Erik OBrien

Transcription:
(Attached in this post)
I have a little bit of experience transcribing from my documentary class with Dr.
Avery. After recording various interviews each person in the class was slated to
transcribe 2 interviews, which lasted about 40 minutes each. We needed to
transcribe all the interviews so we could create a working script for the
documentary. I originally had thought it would be a quick task however; it seemed
to take an eternity. While Tracy cites some fellow named Bird (2005) saying that
transcription could be fun, my experiences before and now during this class make
me think otherwise.
Since it is Fall Break and there are no DJs to interview I thought to myself
that I could still get valuable transcription practice from unrelated sources. I opted
to transcribe a reading of a segment from David Foster Wallaces Brief Interviews
with Hideous Men by my friend who chimes in with a few little anecdotes and
opinions. I recorded him into adobe audition and then slowed down the clip to a
point where I could type almost as fast as he was talking. This 20ish minute reading
took about an hour to transcribe without any of the extra transcription symbols in
table 8.3 in the Tracy book. To make proper annotations for academic work (unlike
the documentary transcription I did) it would have taken multiple more listening
and more knowledge on transcription coding (now I understand why Dr. Dan
Canary says it takes 10 hours to train an adequate coder).
For my thesis project I am now hoping to avoid transcription. I plan on
having a lot of conversations and recording them so I can come back to them for
later listenings but if I have to transcribe them I do not think I will ever finish this
project. I am eased by Tracy saying on page 177 Granted, transcribing is not a
requirement; listening repeatedly to participants voices can be an effective method
for early analysis. but I am not sure if that just makes me lazy. Since I am
attempting to make this weeks writing more focused on the practical, I will just
come out and say that doing transcription for every recording I make will not be
functional for me. I am doing a masters thesis, not a dissertation. Yes I am here to
learn and create new knowledge but I am also hear to get through it and move on to
bigger and better lines of questioning. This is my first practice run in academia and I
dont want to end up running in circles.
Class Notes:
Fortunately my class notes agree with some of the realizations I made during
the transcription process. Specifically when doctor Anderson said that the notes are
more important than the recording. This was helpful to me because coming from a
production background the recording was always king. It is the reason whenever
you have any kind of audio or video recording device there is always a person whos
sole job is to operate the device (though this is changing in the news world and
creating lower quality work). The reason Dr. Anderson stated was that since we
were doing interpretive analysis anyway notes are better since any transcript or
recording will be interpreted. The interpretation is where the value lies, not in the
actual word for word data. That is why we are supposed to be so astute to changes
in facial cues and other forms of subtle communication.
This brings me to the question Dr. Anderson told us to consider this week.
Can I really represent someone elses view. I know I need to focus more on
application but some more self-reflexivity will not hurt with this question. In a
practical and surface sense we can represent someone elses view. The key is in the
word represent, we acknowledge we can never know but we can get something
close. When I draw a self-portrait it may not look like my mirror reflection but
people can still tell it is a picture of me. Additionally, if we did not believe that we
could represent someone elses view all interpretive research would be worthless,
the paper may be interesting or insightful, but we would have to concede that it was
all fiction (not that you cant learn anything from fiction). Lastly, in a practical sense,
we set up controls for this when conducting interpretive research. Researchers
often show their findings and interpretations to those they have studied, asking if
they have accurately portrayed their viewpoints and actions. To disregard the
response from a participant to whether or not the researcher has accurately
portrayed them is reductive to the participant.
However, theoretically I would say we can never REALLY represent someone
elses view. This is the reason I do not believe in representative democracy. Even
from the practical side of things with my experience in documentary I have lived by
the philosophy of master documentarian Ken Burns. Burns and I believe that any
time you are representing something it is a lie, all story is manipulation, and that is
ok, there is no other option. There is an art to everything, and though I believe
interpretive research strives to be truthful and is less manipulative than other forms
of art, I struggle to believe that something that requires argumentation, writing,
recording, sleuthing, and creating pretty graphs does not include an artistic element.
Personally I believe that once you gain enough perspective on anything is becomes
art, and interpretive research is no different. My last example of why we can not
really represent others views comes from the short story Good Ol Neon by you
guessed it, David Foster Wallace. In the story the narrator laments to wheather it is
even possible to accurately represent our thoughts with our own language. He
characterizes language as a crummy tool and method for representing the huge
amount thought that goes on in our heads. As someone who often falls over their
words when trying to express an idea I am inclined to agree.
Goals for rest of class:
Disclaimer: What I write here could very well change tomorrow. I would love
to continue conducting interviews because I think it would be good practice both
academically and practically, it is a very valuable skill. Maybe I could try doing some
focus group stuff. What I think might be the most helpful to me however, is to do a
mini project that fits into my thesis from start to finish. While I think I have a decent
grasp on NVivo I do not think I will really know how to use it till I use it as part of a
project rather than as an exercise. The following is an outline of what I think might
be a good idea, feedback would be great, maybe this is not what you are looking for
and it is not rigorous enough and does not fit into the form the rest of the class will
take.
Step 1: Make research questions (already have 2 that my committee like).
