research proposal

This post is about the joyous endeavor of completing my first research proposal. We were ask to pick a subject related to Digital cultures, of course, and follow the ARC research guidelines to complete a fully-fledged research proposal.

In choosing my topic, I actually started off running in circles. I'm quite indecisive at the best of times, though I really wanted to look into something that I was interested in and would expand my knowledge.

I ended up looking into an understanding of how different choices of consumption reflect upon the shift in the user’s choice of listening practices. It was quite difficult to actually narrow my topic down and refine it to actually suit a single research problem and not a broad research topic. I chose qualitative methods for research as the premise of this data were the feelings and motivations of the participant’s, and also the inner workings of choices in media consumption.

All in all, I really enjoyed doing this proposal. It actually made me want to go through with submitting it and conducting the research put forward via the task....

Question Time....

Well, well, well....if your into music....fill out this survey!!!!

This is a brief survey to get a small amount of both quantitative and qualitative data of
peoples listening practices and choices of music media!

Surveys offer a method that can gather both a breadth of quantitative data and qualitative facts. Due to the uniformity of responses it offers ease of analysis and offers, lets say compared to an unstructured interview, collation of data.

Due to my research proposals qualitative nature, I would probably not choose the survey method.

Time Diary time.....

Let me start by saying, I didn't think I was this nerdy....The results of my time diary kind of astounded me. The fact that the restrictions mobile devices have given us to stay "connected" whilst on the move is a dramatic shift that only a product of this generation may seem normal.

I'm not going to tell you absolutely everything I did, though I was pretty much dabbling in some form of technology all day. I woke up via my mobile phone, preceded to trudge my body to my computer to check a daily ritual of websites (email, news, several blogs, weather, surfcheck) I got in my Car to go for a surf whilst listening to my ipod all the way. I arrived at my friends house, and needed to check my emails upon arrival. We went and looked at the surf. Even though this activity relies on no digital technology, it still worked its way in. We checked the tide, wind and swell directions on his iPhone whilst sitting in the car. Before I even put my toes in the water I'd been drenched in some form of digital artifact and it was only 8am. The day continued along as my introduction would have you assume. I was doing study at home so I was pretty much on the computer all day. Between that and my phone, which I use constantly, I was sucking in radiation and electricity all day. I realized however how I am not one to have the television, stereo, computer and so on active at the same time. I see only the need for one of those at a time and my "save the trees side" tells me to turn one off before I continue with another.

Now I say I'm not that dependent on technology, I do prefer to socialize face to face, and I'm pretty active; but I really do use a lot of electricity.

Time diaries give a researcher a good source of research upon, for example, habits that directly relate with time. This weeks reading by De Haan and Robinson, illustrated a use of time diaries and their application to the research into individuals devotion of time to different Information Technologies. For this research the method was a perfect process of research as it gave a clear indication of the intricacies of peoples day to day lives without having to observe their every step (as we know from before, maybe manipulating their activities.)

However in the analysis of time diaries one important factor in its success is, like content analysis, concise coding standards.

Quantatative Content Analysis

So today we looked at the wonderful world of Quantitative Content analysis. We looked in particular at gathering a comparison of content from the technology supplements in Sydney papers, such as The Australian and SMH, from periods 10+ years apart (well done on not throwing them out Chris!) We were aiming at gathering information to observe a shift in the contrasts of topic areas and also the tone in the articles.

I was lucky enough to get a supplement from a 1995 SMH. Using strict coding framework we observed the content of the articles, the themes they fell under, the time orientation of the article and its tone. My observation was probably not as thorough as would've been desired I have to admit. I came back with a majority of short news items to do with business and Internet from the present that had a mostly positive tone. The only problem I realised through the activity, apart from its tediousness, was that without a strong and defined coding scheme at times the accuracy of the data collected may be a little problematic. If I was to undertake this exercise for my own research, I'm sure it wouldn't seem as tedious and my own coding might allow me a better understanding of what goes where.

Cicuit of Culture

This weeks exercise involved looking at our project proposal via a certain interpretive analysis. So I thought it'd be nice...not nice....beneficial.....yeah, beneficial to look at the big world of downloading music under a little number people like to call 'Circuit of Culture'.

For those of you that don't know, the Circuit of Culture is a theory or framework that poses that in studying a cultural text or artifact you must look at its representation, identity, production, consumption and regulation. So lets start by looking at downloading music....

