interview reaction cards

The next couple of months I'll be busy teaching and co-ordninating the bachelor-course Tekst, produksjon og analyse (text, production and analyses). My aim for the autumn is to do quite a few interviews as well. I definitely need to start talking to youngsters as I claim that my research concerns their use of various communication media. After listening to PhD-student Mikael Norén's presentation in Örebro yesterday, I wonder whether I should try to include reaction cards to my interviews. It's sounds really simple, but I don't know if it's appropriate in my project, as these cards are usually used within usability studies. In short, interviewees are asked to pick word-cards that they find fitting for a specific web-site (from words such as clean, clear, effortless, efficient, time-consuming, unattractive and like another 100 words). Then they are asked to explain how they understand these words and why they chose the cards they did. I would of course have to choose words appropriate for my project. The method is developed by Microsoft Usability Lab, but I can't hold that against an interesting way of doing research and initiating reflections in interview situations.

The cards are of course not used to direct interviewees "my way". My goal with using such cards would be to inspire the informants. And playing cards is fun. Of course, the situations will be quite different from exploring questions of usability. Maybe I don't need the cards: it might suffice to ask informants to associate and suggest words themselves, and then ask them to explain why and how. Or maybe I can introduce the cards in situations where informants struggle to answer questions? I'm thinking as I write, and it might just be a bad idea. But I'm curious of how it would work.

jet mind

Back from New York. Everything is so quiet, and I can hear my mind. It's ok to be home. I suddenly remembered that good things are yet to come: Nick Cave performs live on Monday, and I'm going to be there. How wonderful! I had no room for other things in my mind besides the here and now while in New York. Now I remember.

NYC program

NYC tomorrow! I believe we will have enough to do, our preliminary program looks something like this: MoMA, Whitney, Guggenheim Museum, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, International Center of Photography, Museum of Television and Radio ( Look! Up at the Screen! It's Superheroes on Television June 18 to October 10, 2004), Dia-center, American museum og moving image (oh, that was so much fun in 1999!). And: Monster Magnet at Bowery Ballroom tomorrow!

Supervising

To welcome new PhD-students, The faculty of Arts arranges a kick-off seminar tomorrow. Besides general information about where's and what's, there will be an informal discussion of what to expect from your supervisor and what to expect from you as a PhD-student. I agreed to contribute with some points in order initiate a discussion.

Expectations of supervisor:
* Do what supervisors are supposed to do: read drafts; give comprehensive feedback; discuss problems; help with literature, theory, seminars, conferences; help networking/share contacts; make you feel safe enough to not appear brilliant at all times
* Challenge PhD-student, on progress, on quality
* Be open and honest: are expectations met? Is the relationship between supervisor and PhD-student constructive?

Expectations of PhD-student:
* Do what PhD-students are supposed to do: plan, organise and lead your project; let supervisor read drafts although not perfect; be independent and able to think for yourself; still, follow advice: don't ignore feedback from your supervisor, keep deadlines, publish, progress
* Challenge supervisor, be explicit on expectations
* Be open and honest: are expectations met? Is the relationship between supervisor and PhD-student constructive?

Question is: am I being a good PhD-student... I already feel the pressure of lacking progress. But this year has been spent and will be spent with a considerable amount of teaching. I still have clear objectives of what I will accomplish before December. And then next year...

meditation of death

I wasn't aware of the ancient history of the idea of living each day as if it were the last. To the Roman philosopher Seneca, training for death was an important part of taking care of the self, as explained by Foucault in "The hermeneutic of the subject" (in Ethics. Subjectivity and Truth). I don't think Seneca would think very highly of me if he'd seen me in one of my weak lying-passively-on-the-couch-watching-TV moments. Not quite what he thought of as melete thanatou (meditation of death). It's rather about being very aware of every day and every moment, and thinking of every day as a possible entire life: "Let us go to our sleep with joy and gladness; let us say; I have lived." Meditation of death offers the possibility of looking back on one's life. In advance. When you still have the chance to appropriate a virtuous life. When it's not too late.

chess mate?

