Participant Recruitment...Doing it right

What's the news in the last week? Well, I was given ethics clearance. That was really painless, actually. I'd like to give a shout out to one of my supervisors who helped flesh out my application back at the start of the year. Holla!

What else? I'm still writing my methodology chapter, though I'll have my second draft ready by Monday. I think it's starting to resemble what my other supervisor was hoping for, but as we all know there will be room for improvement.

Possibly the most exciting news is that my recruitment has kicked up a notch. GWLG agreed to post my recruitment flyer and within a few hours I've already been approached by 5 individuals. I only needed 5, and I had a few already that I anticipated could snowball into a few others, so that's been really good. For a straight guy to successfully approach and insert himself into a lesbian community is no small task. It was probably my biggest fear, leading up to actually doing my research - what would happen if I failed miserably in recruiting? The good news is, I won't have to worry.

I feel like maybe it's a good idea to share a part of my methodology, in regards to approaching a community that the researcher exists out of. I was reading some stuff on internet research ethics recently, namely Christine Hine's Virtual Methods: Issues in Social Research on the Internet (2005), Virtual Ethnography (2000); The Ethics of Internet Research: A Rhetorical, Case-Based Process by Heidi McKee and James Porter (2009); and Boellstorff's Coming of Age In Second Life (2008). One salient thing that I learned from these texts is the need for 'authenticity'.

There was something by Janne Bromseth which I took from one of those texts. Bromseth did some research on gay and bisexual women's interaction on a Scandinavian litserv. She noted that when conducted ethnography online, it is important that the researcher sustains a 'cultrally appropriate image'. Such an image is necessary so as to appear legitimate and culturally sensitive toward the population that the researcher is studying, and, perhaps more importantly, reduces that the researcher can be seen as an 'other' (outsider).

Taking from this, I thought that it wasn't enough for my methodology that I simply have a tumblr blog for my research (though it would be where my potential participants could acquire the participant information and consent sheets). I would have to establish my own tumblr blog. Now, tumblr users can be assured that I am not just an amused researcher, looking down from high above in my ivory tower. This is also that is something which resonates with the standpoint epistemology that I've used, which calls for reflexivity and that the research operates as a participant, rather than an expert.

Anyway, as is customary when concluding posts on this blog, it's gif-time - for "teh kidz". Here is an apt representation of me presently, replying to all my participation requests:

References

Boellstorff T 2008, Coming Of Age In Second Life, Princeton University Press, USA.

Bromseth JCH 2006, 'Genre trouble and the body that mattered: Negotiations of gender, sexuality and identity in a Scandinavian mailing list community for lesbian and bisexual women', PhD thesis, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, accessed 28/09/20012, DiVa database, http://ntnu.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?searchId=1&pid=diva2:122317

Hine C 2000, Virtual Ethnography, SAGE, UK.

Hine C 2005, Virtual Methods: Issues in Social Research on the Internet, Berg, UK.

McKee H A & Porter J E 2009, The Ethics Of Internet Research: A Rhetorical, Case-Based Process, Peter Lang, USA.

"Imposter Syndrome"; Recruiting Research Participants

So this week's post will be split in two, as there's a lot on my mind at present. As you can see in the above image, one of this week's themes is "imposter syndrome". You wouldn't believe how many blogs there are out there mentioning this (and hey-presto, I've added to that mess). It might interest you to know that imposter-syndrome is quite common in areas where one's work is routinely critiqued by peers. Sound familiar? It should - that's academia and postgraduate study, baby!

This methodology chapter has been doing my head in. I think I severely underestimated how much knowledge I would have to acquire. I barely understand standpoint epistemology (I mean, I get the basic gist, but c'mon), and yet I'm writing about it like I know it well. I think that's where the imposter part comes in.

I'm at times plagued by this overwhelming anxiety that I don't belong here, I don't have the intelligence or capacity to be an honours student, let alone be one of the dreaded PhD students. I feel like fortune and luck has got me this far, and at some point someone will notice that I know nothing. I know that's stupid to say, of course I have the ability, why would people agree to supervise me if they didn't think I was capable, etc.

