Summary: There are four opportunities to conduct short media analyses over the course of the semester that build on our labs to give you additional experience using research methods to answer a research question about media. For this fourth and final paper, you will focus on Media-Elicitation.
Details: Please write this paper using Google Docs and share the document with me as an Editor.
As we are discussing during our unit on Photo and other forms of media elicitation, this method combines aspects of both interviews and participant created media. The researcher recruits participants to create some media based on a prompt. Once created, the researcher conducts interviews using the participant created media as a topic of discussion in order to facilitate data collection on the topic of research. As with earlier assignments, you have some flexibility in how you will complete this one in terms of what kind of media elicitation you want to use: photo, audio, video, or AI-generated images. Whichever kind of media you choose to have your participants create, your choice should be based on helping you answer a specific research question and you should be engaging explicitly with the method as it is explained in the course texts. You should concisely and clearly explain the form of elicitation you are conducting sufficient to understand why it is appropriate to answer your research question. Try to stay away from quoting the course texts or simply defining terms, but do paraphrase and reference the texts with citations. Remember, the purpose of this assignment is to practice using a method, so focus more on that process piece than on the results. You want to have a conclusion--that is, you want to say what you learn from applying the method to answer your research question about media--but that is secondary to showing me your process of using the method to analyze a media text or aspect of media culture.
Media Elicitation
Step 1: Come up with a research question appropriate to the method. It should have something to do with media culture, broadly defined. Keep in mind that this method is best suited to thinking about the sites of production and audiencing. Consider the modality embedded in your research question. Don't choose anything that is sensitive in nature. This should really be about something relatively innocuous so that you don't inadvertently do harm to your participants by, for example, asking them to take photos of the parts of their body that they hate and then ask about eating disorders.
Step 2: Decide on what media your participants will created. What kind of media would be useful and realistic to create? How will this media provide an entry point for your interviews and allow you to answer your research question?
INSTRUCTIONS
Format
- ? At the end of this step, stop and send me a quick email letting me know your research question and what media you'll ask people to create so I can make sure it is ethical research.
Step 4: Recruit participants. You should try for 3-5 participants. Give them the prompt and have them create the media. They need a reasonable amount of time to do this, but also need a deadline to get you their media, ideally before you conduct the interview.
Step 5: Create the interview protocol. This includes not just writing out your questions, but deciding how you will present the participants with the media they created as part of the interview. Will you give them the media and ask them to provide descriptions/captions, order the materials in terms of priority or another form of categorization prior to interviewing, or in some other way have them interact with their materials at the initial stage? What are the questions you'll ask them? How will you take notes?
Step 6: Conduct the interviews. Take notes or ask for permission to record.
Step 7: Normally you would then code the transcripts of your interviews (you could even use qualitative content analysis here), however since we are more interested in process than product, what I'd like you to do is simply read through your notes and try to identify a few themes from across the interviews that you think offer you a preliminary way to answer your research question. This won't be systematic, but it will give you a chance to interpret your data at an introductory level. Think of this as the results section complete with what conclusions you can draw from the interview process.
Please limit your paper to just 3 pages of writing (include a link to the participant created media embedded in the doc, as well as the interview questions and media creation prompt, but don't count these towards the page limit). As always, if you really needed more space to get your point across, I won't count it against you, but if it's clear you just didn't edit out unnecessary stuff, I will. Similarly, if you do everything needed in less space, I won't count that against you, but if it's short and missing something, I will.
You shouldn't do any outside research for this, so a works cited is not necessary, but you should cite the course text(s) on your method where appropriate to help with your analysis. Do not us Chatbot or any other "AI" or similar aid in writing your paper. Doing so is considered Academic Dishonesty. The point of this paper is the process of you trying to learn a method, which you won't do if you have someone or something else do some or all of that work for you. If you run into a problem with this assignment, email me, talk to me after class, or come to office hours. Having me in your google doc is partially to allow me to assist you in the writing process should you need it.