Research Methods Thus Far

            In the first month of MUSE-489, Research Methods, I have learned a surprising amount about how researchers employ a plethora of research methodologies, how they create research questions, and what types of evidence they collect. All of the authors contribute and craft their narratives in differing ways. Two readings in particular have stood out to me this semester in terms of how research methods– “Preserving the Voices of Revolution: Examining the Creation and Preservation of a Subject-Centered Collection of Tweets from the Eighteen Days in Egypt” and “ ‘I Know I’m Home When I Have One:’ The Cultural Significance of the Garbage Plate of Rochester, NY”. Both articles broke down the barriers of what I had believed a scholarly article could be. Both approached new topics of interest in the 21^st century, digital curation and food culture, respectively.

            A majority of research articles that I have read often employ similar methods of collecting data, such as surveys, academic research, and case study analysis. Timothy Arnold and Walker Sampson, the authors of “Preserving the Voices of Revolution: Examining the Creation and Preservation of a Subject-Centered Collection of Tweets from the Eighteen Days in Egypt” present an alternative method of collecting information and data in the 21^st century, Tweets.  The authors sought to document how to collect Tweets through Twitter’s Application Programming Interface (API) and figure out the best way to preserve ephemeral artifacts such as Tweets. While social media has been thoroughly examined in relation to riots and political upheavals, it has not been documented. The authors pointed out that “few have conducted rigorous content analysis simply because the content is unavailable to scholars who do not have the ability to build tools to collect data from Twitter”[1]. I had never previously thought about Twitter as a medium to gather information from or a methodology for collecting data. It seems unconventional since social media is relatively new and its potential uses have not been harnessed entirely. It inspires me to use creative methodologies for my own thesis research though building an API might be a little lofty for my skill set.

An infographic by Safaa Hamed that illustrates the use of digital media in Egypt during the Egyptian Revolution as well as their daily lives (source: https://www.behance.net/gallery/11124497/Digital-Media-in-Egypt-(Infographic) ) 

            Research articles can either succeed or fail at hooking their audience with the abstract alone. Emily Fekete managed to catch my attention immediately given that her article,“ ‘I Know I’m Home When I Have One:’ The Cultural Significance of the Garbage Plate of Rochester, NY”, is about an area that I have become extremely fond of during my college years. As mentioned previously, food culture has become quite topical in our society. This shift has resulted in people becoming “foodies”, which means that people have an increased interest in what is on their plate, where it came from, and what its backstory entails. Despite Fekete’s article being easy to read, it lacked a sense of professionalism and variance in the research methodologies employed. Her research question was to figure out how the Garbage Plate was culturally connected to Rochesterians. This in turn means that her target audience was all Rochestarians of varying ages. By Fekete’s use of a Facebook survey through Survey Monkey and emailing those individuals, she is instantly skewing a bias towards those 50 and under. Older individuals do not frequent the Internet as often, let alone Facebook. Through these research methodologies, she is not properly gathering the opinions of a group that properly represents those that comprise Rochester’s demographics. Because of this, her results are illegitimate in terms of assessing the cultural value of the Garbage Plate to Rochester as a whole. Fekete even acknowledges, “the survey results likely reflect a younger generation”[2]. Currently my thesis idea does not require surveying individuals or emailing interviews to obtain data. However if my topic was to include these methodologies, this article has taught me that I would need to administer the survey in such a way that was reflective of my target audience.

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[1] Timothy Arnold and Walker Sampson, “Preserving the Voices of Revolution: Examining the Creation and Preservation of a Subject-Centered Collection of Tweets from the Egyptian Days in Egypt,” The American Archivist 77, no. 2 (2014): 512.

[2] Emily Fekete “’I Know I’m Home When I Have One:’ The Cultural Significance of the Garbage Plate of Rochester, NY,” Journal of Material Culture 46, no. 1 (2014): 34.