant to each candidate theme" (p.35)
• " a theme has to capture a wide range of data that are united by, and evidence, a shared idea, sometimes quite obviously, and sometimes far less obviously, and sometimes in quite different ways. " (p.77)
• "A topic summary is not a theme" - elaborates on distinction: "A topic summary is a summary of everything the participants said about a particular topic, presented as a theme. One of the main problems with topic summaries for us, and for reflexive TA, is that they unite around a topic, rather than a shared meaning or idea. Topic summary ‘themes’ from the childfree dataset would be something like reasons for being childfree or perceptions of people who choose not to have children" (p.77)
• Each theme needs to have "its own distinct central organising concept" (p.77)
• Phase 3 "involves a range of processes of engaging with the data codes to explore areas where there is some similarity of meaning. Then clustering together the potentially connected codes (into candidate themes), and exploring these initial meaning patterns. " (p.79)
• "Key to remember at this stage is that you are exploring clustered patterning across your dataset – not just within a single data item. So even if you have one data item or participant who expresses an idea repeatedly, if it’s not evident in any other data item, it probably isn’t the basis for a theme in TA" - so I wouldn't just be looking for themes in a single show for example (p.79)
• "The initial way to explore patterned meaning is to consider all the codes (collated at the end of Phase two, see Table 4.1), and explore whether there are any broad ideas that a number of different codes could be clustered around. " (p.80)
• Themes vs codes: "themes capture multiple facets of an idea or concept – whereas codes capture a single facet or idea. These multiple facets all need to contribute to the same core idea or central organising concept. This means you’re trying to cluster codes into broader patterns that are coherent, and meaningfully tell you something important and relevant in relation to your research question." Ok I think I get it? Whatevar. (p.80)
• "In theme generation and development, you may occasionally decide that one of these broader and nuanced codes seems like it might actually be a theme. There is a core idea, but also variation. In such instances, it’s perfectly reasonable to ‘promote’ a rich or complex code to a candidate theme." (p.81)
• Questions to ask to evaluate your themes: " Does this provisional theme capture something meaningful? • Is it coherent, with a central idea that meshes the data and codes together? • Does it have clear boundaries?" (p.85)
• Braun and Clarke recommend "using a visual mapping technique – drawing thematic maps, either by hand or electronically" (p.85)
• ADD THEMATIC MAP EXAMPLE
• "your initial (and indeed final) themes do not have to capture everything in the dataset, or indeed all the codes that you have developed. [...] Your job in analysing the data, and reporting them, is to tell a particular story about the data that addresses your research question." (p.88)
• "Trying to finalise your themes early on is likely to produce a superficial reading of the data. You need to be prepared to let things go throughout the whole theme development and refinement process." (p.89)
• "we generally recommend somewhere between two and six themes (including subthemes) for an 8,000-word report. A longer output – such as a 10,000-word dissertation or an 80,000-word thesis, offers greater scope to explore more themes in depth" (p.89) - Our thesis length is around twice the 8,000 word report they use as an example, so I'd probably want between four and twelve themes? Though I guess I wouldn't be dedicating that entire word count to the thematic analysis so... maybe not? (Also bear in mind that I'm analysing both the TV examples and the results of the focus group).
• "try to avoid a ‘question and answer’ orientation in the way you engage with codes and data. If you generate clusters related to ‘answering’ quite specific or concrete (p.89) questions, such as how is being childfree negative? or how is being childfree positive? or even why are people childfree? you can be pulled towards quite surface readings of the data, as well as topic summary-type themes." (p.90)
• "Your role as analyst is to tell the reader what the data and your themes mean and why they matter. A key mantra for analysis is ‘data do not speak for themselves’" (p.91)
• "Phase 4: Developing and reviewing themes. Here, your task is to assess the initial fit of your provisional candidate themes to the data, and the viability of your overall analysis, by going back to the full dataset. Development and review involves checking that themes make sense in relation to both the coded extracts, and then the full dataset. Does each theme tell a convincing and compelling story about an important pattern of shared meaning related to the dataset? Collectively, do the themes highlight the most important patterns across the dataset in relation to your research question? Radical revision is possible; indeed, it’s quite common. Certain candidate themes may be collapsed together; one or more may be split into new themes; candidate themes may be retained; some or all may be discarded. You have to be prepared to let things go! " (p.35)