Representation: there are many avenues for downloading music, each with a different sort of representation. If one is to use a torrent based p2p filesharing site, they might notice that a majority of these sites are very bland and offer no sensory stimulation. However if one is to visit the iTunes store they are greeted with a totally different representation. With a sleek layout and different headings such as "indie pick" or "whats hot" together with a saturation of consumable alternatives.

Identity: -Geek -Thief- Muso -

we see in iTunes, identity is varied. Different styles of people access different styles of music. Though if one is to go to a bands page that has been featured by iTunes, we see identity starting to work in....for the?????? we see a dark and moody photograph of the band where as for ??????? we see a vibrant and dancey image appealing to their fans. Furthermore in torrent websites, users that frequent "comment" pages have jpeg's or gif's attached to their profile. Here we see what type of user we are linked with.

Production: as stated before, torrent sites tend to be bland and boring type of affair, where itunes is created meticulously to catch attention all over the programs interface.However starting a P2P site is not exactly difficult. Means of production are at, not meaning to sound cliche, the fingertips of any computer user. I could be uploading music this afternoon for a Nepalese Buddhist monk to be downloading within minutes or seconds of its completion.

Consumption:The phenomenon of podcasting has made iTunes a collaborative realm. Furthermore these participatory avenues of consumption increase distribution and allow further sales for iTunes through increasing access to users. Also the participation of torrent sites work on no revenue building motivations, however the site administrators must be making a bit of the advertisements everywhere. The ease of downloading that song repeating over and over in your head you love....$1 something....

Regulation: well P2P file sharing in the majority of cases is ILLEGAL. Don't do it....your stealing money from the artists you admire and love....though people keep on doing it....though many still purchase from iTunes legal copies of things they've already downloaded....

Its cyclical and relies on each other to function...the artifact relies on the understanding of all parts of the circle.

Focus Groups

This weeks task was to conduct a focus group on a specific subject to do with researching digital cultures. Our group chose observing to what extent we live in the public sphere, in particular through the information we post on facebook. Our group was an average sample size of 8 people and we had prepared a short list of questions to incite some conversation and first hand insight into the ideas and views of others. We filmed the session for later analysis of the focus group data (Link with video to come)

Our questions started off as follows:

1. Introduce yourself and explain what made you join Facebook?
2. After joining and becoming a Facebook user, what activities kept you coming back?
   
3. How do you manage your privacy online?
4. Do you ever feel your privacy is out of your control on Facebook? i.e. not being able to control what others write, post, tag you in?

We wanted to bring the focus group to a start with a question that functioned as both an opening circle and an introductory question that started the attendees thinking. It also paved the ground for some of the key questions that were to come.

The questions flowed as we hoped; however, as the mediator, I found that to many questions were not probing enough. Question 4 was a yes/no question that resulted in having to probe the group to obtain more qualitative information.

Another issue I found that as the mediator I wanted to participate in the conversation and discussion, so as I probed for more information some of my questions may have been a bit biased.

The use of Focus groups are a great method in producing qualitative analysis produced through interactions by and between the participants.

Interviews

This weeks exercise was to conduct some interviews to develop a greater knowledge in both their purpose and also their intricacies. Through first hand knowledge of experiencing interviewing we got a greater understanding of what question to ask, what questions not to ask and most importantly, how to word a question to get the response we want. By this I don't mean coerce the interviewee into saying what we want, but more define whether an answer is quantitative, if we want it to be, or qualitative, if we need it to be.

In these interviews I decided to ask a few questions on how P2P file sharing impacts on both the distribution of music and how we gain access to music.

You can have a listen to the interviews here:

Interview 1:



Interview 2:



I found it interesting how P2P filesharing, across both interviewees, increased their access to types of music they wouldn't usually listen to, and ultimately increased their interest in music.

I also found it interesting that Emma stated she liked to listen to music directly off youtube. I found this to be a shift, even further than P2P filesharing, to put the access and consumption of music even further out of the record companies hands.

Lessons learned:
I feel some of my questions could have been worded a little better to probe a longer and more qualitative response. I also think if asked in a different order, it would have created a better flow.

methodologies

This week we were to look at one of the weeks readings and the specific approach and methodologies that were employed.

The reading assigned to our group was Sonia Livingstone's research on how teens use the Internet for the purposes of self expression and identity; as well as bridging into the area of online Dangerous liaisons. She employed qualitative research methods, in particular interviews and group interviews. The sample size was a relatively small amount of youths between 13-16 all with home Internet access. The teens were from various socio-economic backgrounds and all were from Greater London.