I've been looking forward to sending photos from my phone to flickr from NYC. But apparently I can't. Not as a Chess customer anyway. I didn't get any explanations from their custom service, just that it's not possible to send mms-messages from abroad. They are cheap, but there seems to be a reason why...

gender in media

I've been to the Gender in media-conference today. I was looking forward to hearing David Gauntlett talk about "New approaches to exploring media, gender and identity". From reading his books and exploring his web-sites and project, you get an impression of him as very vivid and funny. He is. His talk was ok, but quite what I expected after reading his Media, gender and idenitity and having studied some of his rather interesting research methods.

So, the short version of his lecture: First part was very basic: In post-traditional societies the self is reflexively constructed (Giddens), and mass media are one of several sources of models and ideas in these never-ending processes. Our modern society experiences a decline of traditions (hence post-traditional societies, see also e.g. Ulrich Beck right?), which makes the construction of identity a project for the individual. We construct narratives of the self in order to give order to our complex lives. Gauntlett eloquently synthesises theories of the identity in (late) modern societies. What perhaps is more interesting is how he uses this theoretical foundation in his analysis of men's magazines. This is where I find him fresh, as he deals with popular culture not from a top-down perspective. Today's magazines for men are all about the social construction of masculinity, that is their subject matter. Countless idealised women in bikini don't change that. You can find all this and more in Media, gender and idenitity, which is a good introduction to these issues.

What clearly is of interest to me is Gauntlett's approach to research methods. He's a professor in media and audience, and his suggestions to new ways of exploring how people actually understand mass media products are valuable. Apparently with success, he has used creative and artistic activities as research tools. This is to avoid the problem that people don't necessarily find it easy to reflect and depict in language their experiences. The works are then interpreted in dialogue with the informants. They explain what they have done, and they are involved in the research project in a comprehensive way. Especially if dealing with kids and young people, this seems to be a good alternative or at least a good supplement to doing traditional interviews. See Artlab for interesting project using creative research methods.

research seminar

CMC (Competence and Media Convergence) and the research-school at the Faculty of education organise two open lectures on the 22nd of September (at InterMedia, meeting-room 4, from 14.15). Gunther Kress will talk about about "New forms of text, new questions around writing and reading: moving from competence to design". I'd like to go, but I can't. I'll be in NYC (I love to link to tag-pages in Flickr. The photos are always changing). Oh, Per Linell from Linköping University will be talking first: "Essentials of Dialogism - An approach to language, communication and cognition".

annoying

I woke up too early this morning. I couldn't get to sleep again because all I could think of was sorting out what was wrong with the invoice we recieved yesterday from Rørleggersentralen (the plumber). There was definitely something wrong, and it accounted to about NOK 4500,-. So I spent ages explaining via e-mail and the phone. I was of course right. We will now pay them NOK 16 500,- instead of NOK 21 200,- But the hassle so ruined my focus today. Argh. At least I'm happy I bother. Don't ever trust your plumber's mathematical skills. At least not if he happens to work at Rørleggersentralen. They probably don't know that if I blog a really bad review of their services, people googling for Rørleggersentralen will easily find it. I have power.

sms-based television

On today's Friday-seminar Espen Ytreberg and Yngvil Beyer will talk about tendencies in interactive SMS-based TV. I have skimmed through the yet unpublished article that the talk is based on (Beyer, Enli, Maasø and Ytreberg). The article presents analyses of the design of these formats and the interactional relations that are facilitated. I may have to revise my own thoughts concerning personal media/mass media, but I think I will still argue that even SMS-based TV-formats that rely heavily on SMS/MMS-input from their audience are not really facilitating mediated social interaction the way we are used to. Maybe I will have to include another arrow in my own model indicating that mass media institutions strive to initiate more symmetrical relations towards their audience (see 23rd of August).

Or maybe I'm all wrong... Web-chats facilitate mediated social interaction, but TV-chats do not? There is clearly an element of mediated social interaction also in TV-chats. Maybe my reluctance lies in the potential scale of TV-chats? In order to be interactive (whatever that means), the audience size has to be relatively small. Some of these programs have like 5000 viewers, which isn't very much. Basically, I believe that for most viewers these TV-formats are just as one-way mediated as any other TV-program. A few however, bothers to pay for texting and sending MMS-messages to take part in the program, and get their messages on air. Then again, lurkers are common in any social and interactional setting. Seems I have some more thinking to do.