• "Phase four extends, and offers a vital check on, the initial theme development in Phase three, through a process of re-engagement with: (1) all the coded data extracts; and (2) the entire dataset. The purpose here is to review the viability of the initial clusterings, and explore whether there is any scope for better pattern development. This phase is partly about providing a validity check on the quality and scope of your candidate themes. But it’s importantly also about devel- oping the richness of your themes; you’re aiming to develop a rich, nuanced analysis that addresses your research question." (p.97)
• "The most useful basic question to guide this development and review process (both now, and in relation to the full dataset) is: • Is this pattern a viable theme – a pattern that has an identifiable central organising concept, as well as different manifestations of that idea?" (p.98)
• If your themes pass that test, other useful questions include: "Can I identify boundaries of this theme? Am I clear about what it includes and excludes", "Are there enough (meaningful) data to evidence this theme? Are there multiple articulations around the core idea, and are they nuanced, complex, and diverse? Does the theme feel rich? A useful heuristic here is to ask yourself, do I have quite a bit I could say about this theme?", "Are the data contained within each theme too diverse and wide-ranging? Does the theme lack coherence?", "Does this theme convey something important?" (p.99)
• "Once you feel you have a set of themes that work in relation to the coded data extracts, that tell a good story, with each theme offering something distinctive, you then expand the focus of revision and development by going back to the entire dataset. " (p.100)
• Long ass quote sorry but I want to remember this bit: "As noted, coding moves you away from your dataset, and in initial theme generation you effectively work at two steps removed from the dataset: one step from the full dataset to the coded dataset; another from the coded dataset to your list of code labels. With theme generation, you’re initially just looking at the code labels themselves. When you move to development and revision with the coded data, you get closer to the dataset again, but you’re still a step removed, as you’re only working with pre-selected segments of the dataset – the data you have tagged with code labels. Each step of removal allows greater scope for misremembering, decontextualisation, or just plain forget- ting the full scope of the dataset, and thus an analysis that potentially misrepresents the data content. Furthermore, as we go deeper and deeper into analysis, there’s a good likelihood that we’ll notice different (relevant) things in the data. This is especially the case if our analysis is more latent, conceptual or theoretical. So full, thorough, and open engagement with the whole dataset at this stage is important. " (p.101)
• "Theme importance is NOT determined by (numerical) frequency so much as salience and importance to addressing the research question." (p.102)
• "After the two layers of review and theme development, you need to decide if you feel your analysis fulfils the criteria we described at the start of this section. If so, great! Move on to the next phase. If not, you may need to proceed ‘backwards’ for a while. You may need to revisit your coding, re-coding some or all of the dataset; you may even discard some coding if the scope of analysis has shifted. " (p.103)
• "your overall TA can contain themes developed around contradictory meanings. Different themes can be contradictory to each other, just not internally contradictory." (p.107)
• "Phase 5: Refining, defining and naming themes. Here you fine-tune your analysis – ensuring that each theme is clearly demarcated, and is built around a strong core concept or essence. Ask yourself ‘what story does this theme tell?’ and ‘how does this theme fit into my overall story about the data?’ Key activities in this phase involve writing a brief synopsis of each theme. You also decide on a concise, punchy and informative name for each theme" (p.36)
• Phase five " involves further development around your themes, as well as more precise analytic work refining your analysis. As analytic refinement involves writing, it necessarily blends into the final phase of TA" (p.108)
• "The disciplined task of writing a theme definition – effectively an abstract for your theme – is a good test of the quality of your themes. A definition, in a few sentences, clarifies and illustrates what each theme is about – the central organising concept or key take-away point of the theme, as well as the particular manifestations" (p.108)
• "In writing a definition for each theme, it’s useful to ask yourself whether you can clearly state: • What the theme is about (central organising concept). • What the boundary of the theme is. • What is unique and specific to each theme. • What each theme contributes to the overall analysis." (p.111)
• "Another important aspect of this phase is to think about the name you will give each theme. A good theme name will be informative, concise, and catchy." (p.111)
• "Single word theme names typically don’t work well for reflexive TA." - should tell the reader a bit about what the theme means (p.112)
• "Phase 6: Writing up. Writing is an integral phase of the analytic process for TA, as it is for many qualitative analytic approaches, so you start writing early on. In reflexive TA, formal analytic writing often starts from Phase 3; the more informal (just for you) writing you do from the start of the process – familiarisation notes and reflexive journaling – can feed into the more formal writing. In writing up, you finesse and finish the writing process." (p.36)
