Few (if any) would be willing to deny that digital
technologies are changing writing and writing studies research persistently and
significantly. Because of this, we cannot ignore the consequences for research
methods and methodologies. (Citing Patricia Sullivan and James Porter, Stuart
Blythe describes methods as “procedures, techniques” and methodologies as more
epistemological viewpoints [205], a distinction I will maintain here.)
Addressing these consequences is precisely the focus of Digital Writing Research: Technologies, Methodologies, and Ethical
Issues, edited by Heidi A. McKee and Danielle Nicole DeVoss. What this text
emphasizes throughout its chapters are ways by which researchers might build
upon and adapt more traditional research methods to work more effectively with
digital technologies and sites.
Underwriting much of the chapters by various authors in this
text is a general sense of research methods tradition. Given the more
humanistic/social sciences approaches discussed throughout, the emphasis here
is certainly on qualitative methods. John Creswell describes qualitative research
as that which “involves emerging questions and procedures, data typically in
the participant’s setting, data analysis inductively building from particulars
to general themes, and the researcher making interpretations of the meaning of
the data” (4). These methods are at the fore throughout the majority of the
articles here, as many authors discuss the importance of engaging in research
in the particular context in which text production or interactions occur (e.g.,
Sapienza 90; Smith 134). In addition, many of the scholars in Digital Writing Research talk discuss
their research in digital spaces and on digital texts in terms of traditional
qualitative research practices. Perhaps one of the more common practices
discussed in the text is ethnography. As Janice Lauer and William Asher
explain, “ethnographers observe many facets of writers in their writing
environments over long periods of time in order to identify, operationally
define, and interrelate variables of the writing act in its context” (39). Beatrice
Smith’s chapter, for example, seeks to bring ethnographic practices into a
hybrid workplace (where work occurs at a physical office as well as an online
space). This chapter, and indeed all of the others, raises the key questions of
the text. Rebecca Rickly puts these questions perhaps most succinctly: “Are
traditional research methods sufficient to capture the complexity when studying
writing/writing scenarios? What happens when we add technology to the mix? Are
traditional methods (or our understanding and/or application of them) enough,
or do we need new ones” (381)?
The short version is that many of the authors represented
here feel that some of the traditional methods as often taught and some of the
rigidity prescribed (or implied) in their traditional manifestations indeed are
not adequately meeting the needed of researchers exploring digital technologies
and writing. In nearly every chapter, the author or authors point to the
complexities digital technologies and spaces create relative to traditional
methods. In their introduction to the anthology, McKee and DeVoss note the vast
changes that have occurred in what constitutes “writing,” how writers and
audiences interact, and how collaboration takes place (9-10). As a consequence,
researchers must approach traditional practices more critically and
reflexively.
One area that requires more careful attention is in ethical
considerations. Working in digital spaces creates a number of complications
related to treating participants ethically. First, Will Banks and Michelle Eble
remind us that though these spaces are virtual, we are still dealing with human
participants, and we must consider how our interactions with these participants
can have ramifications for them not typical of research conducted in physical
environments, especially since online interactions always leave permanent
digital traces (31-32, 39). Furthermore, online and digital environments make
distinguishing between “published discourse and private discourse” all the more
difficult (Sidler 78), and we must wonder if the digital spaces we examine are
texts (or products) or sites where people interact (DePew 55). In other words,
how we treat the texts we are examining and how we treat the people who produce
those texts take on new complications in digital research contexts. The new
digital modes of text production also raise ethical concerns in terms of
copyright and intellectual property rights. Because of the ease of access to
what researchers produce, we must consider ownership in new ways (McIntire-Strasburg
288). Copyright has multiple layers of complexity, and what constitutes fair
use and altering to the point of significant difference becomes especially
fuzzy (294, 296).
