Scholarly Media in the Digital Age: Exploring New Dissemination Methods

1. Watching, listening, reading and clicking Bella Dicks Cardiff School of Social Sciences Research Methods Festival 30 June - 3 July 2008

2. getting findings ‘out there’ • Traditional print dissemination • Journal article/report • Book • Filmic dissemination • E.g. ethnographic film

3. networked digital media • New electronic possibilities • digital video • electronic article • podcast/sound essay • Clickable multimedia = hypermedia • Web as new means of distribution

4. authoring in different media • How do different media communicate? • conventions of print • (outline structure; rhetorics & genres of scholarly reporting & argumentation; conventions of presenting evidence; sequentiality, etc.) • conventions of film • (uni-linear structure; narrative conventions of genre & style – e.g. documentary; politics/poetics of editing; representing temporality; etc.) • conventions of sound • (radio-genres; narrativity & unfolding action; uni-linear explosition; timbre, cadence, accent, soundscapes, sound-effects, etc.)

5. why use the screen? • accessibility - reaching new audiences • providing access to data-sets - transparency • enabling interactivity • creating reproducibility • encouraging re-use & ongoing analysis • enhancing speed of dissemination • allowing more creative & flexible navigation • exploiting multimedia capabilities

6. the cinematic imagination Marcus, G. (1994) The modernist sensibility in recent ethnographic writing and the cinematic metaphor of montage, in L. Taylor (ed.) Visualising Theory: Essays from V. A. R. 1990-1994. Routledge. New sensibilities in ethnographic writing which seek to : • problematise the spatial • problematise the temporal • problematise perspective/voice • acknowledge dialogic authorship • perform bifocality (reflexivity) • produce critical juxtaposition

7. scholarly media see P. Biella, 1993, Beyond Ethnographic film, in J.R. Rollwagen (ed) Anthropological film and video in the 1990s, NY: The Institute Inc. essential components of a scholarly work: • further established paradigms in literature, e.g. through originality, debate, response, etc. • adhere to standards of clarity, debate & argument • conform to expected formats high in redundancy, e.g. contents, cross-references, abstract, data, footnotes, results, etc. • enable rapid, repeated, non-linear study • allow reader to take unlimited notes • allow author to make unlimited footnotes & bibliographic references See also Grimshaw, A. (2001) The Ethnographer's Eye: Ways of seeing in modern anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

8. screen-based authoring • What can we put on screen? • text • video • audio • graphics • clickable hyperlinks • How to combine these through screen design & navigation? • N.B. multimodality of screen-based media

9. on-screen authoring effects • relationship between text, sound, images • refracting analysis through different lenses (see Denzin & Lincoln, 2000: The discipline & practice of qualitative research, Handbook of qualitative research, Sage.) • presenting multiple perspectives/voices • dialogue between participants, author, audiences • multi-linear navigation (maintaining sequentiality?)

10. loss of scholarly apparatus? • loss of structure, coherence & sequentiality • occluding of argument and authorial voice • reduction of analysis to bit-sized fragments • telling risks being replaced with showing • distraction of special effects & aimless clicking

11. Watching, listening, reading and clicking Research project: current and ongoing compares responses to: • Hypermedia web-pages • Ethnographic film • Print journal article Audiences: PhD students

12. findings so far audiences appear to be: • more critical & demanding of film • less reflexive about written article • seeking a clear authorial voice • requiring a step-by-step argument