• "With TA, you will still be producing your analysis as you write it, not simply describing the analysis you finished before writing started" (p.118)
• "Rationalising your choice of reflexive TA needs to demonstrate that you understand what it offered and allowed you to do. In describing what reflexive TA offered for your project, try to avoid simply citing its generic strengths (e.g. that it is theoretically flexible or accessible). Instead, explain why these are strengths for your research in particular" (p.122) - should expand on this in thesis
• "As well as framing the rationale for why TA, you also need to explain how you did your analysis. What we want to emphasise here is the importance of writing about how you actually applied TA, rather than a more generic description of your process." - probably don't need to worry about this until I've actually done the analysis LOL (p.124)
• Should start your write-up by letting the reader know " what to expect, albeit briefly. Often in reflexive TA, this takes the form of a summary paragraph or list of themes" (p.130)
• "The final analysis in TA combines data extracts and analytic narrative – the things you write, giving the reader your interpretation of the data and their meaning. We very loosely recommend a 50–50 balance of these two aspects: not too much data to suggest the analytic narrative aspect is underdeveloped (remember: data do not speak for themselves, which is why interpretation matters; see Chapter Seven); not too much narrative at the expensive of real data (as we discuss shortly, data extracts provide the foundational validation for your analytic claims). However, there is of course flexibility!" (p.131)
• Braun and Clarke's tips on selecting good data extracts to include in the write-up: "Select vivid examples", "Select extracts across the range of data items" (p.133), "Select clear and concise extracts to illustrate analytic claims", "Use longer extracts when treating data analytically", "You want a range of quotations for each theme", "Avoid repeating extracts", "Edit out unnecessary detail" using [...], "Clarify and contextualise extracts where necessary" (p.134)
• "There are two typical ways data extracts are used in reporting reflexive TA: illustratively and analytically. " (p.135)
• "With an illustrative use of data extracts, your analytic narrative – the rich, detailed, interpretative account of the theme – tells a story about your themes, and their meaning and significance, without focusing on the particularities of individual data extracts. The analytic narrative would make sense without any instances of quoted data included.13 Data excerpts are effectively inserted into this narrative, and provide illustrations or examples of the analytic points. They provide snapshots of data evidence to show the meanings you’re claiming – and a basis for the reader to assess your interpretation of those meanings." (p.135)
• "For an analytic treatment of data, it’s better to imagine the data extracts and your analytic narrative as knitted together. This is because here you focus on the specific detail within the quoted data extracts and you develop your analytic claims and overall narrative in relation to these." (p.138)
• This is probably a very simplified way of looking at it but generally seems to be: Illustrative use - put your discussion first, then put in an extract as an example; Analytic use - Put in the extract first and then analyse it
• "We generally advise against the reporting of theme frequency in reflexive TA because it’s premised on assumptions that are not consistent with a Big Q qualitative framework." - also I imagine numbers wouldn't necessarily mean much bc you're just talking about a specific sample? (p.141)
• Types of conclusions to think about drawing from the analysis: "Conclusions related to the data and the analysis. What do we know about this area that we didn’t before, and what do we think the implications of that are?" (p.146), "Conclusions related to existing scholarship and/or the discipline you’re working in. What does our study tell us that’s new or different for our field or discipline? How might what we already knew be reinforced or validated by the similar understandings we’ve developed here? How can similar conclusions from different contexts or settings allow us to make claims about the broader relevance of our analysis? How does existing scholarship provide validity or foundations for the sorts of conclusions we draw from our analysis?", "Conclusions related to the method or methodology. What does our use of this particular method(ology) reveal – in relation to the method itself, and/or in relation to the topic?", "Conclusions related to theory. What might our story tell us about our theoretical ‘takes’ on the topic, the issue, or the analysis?", "Conclusions related to practice. What can we say about how people work or practice in an area, based on our data analysis?", "Conclusions related to the wider societal context. What might this mean for societal understanding, engagement or intervention?" (p.147)
• Finally, an evaluation: "your written report should reflect back and consider what was gained and what was lost (p.148) by your decisions, choices and actions along the journey of your project – including but not limited to analysis." (p.149)

