Dissertation Method Readings

The method section of Ross dissertation begins with the revision of the main purpose of the project. It was interesting for me to actually see this description in the method section. Usually, we primarily see how the researcher jump into explaining the methods without talking about purpose, but I guess, dissertation sections (chapters) , as we talked last time are supposed to be stand alone pieces.
If it is the case, the author did a great job of providing us with information about the goals as well as went into detailed discussion of the theories at the beginning of the method section, which also seemed a little bit out of place for me.

What I liked about the introduction part was how the author differentiated his research from other types of studies, which analyze persuasive messages or arguments created by media or other institutions. This kind of research is usually done in the mass communications departments. The purpose of the current research is to study the major themes, or as the author calls them commonplaces, recurring thematic elements, tropes or phraseology. Eventually as we saw the author came up with the 12 categories of response, which are the most prevalent and therefore viable in current environmental argumentation.

From my standpoint, it is a very valuable study, because we can analyze media and institution messages but never really know what works for the audience. Knowing those major themes, professionals in PR departments could create even more convincing and effective messages, I am not sure if that would be for good or bad???
I wonder who would be the potential audience for this particular study besides academic community?

The author spends a lot of time explaining and discussing the theories he is using in the study, clearly identifying where he is planning to fill the gap in the literature. It seems like that it is the first study which actually looked at the themes used by the audience in relation to environmental discourse and argument.
He lists several theories (p. 58) stating that none of those theories are actually applicable to his study. When I was reading his explanation of the purpose of the study and how it differs from other studies, I thought that framing theory (mass communications theory) does look at media frames and audience frames. By frames we mean major recurring themes, which I think would be appropriate to call commonplaces. The list of 12 themes, which is the result of the study, is exactly what the media scholars, who study audience frames, produce as a result of the research. Looking at audience frames within framing theory, we may use experiment as well as interview methods. The purpose of the study would be: to identify the major thematic categories employed by the audience. So while reading this part of the method section, I thought that framing theory might be an interesting theory to explore in the context of this particular study.

The author discusses main theoretical paradigms employed in his research. First is feminist methodology. I found his explanation very useful. The author clearly points out that neither his data nor his interpretation is a purely feminist approach. Although, some of the respondents talked about power hierarchy and complex communication strategies, where the feminist methodology may provide some guidance.
Another approach used by the author is a popular culture approach. As the author points out it should not be confused with contextualized inquiry. Popular culture approach looks not at the “real use” or intent of an artifact, but at social circumstances and beliefs that have created a certain phenomenon. In other words, this approach helps us answer the “why” question. By this I mean that, if we as researchers look at recurring themes used by the audience, it would be useful to find the roots of those themes. One of the possible “roots” could be the societal and cultural values, hold by the people. I have not read the results and discussion section, so I don’t know if the researcher actually employed this approach in discussing the results.

But to elaborate on this, I have a question: if we look at the 12 themes, identified by the research, which of those themes reflect the values of the western developed societies? For the sake of a comparison, which themes would be commonplace for the primitive societies?

The third methodological approach is the idea of popularization discourse. From my perspective, it is probably not the best fit to the goals of the current study, since the research does not really look at how the scientific messages are presented. The author does not analyze the representation of information, which according to previous studies, play a major role in rejection or acceptance of scientific information. What do you all think? Is it a relevant methodology approach in the context of the current study?

Reading the research question part of the method section got me thinking that to be successful communicator the most important thing we need to know is probably the “narrative and perceptions audience draws upon when are presented with an argument.” In the light of this discussion, trying to grasp how people understand the social context (power relationships, societal values) and its relationship to the phenomenon, in our case, dam, is the most important thing in developing the successful and convincing arguments.

In the data collection section the author discussed what kind of data he collected, he mentioned that it was interviews as well as samples of material given out at and around each dam site. It would be interested to actually compare the recurring themes in written (audio-visual) materials with the recurring themes used by the audience and see if they are the same or not.

I like how the researcher limited the time of the interview to 2-5 minutes, in this short time period the participants will probably be relying on short-cuts or schemas, stored and easily retrievable from the memory. So, I guess schema theory would be another theory which might be employed within the context of this study.
In the section where the author describes the process of collecting data, I liked how he provided details on his method polishing, i.e. he began with transcribing every single “hmm” and then realized that these data are probably irrelevant to the current study. Basically, during the pilot study and first attempts to transcribe he was able to focus and define the most appropriate methodology approach to be used in the study.