Why meta? I am currently blogging about talking about blogging.
I was in Montreal for a few days and had the opportunity to speak in my colleague’s Qualitative Methods and Educational Psychology class at McGill University. I presented something similar to what I shared at the CUNY IT Conference this past fall, but I really tried to connect my thoughts on why I’ve developed this blog to my research via my methodology. The class has been discussing various qualitative research methods, such as photo voice and ethnography, and one of the readings they did for class focused on blogs as both a field for and method of data collection.
It’s so exciting to see more and more researchers take on the genre, and I was grateful to have the opportunity to chat with students in Montreal doing important research around education, counseling, health and sports psychology, medicine, etc.–some with big questions about digital data collection. Their feedback was insightful and thought-provoking, and I’m already thinking about how to further address some of what came up for discussion:
- What about access to blogging? This question keeps coming up as I talk to people about my research, and understandably so. What am I saying (and not) by giving weight to what’s written in blogs, despite the fact that not everyone has regular access to the internet?
- How do I negotiate being a part of the community I am researching? Where does autoethnography begin and end? Can you be too me-search-y?
- How do I plan to code my data (both logistically [i.e., in hard-copy or digital] and methodologically)?
Here is a slightly edited version of the slides I used for my presentation. Some of it’s unclear without context, but:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPgTdRB9Ovs&feature=youtu.be