Livingstone's intent was to view the sociological nature of the use of social networking sites to construct specific identities for teens. Her research observed how much of themselves they revealed online be it fictitious or real. Together with the participants, and with parental permission, Livingstone examined the different motivations for the representations of self. She also observed the social readings of others networks and the relationships that the participants had, and kept, online and the relationships ion the "real" world.

She observed the participants different uses of social networking sites, be it for communication or purely an avenue of the proclamation of an identity. She stated that younger teens predominantly used the sites to "Play and Display"; whereas the older teens used for more authentic relationships.

Livingstone, S.(2008) 'Taking risky opportunities in youthful content creation: teenagers’ use of social networking sites for intimacy, privacy and self-expression.' New Media & Society, Vol.10 No.3, pp 459–477.

Observations

For the observation task I thought I'd observe how important both mobile phones and the Internet are in the workplace. As I work in a conference centre, hosting many corporate training events, I thought I'd observe how many times and for what reasons people left their conferences to use mobile devices or Internet.

I sit at a desk that has an open space looking at the entrances of our 4 large conference rooms and has a pod of desktop computers with Internet access in front of me. I from previous observations that attendants leave rooms on a regular basis to make calls or check emails, so I knew that I would see some action.

In my 45 minute observation 30 people left their rooms at different times to make calls and access the Internet.

What I observed:

• More than 50% of the people making calls made at least 3 under 1 minute calls. From what I heard these seemed to be linked to the 1 issue that had risen at their main offices.
• 5 out of the 30 people had lengthy conversations leading someone on the other end step by step through computer procedures. eg Instructing people on how to access sections of their databases, how to remotely connect to servers, one in particular was how to get into their personal email.
• 75% of the 30 people seemed to be using smart phones and went through 1-5 minute periods where they were reading or sending emails.
• only 1 of the 30 people asked me if they could get Internet access on our computers, the rest seemed to have access to the Internet on their own handheld devices.
• 7 out of the 30 people had no intention of keeping their conversation confidential. they spoke loudly to the point of yelling and 1 of these 3 was profusely swearing (which I had to advise him to stop as I was working) Towards the end of the conversation they threw their phone on the floor.

Conclusion:

It seemed that most people now where able to access much of their work information and the Internet remotely from hand held devices. Their also seemed to be a shift in etiquette where leaving a room to make personal calls was becoming routine. The way people conducted themselves on the phone was on a whole quite cordial and there seemed to be a realisation they were in a public area keeping their voices low. However there was exceptions with quite overt conversations. Out of nearly all 112 phone calls, only 2 seemed to be to loved ones or calls to people outside of the workplace.

Ethics in research - The art of being Unethical

In terms of creating an unethical research proposal, I found myself to be quite a natural at being unethical. It seems easier to be evil and keniving, than being that of an upstanding and ethical researcher. In a group, we chose to look at a study of how adolescent youths would act when given an anonymous profile with which they could interact on social websites. Would they appear similar to thier real world persona? Would they be unruly and harsh towards thier peers? Would we do everything in our power to prove what we wanted too (be it ethical or not)? We went through the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research (2007) and tryed to go against all ethical behaviour as follows:

• Merit and integrity--We decided that, as perfectly capable yet unexperienced researchers, we would gain access to inappropriate facilities such as a local internet cafe or a McDonalds free wi-fi zone, and begin to research the youths as we saw fit.
  
  
• Justice--Our recruitment process was simple. We would chose the most unruly and misbehaved teens we could get our evil hands on, in an effort to obtain interesting results.

• Procedural justice--Our results would be kept confidential and we would choose to only publish the data and findings we thought would strengthen our argument. Our subjects would surely not be informed on the real purpose of our study.
  

• Respect--We would have little to no regard for the welfare of our subjects as well of any other people that may be abused or persecuted during our study. Cultural sensitivity would be something that stood in our way rendering it unneccessary. We would promise our subjects a monetary reward with no intention of ever paying them.
  

• Avoid risk of harm--humiliation, harm to reputation, pain and injury,embarrassment, guilt, fear, financial loss was not our issue but that of our subjects. It's out of our hands (though we'd push them to take risks)
  
  
• Consent--We would not tell the minors' parent's and we would coherse them to dable in dangerous liasons. They would not be allowed to pull out of our study of course.
  
  
• Attribution and honesty-- We thought it would only be fair to steal some of the research of others somewhere along the way. We wouldn't reference them though. If they wrote it they obviously want someone else to use it....and take credit for it.

Ahhhh...that was a great study! Lots of valuble information came from that....Meet Unethical Edward next week when we take on some other unsespecting group and treat them like animals...