TV (and documentaries!) of the Week

Finished watching The Imperfects. Not a whole lot of further thoughts on it - asexuality didn't really come up much past episode 1, but there was a kind of romance arc between Abbi and another character (Hannah). Once again, the most interesting thing about this show to me is how much it doesn't make a big deal of asexuality. There's a scene of Abbi telling Hannah she's ace, but we don't even see this conversation, and instead experience it through another character (Tilda), who has super-hearing and overhears it happening. Other than that scene, there's no further mention of asexuality and it doesn't even seem to pose any kind of obstacle to that relationship. I did also think it was interesting that the show presents there as being a "correct" response to someone coming out as ace - Tilda commenting on the conversation she hears says "And that is the correct answer, Hannah" - but doesn't actually show us what that correct response is.

I also listened to a podcast episode talking about asexual comedy, and via that went down a rabbit hole looking at the show Nathan For You, which has a segment about asexuality. The segment is mostly played for laughs - the premise of the show is that host Nathan Fielder goes to small businesses and gives them ridiculous advice on how to improve their business, and in this segment he convinces a computer repair store to hire only asexual technicians, so they won't be tempted to look at people's private photos - but there is also clearly an attempt to educate the audience about asexuality. I don't think I'd include it in my thesis because it's more of a reality show than a scripted fiction show, but I found it interesting.

The other thing I watched this week was The Celluloid Closet, a documentary from 1995 about portrayals of LGBT+ people in cinema. Obviously it's a relatively old documentary, so reflects a very different time period to the one we're in now, but I still found it fascinating! Some key points:

• "Hollywood taught straight people what to think about gay people and gay people what to think about themselves"
• One interviewee (Harvey Fierstein) talked about how people need art to be a mirror - power of seeing your experiences reflected in art
• This is perhaps going to sound cynical of me but I do have to wonder how much this documentary was influenced by the fact that most of the people influenced were actors, directors, or other people who work in film. Like there's a lot of really powerful quotes in here about the power and importance of film, which is all well and good, but it is kind of like. Yeah, of course you think that, guy who makes movies for a living. I was listening to this podcast recently reviewing Steven Pinker's "The Better Angels of our Nature" (this is relevant I promise), and the host made what was kind of a joke but also I think kind of an interesting legit point, which is that one of the great "unseen biases" is that pretty much everything you read is written by writers, and of course writers are going to have a bias for writing. They're going to want to make it seem (or perhaps want to believe) that writing is the most important and influential thing in the world. And I think maybe there's a bit of that going on here. But then I am also demonstrably having a crisis of faith about whether art actually matters right now, so take whatever I have to say with a pinch of salt. BUT STILL I THINK IT'S A QUESTION WORTH ASKING.
• Richard Dyer moment!! Talked about how our ideas about ourselves come from culture, and in modern society movies are a key part of the culture. Again, not to sound cynical, but I do find this a bit more convincing than sweeping statements about how powerful the movies are. Like Dyer is making an actual argument here why what we see in film matters. But then again, of course a professor of film studies is going to say film is a super duper important medium
• Dyer also talked about how early film depictions of queer people used stereotypes
• "The sissy - Hollywood's first gay stock character" - these characters were never explicitly gay but "everyone knew" that they were supposed to be
• I found the discussion of this stereotype really interesting. There were very conflicting opinions - some interviewees said they hated this stereotype, some said they actually related to it, and some said their priority was just "visibility at all cost" (which I do get but also feels more than a little reductive. I think it's pretty clear especially in today's media climate that Foucault was right about visibility being a trap - just look at how the media treats trans people. God I can't believe I just unironically said the words "Foucault was right" this degree has made me so annoying)
• Discussed a bit of the overlap between sexuality and gender roles - feminine men were seen as gay, and "seeming gay was just as bad as being gay"
• Gay film history point - talks about the importance of the film Boys in the Band. It was apparently the first film about gay men who don't die in the end, and one of the first to show the sense of community found among queer people
• One actor who played a gay black character in the 70s said he thought people were more willing to see black characters as gay than white characters - theorises it might be because people took black characters less seriously anyway?
• Ending of the documentary talks about the "ending of the silence" that was happening in the 90s

