Plan for the Week

TO DO THIS WEEK:

• FINISH ALL THOSE DOCUMENTARIES - IN PROGRESS
• Finish reading Thematic Analysis - IN PROGRESS
• Respond to thesis feedback - IN PROGRESS
• Edit focus group clips montage based on feedback
• Write up Celluloid Closet notes
• Watch Watchmen
• Get thesis word count up to 8900 - IN PROGRESS
• Make summative review presentation - IN PROGRESS
• Write summative review presentation script - IN PROGRESS
• Begin thematic analysis of TV case studies - IN PROGRESS

One last journey through The Cave

Ok this is probably a lie I will probably be returning to the methodology cave again at least once after this. But hopefully this week will be the week I finish reading Thematic Analysis! Some key points:

• TA is "theoretically flexible" - "Good reflexive TA needs both theory and explicit locating in terms of theory" (p.157)
• Overview of some key theories: "Experiential qualitative approaches are focused on meaning and experience, what people think, do and feel, and how they make sense of their realities." (p.159) while "Critical qualitative approaches are concerned with meaning-making, construction and negotiation, and with interrogating and unpacking patterns of meaning, often focused on the effects and functions of particular patterns of language use and meaning." (p.160) - based on these summaries I think the first one is probably a bit more relevant to my research
• "A common feature of TA generally is theoretical flexibility. Specific types of TA are relatively fixed in terms of paradigmatic theory (which we elaborate on in Chapter Eight), but are more or less theoretically flexible beyond that. Reflexive TA is arguably the most flexible, and can be used across experiential and critical orientations. " (p.162)
• I do like the idea of using a critical realist approach: "Critical realism is realist in the sense that it broadly postulates a reality that exists independent of a researcher’s ideas about and descriptions of it. But – and here’s where critical realism (p.169) differs from pure or simple realism – our experiences and understandings of reality are theorised as mediated by language and culture. " (p.170)
• "In our own work, we are mostly relativist-constructionist in orientation. But we dabble in critical realism-contextualism, and often supervise students who want to work within these traditions (as well as others, see Box 6.6). Being effectively polyontological and polyepistemological (poly = many) doesn’t trouble us, as long as we’re coherent with what we do in each analysis. What troubles us is when it gets messy within a particular analysis" (p.188)
• Importance of interpretation, and thinking about how you interpret the data: "Even more-descriptive accounts of data, which stay close to participant or text meanings, both require and reflect interpretative work. Qualitative analysis is always an interpretative activity." (p.196)
• "Instead of conceptualising your analytic task as one of discovering, distilling and revealing the essence of the data, we suggest it’s better to imagine you’re telling a story in a way that aims to make sense of what’s going on. A story that gives the audience (a reader, a listener) a clear take-home message – one that includes an indication of why they should care about the story you’ve just told them." - WHY is this important? (p.197)
• Interpretation is also woven through all six stages - "Interpretation starts during familiarisation (Chapter Two) – though it’s quite likely you will have already started interpreting the data, if you’ve been engaged in data collection. During familiarisation, or data collection, you often make observations or have ideas about things that are going on – the sorts of things you record in your familiarisation notes. Interpretation at that stage is tentative and should be recognised as such – don’t cling tightly to early interpretations, assuming you’ve noticed everything and made sense of the data in the best way" (p.197)
• "In general, the interpretative process for TA operates most strongly as you move from coding into theme generation, development and refinement (Phases three to five), and is honed in and through writing (including final writing up in Phase six)" (p.198)
• "Asking questions in relation to the patterns you’re developing, and the implications of them, can be useful in helping to develop an interpretative analytic orientation, one that moves beyond describing semantic content. During phases three to five, examples of the questions we might ask include: • What assumptions are part of this pattern of meaning? � Assumptions on the part of participants or expressed within the dataset? � Assumptions that I might be making as I make sense of the data? • What wider meanings or ideas does this pattern rely on?4 • Why might this pattern of meaning matter? � Might it matter more, or less, to certain people? • What are the implications of this pattern? � For any participants? � For the issue at hand? � For the academic knowledge of the field? � For society? Both overall or for particular groups within a society?" (p.198)
• "The key take-away is that for us as qualitative researchers, interpretation is inevitably subjective (we reiterate, this isn’t a problem), and there is no absolute, singular, correct interpretation. (Conversely, we will argue that interpretation can be wrong in various ways.)" (p.201) Lol. lmao even
• To expand on that point, they note the importance of "making sure that you’re not shaping the data to tell your story, or smoothing over complexity to (mis)represent the stories in the data." (p.202)
• "Another way theory comes into play in doing TA is through theory-driven analysis, where interpretation utilises existing theory to guide the developing analysis. This captures analysis that is strongly informed by existing theoretical constructs (e.g. heterosexism and heteronormativity) or a wholesale theory (e.g. Foucault’s theory of sexual ethics or identity process theory). In such strongly deductive or theory driven reflexive TA, you, as researcher, deliberately seek to explore, or develop your analysis in relation to, one or more pre-existing ideas or frameworks" (p.208) IS THIS WHAT I'M DOING??? HELP????
• Types of theory that might be utilised: "The theory that informs our interpretation practices in broad conceptual ways, such as theories related to phenomenology (Langdridge, 2017), discourse (Wiggins, 2017), or affect (Moreno-Gabriel & Johnson, 2020; Wetherell, 2015)", "Explicitly socio-politically inflected theories that you draw on to make sense of the possibilities and boundaries for understanding and experience within the material, symbolic, and power organisation of our worlds – our immediate and broader contexts. Such frameworks include various feminisms (Collins & Bilge, 2016; McCann & Kim, 2013), postcolonial (Said, 1994) and decolonisation theories (G. Adams & Estrada-Villalta, 2017; L. T. Smith, 2013), crip theory (McRuer, 2006), queer theory (Sullivan, 2013)", "Theories that are more specific – you might call them lower-level theories – theories that focus on exploring or explaining a specific topic, mechanism or process." (p.209)
• "Work from a curious, open and questioning position when engaging with data more theoretically. For instance, understand your task as exploring how a theory or concept is evidenced – and not evidenced – within the dataset, rather than one of merely identifying it in the dataset." (p.210)
• "Keep asking which data aren’t fitting with the developing interpretation, and, importantly, in what ways they aren’t fitting. This is about ensuring that the interpretative frames you’re bringing to the data aren’t obscuring a different story, a fuller story, or one that may be more important to the topic." (p.210)
• Contextual aspects that can inform interpretation: "Ideological aspects – such analysis would interpret the data in light of prevailing broad meaning-making frameworks – ideologies – that form the dominant common-sense of society" (p.211), "Political aspects – such analysis would interpret the data in light of contemporary and/or historical political arrangements and governance. Political here could be big-P, formal government-related politics and practice. Or it could encompass small-p politics, related to the structuring, organisation, and operation of power within society, leading to differently-organised potentialities and marginalisations for different groups", "Historical aspects – such analysis would interpret the data with a longer-term view of meaning, politics and ideology in society" (p.212), "Material aspects – such analysis would interpret the data in light of material conditions in which people’s lives are embedded", "Policy aspects – such analysis would bring policy, contemporary and/or historical, to bear in the interpretation of data", "Discourse aspects – such analysis might explore the discursive ‘conditions of possibility’ (Gavey, 2018) in and through which the data need to be interpreted, to make sense. Discursive locating means exploring what discursive formulations of the topic, and of society more generally, are at play in the dataset, and how understanding these might add to our analysis" (p.213)
• "There is no simple or pure description; we always interpret from a position – or, perhaps more accurately, an aggregate of positions. This means interpretation is inevitably a political act." (p.214)

