October 4: Qualitative Empirical Methods / Digital Humanities  

Category
Ryan Carl, Circle Study 07 (2020); via Socks Studio

Historically, much research in our field has emphasized humanistic textual analysis. We’ll address such methods in a few weeks. Yet media studies’ genealogy can be traced back through the arts and the social sciences, too. From the latter we’ve inherited empirical methods through which we can generate our own “data.” Some researchers gather and analyze that data through quantitative methods; you can find quantitative methods classes in Annenberg and the School of Social Policy and Practice (you might also be interested in the GIS classes in the Weitzman School of Design). Yet CIMS’s humanistic orientation predisposes us to look more toward qualitative methods — interviews, oral histories, focus groups, ethnography, and so forth — which we’ll explore today. We’ll also talk a bit about sampling, which applies to any research project: how many and which people, non-human subjects, events, actions, sites, processes, or texts we choose to focus on, and how that assemblage is complementary and representative of the key variables in our study. We’ll also consider how research that integrates empirical methods might resist AI generation. 

I’m hoping we can also approach our own class as a “field site” for participant observation — where we can reflect on the practices through which methods are theorized and theories are operationalized — and that we can regard our periodic guests as interview interlocutors. 

IN-CLASS WORKSHOP, 5:15-6:15pm: We’ll speak with Stewart Varner and Cassandra Hradil from the Price Lab about digital methods.  

To Read for Today: 

  • Read an excerpt from Klaus Bruhn Jensen’s “The Qualitative Research Process” in Jensen, ed., A Handbook of Media and Communication Research: Qualitative and Quantitative and Methodologies (Routledge, 2021): 286-96 [note: you’re reading only 10 pages!; I chose this particular text because it’s the most concise and inclusive overview I could find!]
  • Now, skim through the tables of contents for Norman K. Denzin, et al, eds., The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, 6th ed. (SAGE, 2023) and Uwe Flick, ed., The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research Design (SAGE, 2022) to get a sense of the breadth of options available to you. Penn Libraries offers online access to Flick’s book. Portions of these books could serve as reference material after you’ve chosen specific methods for your own project.

Interviews:

  • You’ll recall that Jennifer Pybus studies digital privacy through the analysis of hardware and software, and by engaging with users in pedagogical workshops. Compare Pybus’s approach with that of Alice Marwick, who studies digital privacy through interviews and focus groups. She discusses her new book,The Private is Political: Networked Privacy and Social Media (Yale University Press, 2023, and her qualitative methods, with Jake Chanenson on New Books Network (July 30, 2023) [podcast: 35min]. Please listen to the podcast; you might choose to read the book on your own at a later date.
    • Optional: For more on interviewing, see Annette Lareau, Chapters, 3, 4, and 5 in Listening to People: A Practical Guide to Interviewing, Participant Observation, Data Analysis, and Writing It All Up (University of Chicago Press, 2021): 38-139 and Philip Gerard, “The Warm Art of the Interview,” in The Art of Creative Research: A Field Guide for Writers (University of Chicago Press, 2017): 98-129. Plus, check out our Interviewing collection on Arena. 

Ethnography:

  • Now, please listen to Jeff Lane talk about his book, The Digital Street (Oxford University Press, 2018), and his mix of digital and analog urban ethnography, with Jabari Evans on the Uncommon Naledge podcast, Episode 4 [~48min]. Again, I invite you to listen to the podcast; you might choose to read the book on your own at a later date.
  • Now, I invite each of you to investigate how qualitative empirical methods have been used — in both classical and contemporary studies – in your own disciplines and on your own subjects of interest. This exercise is also meant to help you familiarize yourself with relevant journals. Please find three peer-reviewed journal articles – including, ideally, at least one historical/germinal study — that exemplify the use of various qualitative methods in studying topics you plan to examine in your own research. You’re welcome to prioritize those methods you might actually adopt yourself. Please share your three references – each with a 150-annotation briefly summarizing the article’s argument and methods, and offering your own assessment of the value of those methods — on this collaborative slidedeck. We’ll then use this deck to share and discuss your work in class.