Working on Thesis

Spent most of this week working on my thesis - I'm ahead of where I need to be at this point in order to get my word count up to the minimum by hand-in, so that's good! Still doesn't mean I'm not shitting myself!

Stuff about aro history I had to cut (but still interesting tidbits):

• “The aromantic community is connected to the asexual community, but not everyone who is aromantic is asexual.” – Chen, p.128

• Possible reference to aromanticism in 1922 – “The Female-Impersonators, written by an androgyne named Ralph Werther (who also went by Jennie June and Earl Lind), details the existence of what Werther calls “anaphrodites”—derived from the term anaphrodisia. According to Werther, “anaphrodites are not suffused with adoration for any type of human.” (Brown, 2022, p.157)

Focus group updates

I've now sent out the consent forms and finished participant information sheet for my focus group, as well as a form for people to fill in with their availability. Now I just need to wait for people to respond! Am I freaking out about the fact that I sent everything out on Wednesday and it's now the end of the week and only one person has properly got back? A little. Let's not think too hard about it.

At the weekend I did a test run of my focus group with my flatmates and some friends, to test out my recording setup and get some feedback on the questions I use as well as the collection of clips I chose for prompts. I decided to select clips based around the theme of "coming out" - including clips from BoJack Horseman, Game of Thrones, Generation, Heartbreak High, Heartstopper, and Legends of Tomorrow.

I tried out a few different methods for recording. First I tried recording with Audacity and then putting the audio into Premiere to transcribe. Next I tried recording by setting up a Teams call (Miles was part of the test focus group so I did this by calling him and then having him mute and silence his device, so the call would only pick things up through my microphone) and then using Teams' own recording and transcription feature. I had to do this through my staff account since apparently students can't record, which is a bit annoying, but workable. At first glance, neither of the transcription methods honestly seem that accurate, but I'm planning to have a closer look to identify if one was a bit more accurate.

In good news, I was able to establish that my external microphone is powerful enough that it can pick up people speaking all around the room, so as long as I keep people in the focus group fairly close together, that should work fine. There were some technical issues where I accidentally forgot to plug in the microphone before recording for one of the recordings, and it quickly became clear that my laptop's internal microphone would not work well for this. It's good to know that I have equipment that will work for the focus group.

Since this was just a test, I didn't run the focus group for the full three hours or ask all of my questions (I also had a mix of people in the group who identify as asexual/aromantic and who don't, instead of having the two separate groups I'll have in the real thing) - instead we kept the first part of the discussion to half an hour, then watched just a couple of the clips from my montage, and then spent just ten minutes discussing them, as two of my friends had to leave. I still got some really useful feedback on the focus group process, particularly on the collection of clips - a couple of my friends gave me the feedback that they felt the clips used were a bit too long. Both clips I showed featured a fair bit of lead-up to the discussions of asexuality/aromanticism - I'd kept these in so people would have the context, but my friends told me that they'd found it a bit confusing and that it felt like a bit of a waste of time. In particular, they said it had confused them because they hadn't been sure at first which parts were meant to be about asexuality/aromanticism and had been trying to draw conclusions based on parts of the clips that had nothing to do with it. For example, with the Game of Thrones clip they mentioned being confused about whether the mention of "the Unsullied" was meant to be some kind of reference to virginity or a fantasy term for asexuality, or if maybe the country that the characters mention was in the show "known for having a lot of asexual people", before they got to the part of the clip that was actually about asexuality and realised that none of the previous part had been relevant. Based on this, I'll definitely be cutting down some of the clips.

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