6.13 Plan for Friday 6.14

At our last meeting back in May we talked about moving forward with some readings on methods - and the following week we set up the google.sites readings (to the right, by invitation only so you have to be signed in to access the link).

Friday. I am hoping to finish at/before 3:00 (though if any of you want to set up some time to work one-on-one on your project, I could do up until about 5). The plan is to touch on the following:

Part I
1. Check in on what we see as the focus for the book (my post is drafty writing - I am still in process on this - but it puts forward some writing) and how your work will fit in.  I am thinking that it might also be an example of mediated ethnography - as well as an illustration of how a mediated ethnography can explore questions about online communities in new ways (where our question would be about ideologies/discourses that underlie/shape/are shaped by community practices).

2. Talk over what the computers and writing folks suggested in terms of working on our project.

3. As a follow-up on 1, look at the content-template, develop our list of how we want to use media in our ethnographic documentation, and maybe do some preliminary work on a media template.

Part 2
1. Talk about Leander's ideas about connective ethnography.  We will focus on figuring out + making lists of data collection methods/theories that allow you to do ethnography that does not a priori ghetto-ize online identities, practices, and communities from material world life. 

2. Use Burn's critical lenses to analyze a new media document (a course site with connected blogs for students).

• modification of Kress & Leeuwen's four strata: discourse, design, production, distribution + interpretation. 
• analysis of semiotic metafunctions: representations of the world; communications among producer, texts, and audiences; organization as a process of composition that ensures coherence
• modes of representation (+ what is represented) = how design/written/spoken language is use to impart information, give instruction, construct dialog, create coherence

3. Have some preliminary discussion of Livingstone (differences between the purposes, methods, and forms of research associated with media v information literacies research studies of new literacies).  Within this discussion, it is important to note Livingstone's observation that more attention (so far) has been paid to "questions of access, selection and understanding than . . . to the creation of content".  This was written in 2009, and there has been increased interest in production/participation - but our study is timely in its attention to a focus on the creation of new media materials and the role those creative processes play in "writers" lives.

4. Talk about what to think about in Kendall's essay on interviewing.