[Imc-research] Global.ImcResearch on the twiki

[Mr Shayne]

>> I tend to think for media research, small scale "Focus group" stuff works 
>> the best. Ie getting 10-20 people in a room and observing how people 
>> interact with the site(s), what they want to use it for, what they like and 
>> what they dont. Too often our deliberations on indy sites seem more around 
>> technical issues like cacheing and security while we ignore useability and 
>> social issues surrounding them.

The practice of focus group research in media has a fairly established 
background , particularly in the post structural-world of Critical media 
research common in the UK and europe (and australia of course. no Idea 
about the States, Im told they do things diferently there).

One of the key issues with "Quantative" research, is that the questions 
that are most interesting to us, are really qualitive as oposed to 
statistical ones.

What Quantitive research tends to do is ask questions about Demographic , 
and audience, whereas critical research prefers to problematise such 
questions and say "What do we *mean* by audience or Demographic". I'd 
argue that those deeper questions must necessarily precede the numbers.

The more practical question for me, is not really *who* is using the site, 
we sort of get vibes on that from our newswires, but *what* are they doing 
with the site. This is something that really requires a more Ethnographic 
aproach to research , getting in there and just watching people use the 
site. Seeing whether its locked eyes focus, or whether its part of broader 
meandering "surfing". Do new people feel nervous about posting? Is there 
issues with gender? Are our systems intimidating to traditionally less 
computer literate people. How are they using them for there own purposes 
and agendas.

Im not really sure any of these are particularly 
amenable to broad based statistical analyses, but I'd argue that they ARE 
amenable to more intimate group discussions in a well designed and 
facilitated discussion. More to the point, we can actually afford to do 
these (and this Id argue is perhaps a hidden reason why the small group 
ethnographic study is so popular with postgraduate researchers in media).

What I'm getting at is you dont need to use much statistical method 
with most of the 
interesting media questions. Its really not that useful. Its a social 
issue, not a science issue.

> BTW, i'm not so enthusiastic about an idea mentioned earlier of having
> a "Research IMC". The nature of research, and certainly if it's
> "global" research, is necessarily going to be less participatory than
> normal IMCs are supposed to be - since many people lack the chance or
> desire or skills (there may also be some innate genetic limitations)
> in knowing/learning the analytical and mathematical/statistical
> intuition needed. i don't see how we can talk about independent media
> for (so far) 1 billion people without using any mathematics. We can
> try to make the results maximally understandable and make the methods
> maximally participatory (e.g. GPL software), but a large fraction of
> people will still be effectively excluded, in practice, from doing
> much of the research. More so, if we only stick to English.

Fair call.