[Imc-communication] Imc research

[barry saunders]

Having been a semi-latent Indymedia volunteer (and list lurker for the 
past semester) I feel I say a few things about this topic.

Firstly: myself-

I helped start Brisbane Indymedia in late 2001 - early 2002, and was an 
editorial volunteer for a year or so. Since mid 2003 I have left the 
Brisbane Collective (due to various internal conflicts) and focussed on 
other media projects, as well as my honours research.

My honours thesis looks at things like community media, 
'multiperspectival journalism' and the Internet, and how open publishing 
(Indymedia, Wikipedia, etc) expresses these values.

Up to this point, I've been mainly focussed on looking at the existing 
literature, and doing a short user survey on Australian Indymedia users. 
I haven't finished the article yet, but will be publishing it soon. You 
can see the methodology I've used and the survey form here:

http://newslab.org.au/main/node/view/4

As you can see, I published a short article on each Australian Indymedia 
just to point out that I was doing the survey, so that anyone interested 
could visit my site and complete the survey.

>
>I don´t know if you feel the same - but here in the UK, I am under the 
>impression that imc has become a very en vogue research topic.
>

Yeah, absolutely. As someone whose involvement with Indymedia began as a 
volunteer, I have mixed feelings about this. Obviously, I think there is 
some role for academic interest in Indymedia. (Otherwise I wouldn't be 
doing it.) However, there are always concerns with things like security, 
confidentiality, and mischaracterisation of the Indymedia project.

> We are 
>approached by teams from Universities, PhD-researchers, critical 
>publicists, MA or BA students. Some inform us about their research 
>design, research questions etc, most don`t.
>

Any researcher should inform study participants of their methodology. 
It's poor methodology not to. That said, Indymedia is a public project 
in many respects - and anything public is fair game for analysis.

> Many want us to fill in 
>questionnaires, one research team from nijmegen bluntly put their 
>questionnaire on the newswire, 
>

I don't think this is really a concern. I mean, Indymedia is 
open-publishing, is it not?


>another one from Wales wants us to link 
>to their questionnaire from a feature (!).
>

Well, this is a little rude. But really, most media outlets survey their 
audience, for various reasons. Why shouldn't we?

> <>
> - we consider it appropriate that publications about indymedia are
> published under a creative commons licence and made accessible on the web.
>
Anything i publish will be available under an open source licence - and 
incorporated into my community media wiki that I'm maintaining. For many 
academics, that might be a problem - but making it available online for 
free should be easy.

>- If you use indymedia as a research topic, we expect you to provide a 
>link to your work on 
>http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Global/ImcEssayCollection
>
>I am also tempted to collect some guidelines:
>
>- if you wish a more intensive collaboration with your research object, 
>please send a description of your research design, methodology and 
>research questions, including planned proceedings with the results. More 
>intensive collaboration includes for example: interviews with indymedia 
>volunteers (per email, on the phone, f2f, chatrooms), participating in 
>meetings (f2f, irc), extensive lurking on lists, participant observation 
>online and offline, using imc resources to find more guinea pigs for 
>questionnaires etc.
>
>  
>
I have a few issues here. Who should researchers send their description 
to? Given that my interest is in Australian and Pacific Indymedias, it 
would be innappropriate to email it to global.

Perhaps an indymedia site/list/wiki for academic collaboration would be 
appropriate. Maybe an IMC list specifically for people interested in 
responding to academic interest would be appropriate. This would be good 
from a stopping-the-haphazard-irritation-of-Indymedia-volunteers 
perpective, but I don't think it should have any control over academic 
interest in Indymedia. Rather, it should be a collection of resources 
for researchers so that they understand things like privacy concerns, 
etc. I don't think that we should seek to _approve_ any research 
projects - but rather point out what methodology is most appropriate.

I do agree that lurking on lists without declaring your intentions is a 
problem (hence this email) and strict protocols should apply for 
revealing information on private lists - but that would be a concern for 
the people on that particular list.

I don't know that characterising respondents as guinea pigs is 
particularly helpful - I think that surveying people can be valuable, 
and I'm sure Indymedia users can differentiate useful surveys from 
rubbish. (I only got 15 responses to mine..... )


>- Indymedia is a network of volunteers dedicated to social change. Our 
>core interest is to run the indymedia websites and promote the indymedia 
>network online and offline. Therefore we only participate in selected 
>research projects. Our decision depends on several factors: Is the 
>research likely to create debates and results that are interesting for 
>us as a collective or a collective? Does the researcher make his/her 
>motivation, methodology, theoretical framework transparent? Will results 
>and theories be discussed with indymedia, before publication? Openness 
>for collaborative research models? And finally - does anyone feel like 
>spending time on this project right now?
>  
>

Absolutely. I think that there is a great potential for at least a 
strategic alliance between Indymedia and (some) academic researchers. 
Many academics are interested in the potential of open media, and open 
knowledge production.(and many academics have been or are involved in 
Indymedia.) I know of a few Indymedias that have survived on free 
bandwidth from university servers as well.....

>
>------------------------------
>
>Message: 3
>Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 18:43:47 +0200
>From: clara <clara at ifrik.org>
>Subject: Re: [Imc-communication] Research about Imc
>Cc: imc-communication at lists.indymedia.org, ionnek <ionnek at gmx.net>
>Message-ID: <40D9B343.9080505 at ifrik.org>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
>hi,
>count me in on this... we get so many requests quite often we answer the 
>same questions again and again, while on the other hand we get very 
>little back.
>
>some guidelines might also make it easier for some people to understand 
>why we are irritated over some research requests.
>
>  
>

Absolutely. I think a directory where we can log and document all the 
Indymedia research would be valuable, both to cut down the time 
Indymedia volunteers spend responding and also to provide Indymedia's 
responses to the research.

Would be very happy to help put together a directory of academic 
research on Indymedia. I'm also starting to put together some resources 
here: http://www.newslab.org.au/aprc/ - these are free for anyone to 
use.....

Glad to see this issue getting some discussion.....



---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Barry Saunders
http://newslab.org.au