Losing (and finding) my religion

Over the past few weeks I have been in search of a methodology – or more correctly my methodology. I have found the search to be a spiritual journey – both an external investigation of theories and a personal introspection of my values and beliefs.  That sounds a bit melodramatic – but it is a pretty accurate description of how it feels.  I was in a bit of  a panic a while back (no surprises there) about how to analyse the conversations and behaviours in blogging communities (lets just assume for a mo that I can actually identify blog communities).  Most blogging research uses either SNA (social network analysis) of the nodes and links or content analysis of surveys and interviews.

I spent a bit of time coming to terms w SNA, content analysis and even discourse analysis – in the end realising that none of those felt right.  I keep coming back to the feeling that to understand the motivations and behaviours of members of a blog community, I need to be as true as possible to their (our) world.  As I struggle w how to remain true to this environment while objectively researching it – I thought of a term that Aussie director Baz Luhrmann uses “real artificiality”.

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) and now blog research often suffers from an inferiority complex.  With no face-to-face (FTF) interaction, it is often seen as a poor imitation of real life (RL).  But blog communities are not an imitation (artificial reality) of RL.  They are in fact real artificialities, that is completely constructed realities in their own right which allow members/inhabitants to have a natural experience of that reality (not RL).

So I have returned to ethnography as my methodology/philosophy (although I am still trying to understand ethonomethodology).  As part of that, trying to stay true to my overarching philosophy as I find the tools/techniques/methods for analysing and making sense of what I have observed – I try to approach it as a blog community member.  One of the ways that this paradigm shift changes my methods is that instead of fixating on categorising, ordering, and grouping text – I am trying to tag the conversation threads, themes, and topics in order to view the behaviours through blogging eyes.

Well that is where I am at the mo.  I could probably write on and on about this – I think I am feeling a bit euphoric about completing the first draft of my lit review (yuck – glad that is behind me) and having my laptop Xena back.