As I think is clear, this book has shown me there's a lot more I need to think about in terms of my analytical approach, but I think this has given me a good starting point!

23/4/24 Tutorial

Had a tutorial with Emma this week, mainly discussing my thesis, as well as talking a bit about the presentations next week. Main points:

• Remember to be clear in thesis that I'm specifically looking at TV - should basically assume the reader's a bit stupid
• For editing - some parts should be less personal - say "this thesis" instead of "I" etc. Intro should be in third person
• Think about terminology - should I be calling asexuality and aromanticism "concepts"
• Also backed up what Colin said about maybe discussing role of internet - both in formation of the ace community and in media changes
• Can include bullet points in the thesis - might be good for the methods section to make things clearer
• Recommends adding TV analysis after methods discussion - now the problem there is I don't actually have any analysis to add, for next week I should identify a set of extracts to look at and start noting down initial insights etc.
• Initial analysis could inform focus group e.g. helping decide what questions to ask
• For summative presentation - doesn't have to be completely different to formative, keep stuff from that presentation and add new info on methods and initial analysis
• Thesis doesn't need conclusion for this hand in - they basically expect to see an expanded contextual review with more confident outline of methods and some analysis

Other events of the week

• More focus group prep! Compared the transcripts done in Premiere after recording in Audacity and the auto transcripts from Teams. Tried going through both of them to see how accurate they were to the actual recording. Neither were very accurate but on the whole I'd say the transcripts from Premiere were better quality, at least in the sense that while a lot of words were mis-transcribed, it didn't seem to completely miss anything, while Teams just didn't transcribe several large chunks of audio. Also the quality of the recording with audacity seemed a lot better.
• In addition to checking the transcripts, I've also made some edits to the clips montage to hopefully make it a bit clearer for focus group participants, based on the feedback I got from the test run
• Started work on thematic analysis - I've selected House, Game of Thrones, Sex Education, Heartstopper, Heartbreak High, and The Imperfects as my case studies. I'm currently in the familiarisation stage, making notes on my initial thoughts and possible patterns. Notes here. Lowkey at the moment I don't think it's going particularly well - I feel like if Braun and Clarke could see what I'm doing they would not be impressed lol. But also in my defence I'm on a very tight time schedule rn and need SOMETHING to put in my thesis so I'm kind of. Rushing through it more than I maybe should. Argh.
• I've got my thesis up to the minimum word count! Now I just need to add an abstract and then I can start editing it!
• Other than that I've mostly just been working on my presentation for next week

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