Step 2: Create asynchronous interview question guide
Step 3: Do email interview of 1-2 participants
Step 4: Code in NVivo
Step 5: Analyze and write small response of how it will influence the direction of my
actual study.
It is only 5 steps but I believe that if I were to do this for the rest of the class it
would give me an opportunity to try some new things like an asynchronous
interview and put everything we have learned into practice while also giving me
some beneficial insight and material into my thesis. This of course will be in addition
to any other activities in response to the next two books. This may not be enough
work for the rest of the semester, or maybe it is. It seems every week I learn that
this is far more time consuming than I think. This is simple an idea of my direction
and goals for the rest of this class since I have never done research before.
Unrelated:
This is a small anecdote I would like to share. In light of all the emphasis on
note taking and documenting situations and trying to interpret them I have, as an
exercise, started keeping a note journal of my dreams. I am not a person who thinks
dreams mean anything or any of that spiritual stuff. It just seems like a perfect way
to practice writing and interpreting (for kicks and giggles). Much like interpretive
research without diligent post event notes the events of a dream can fade into
obscurity very quickly; quick and well-written notes are essential. That being said,
even looking at my notes it is hard to understand what is going on. It is a fun little
exercise I have come up with and I have developed a few of my own little writing
codes like Tracy does for interviews. For example ~ around names signifies that
experience in a dream when you have that experience where the only way you can
describe a person is that it was your friend Jake but for someone strange
unexplainable reason you know it is no Jake. ~s signifies something is something
and is not something simultaneously.
Tracy Reading:
Once again we are back to Tracy and since I feel I am ready to move on to
Saldana. I will talk about some of my thoughts on chapter 12 which includes an
exercise by Saldana, however Poetic inquiry is not of practical interest to me so you
wont get to hear what I have to say about Saldana till next week.
Tying this back to Dr. Andersons question about whether or not it is possible
to represent someones views on page 253 we hear that even the form of narrative
is subject to this question. There is (was?) a crisis of representation that calls to
question the realist tales we are used to hearing in qualitative research. From that
there are a ton of different styles that I think would be more interesting to read than
a realist tale, from life-story, confessional tales, to messy text and poetic inquiry.
While all these seem fun an enjoyable I need to hone in on what I should be doing
for my project, so I decided to engage with exercise 12.1.
1. Themes/topics or chronology/natural history will likely be the most
effective ways for exampling my data (but who really knows till I have
collected it). While themes/topics is the more likely of the two, depending
on the data I am able to collect it may be chronology. It would be great to
be able to find documents that showed how specific KUTE polices
changed over time. Additionally, it would be cool to use news clippings
from outside sources about KUTE to shed some light on how the
organization is cast from an outside perspective and what it has to say
about DJ identity. While I am confident I could find outside news
clippings, internal records and policies at KUTE might be hard to track
down or maybe even impossible because of shotty record keeping and
simple lack of documentation.
2. The most appropriate for connecting with readers will mostly likely be
the two forms listed in question 1 since most of the others are more
narrative driven/ artistic and some even almost journalistic in some
ways. My key readers are my committee and maybe some people at
KUTE, themes/topics will likely be the best choice depending on the data.
3. As far as comfort goes, they all make me uncomfortable since I am not a
very good writer but in the past most of my papers would probably fit the
mold of the themes/topics. That being said the most interesting and fun
to me as maybe not a writer, but as a reader would be puzzle-explication
or braided narrative.
4. This I really do not know how to answer, I get a sense that my studies
goals may change as the data appears. As of right now I think a
chronology would have the most potential for achieving my studies goals
but it is very likely that the data is simply not there. That being said,
themes/topics would also be an adequate way to achieve the studies
goals.
I know Tracys cookie cutter approach is maybe not the most realistic but
viewing it in this way is fairy useful for me at least during these elementary
steps.
Outside reading:
I know I am supposed to be commenting on method in the outside but
this week I am having trouble doing so. I am not sure if it is the lazy of fall
break making its way into my writing or if it is me finally internalizing
everything Dr. Anderson has been saying about Comm scholarship in general.
After hearing more about Dr. Andersons Meta analysis of every Comm article
and him saying most research is basically just advancing professors towards
tenure and most theory is bogus and just common since is really starting to
affect me. I always knew this was true and that academia is a job like
anything else but for some reason I have suspended that cynical view in
exchange for a romanticized view maybe as a type of coping mechanism.
Most of my outside reading has been from organizational scholarship
both in my Org Comm class and from my own self-study for my thesis. Most
of the theories unless they deal with social construction and feminism are
usually uninteresting and I hate to say it, kind of obvious. I am not surprised
to learn that inconsistencies in stated organization goals and actual practices
are problematic. This is not something I am only finding in the organizational
literature. I went back and read a few environmental comm. Articles, and
while I think they are more interesting, the findings never seem to be that
significant. I am not very surprised that there is more than one frame in the
Salvadorian press when it comes to environmental justice movements. The
last time I can remember being surprised by an article was back in my
communicating climate change class where they found that fear messaging
can be effective in certain ways in a climate change context.
I should probably not be complaining since my research probably is
not that interesting or useful. This class is making me jaded and I am not sure
if it is a good or bad thing I am certainly smarter for it though maybe.