It doesn't change the fact that I feel like I barely even understand my project at times. On several occasions, I have left my supervisor meetings convinced that my research question or aim has changed somewhat. Add to that, that I'm writing about a methodology that only vaguely seems to make sense to me (the theoretical framework of my methodology has nothing to do with the major theory which comprised my literature review), and yeah - bummer town, dude.

I'm sure I'll get over it. This all sounds vaguely like my week 2 posting, where I emo'd up a storm there, too. I know it's hard for most of the peers in my group to relate entirely as they're at the culmination of their projects now. For them, they mostly know what it is they've synthesised. At this stage, I'm struggling to recruit people for my research - tumblr is strange in the way it operates. Unlike Facebook, direct contact is not so easy. I'm also faced with the challenge that these are communities that quite possibly do not take kindly to outsiders. Now there's some stress - what if I can't find enough recruits? How long will it delay my overall timeline? Ugh...

This gif pretty much sums up my recruitment process so far:

The changing contours of online intimacy

NB: Before I get into explaining what my thesis is about, and where my interests lie, I feel that it is perhaps appropriate to note that my thesis is still in its infancy. As in, still compiling a literature review. Many of my collegial counterparts are well on their way to finishing their theses (I started in July as opposed to starting at the beginning of 2012). So, if you see a relative sparsity here in comparison to the information on offer through my links section, that's why.

Tumblr, as many of you might be aware by now, is a social networking site (SNS) centred around microblogging and inspires its users to “share anything...customise everything”. It is a virtual space where millions of users share the things they “do, find, love, think, create”; where inter-connected communities collaborate in the rapid dissemination of ideas, meme culture and information. As at the time of writing, tumblr (as it is styled) has over 67 million individual blogs, with over 28 billion individual posts. One particular micro-blog that has particular sociological significance for anyone interested in gender, cultural studies, and online intimacy goes by the label Girls Who Love Girls.

I had first heard of Girls Who Love Girls while engaging in a casual conversation on Facebook regarding internet dating. A lesbian friend had made mention that she utilised Girls Who Love Girls in order to reach a broader LGBT community, having had consequentially become disillusioned with the limited experiences on offer in Sydney, when looking to connect with other queer women. Girls Who Love Girls is a community-driven online-dating platform, whereby users participate globally in submitting their own self-portrait photographs or videos along-side brief descriptions of their age, location and interests. Their motivation is in the hope of attracting like-minded women to 'add' or 'follow' their personal tumblr blogs, and commence a communicative exchange (from anything ranging from what music they like, to what they seek in a lover).

I became fascinated by the concept that these women were actively challenging social norms surrounding dating, and engaging in what many would regard as unorthodox methods of attracting a potential romantic interest. I have since learned that there is a paucity in empirical research regarding online dating where users (specifically young adults) pursue intimacy in spaces that were not typically or originally designed to accommodate such function. By attempting to situate my research in the Australian context, I hope to complete a lacuna in research in online intimacy. There are a few current exceptions (see for example Barraket & Henry-Waring 2008; Hjorth 2009, 2011; Malta 2008), however none have investigated the experiences and attitudes of young adults aged 18 to 25, or how they are seemingly driving the reconfiguration of online spaces for desired intimacies.

There isn't much else to say at this point, as I mentioned earlier I am still writing my literature review, but I hope to have that completed by mid-August 2012. Through my supervisors I have been persuaded to consider the impact of pornography on online relationships, but I haven't as yet begun exploring that option. Sufficed to say, it should make for interesting reading...

Until next week :-)

References


Barraket, J and Henry-Waring, M. S. 2008, 'Getting it on(line) : Sociological perspectives on e-dating', in Journal of Sociology, vol. 44, no. 02, pp.149-165

Hjorth, L 2009, 'Web U2: Emerging Online Communities and Gendered Intimacy in the Asia-Pacific region', in Knowledge, Technology & Policy, vol. 22, pp.117-124

Hjorth L 2011, 'It's Complicated', in Communication, Politics & Culture, vol. 44, no. 01, pp.45-59

Malta S 2008, 'Intimacy and older adults: a comparison between online and offline romantic relationships', in Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Australian Sociological Association (TASA 2008): Re-imagining Sociology, Melbourne, Australia, 02-05 December, accessed 31/07/2012, Swinburne Research Bank.