Another area of complexity created by digital technologies
and environments is how to address the mercurial nature of these technologies
and spaces. As anyone who has saved a link and tried to use it months later or
who has relied on a particular tool for something only to have that tool
mysteriously go offline can attest, things on the Web change rapidly. Because
the technologies are malleable, our methods need to be flexible to adapt to
those changes (Rickly 379). Often, this requires a greater commitment to
applying multiple methods in our research. Kevin DePew advocates a strategy of
triangulation of both the types of data we rely on and the types of methods we
employ in our research, which can help researchers avoid the “god trick,” or a
biased, one-sided view of the data (53, 54).
In response to such complexities, a number of scholars here
suggest the explicit use of theory to guide and frame the work researchers do.
Certainly, this is not unique to research in digital writing. Creswell notes
that certain worldviews or philosophies guide research (5-10), and Lauer and
Asher note that research often uses theory to validate or produce new theories
(5). What is most compelling in the discussions of theory in Digital Writing Research is the breadth
of the theories employed and their unabashed political nature (which I think is
a good thing). Digital technologies are often touted as the great equalizers of
knowledge. This has not proven to be the case, and researchers are right to
bring critical frameworks to their work, be that the ecofeminism proposed by
Julia Romberger, the use of articulation theory that allows critical analysis
and re-articulation of digital technologies as discussed by Amy Kimme Hea, or
the use of visual and aesthetic theory to analyze digitally produced visuals
advocated by Susan Hilligoss and Sean Williams.
These uses and adaptations of some of the traditional
methodologies and approaches to the complexities generated by research in
digital writing point to a recognition of the value of traditional methods—but
that recognition is not an unquestioning devotion. Instead, the chapters in
this text point to a discipline that is theory-driven, deeply concerned with
ethical considerations (especially as they pertain to the research
participants), flexible in response to ever-changing digital technologies, and
comfortable with certain levels of indeterminacy. Such an epistemology seems to
me well suited to move research methods and methodologies well into the
twenty-first century.
Works Cited
Banks, Will, and Michelle Eble. “Digital Spaces, Online
Environments, and Human Participant Research: Interfacing with Institutional
Review Boards.” McKee and DeVoss 27-47. Print.
Blythe, Stuart. “Coding Digital Texts and Multimedia.” McKee
and DeVoss 203-27. Print.
Creswell, John W. Research
Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches. 3rd
ed. Los Angeles: Sage, 2009. Print.
DePew, Kevin Eric. “Through the Eyes of Researchers,
Rhetors, and Audiences: Triangulating Data from the Digital Writing Situation.”
McKee and DeVoss 49-69. Print.
Hilligoss, Susan, and Sean Williams. “Composition Meets
Visual Communication: New Research Questions.” McKee and DeVoss 229-47. Print.
Kimme Hea, Amy. “Riding the Wave: Articulating a Critical
Methodology for Web Research Practices.” McKee and DeVoss 269-86. Print.
Lauer, Janice M., and J. William Asher. Composition Research: Empirical Designs. New York: Oxford UP, 1988.
Print.
McIntire-Strasburg, Janice. “Multimedia Research: Difficult
Questions with Indefinite Answers.” McKee and DeVoss 287-300. Print.
McKee, Heidi A., and Danielle Nicole DeVoss, eds. Digital Writing Research: Technologies,
Methodologies, and Ethical Issues. New Dimensions in Computers and
Composition. Ed. Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe. Creskill: Hampton, 2007.
Print.
McKee, Heidi A., and Danielle Nicole DeVoss. Introduction.
McKee and DeVoss 1-24. Print.
Rickly, Rebecca. “Messy Contexts: Research as a Rhetorical
Situation.” McKee and DeVoss 377-97. Print.
Romberger, Julia E. “An Ecofeminist Methodology: Studying
the Ecological Dimensions of the Digital Environment.”
Sapienza, Fil. “Ethos and Researcher Positionality in
Studies of Virtual Communities.” McKee and DeVoss 89-106. Print.
Sidler, Michelle. “Playing Scavenger and Gazer with
Scientific Discourse: Opportunities and Ethics for Online Research.” McKee and
DeVoss 71-86. Print.
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