Michelle and I completed a podcast this week with a pair of seniors. We moved on from the interview format but still asked the same questions to move the conversation along and add topics. I would say it was successful. The discussion flowed better and we liked that it was more casual. I felt that the respondents were more eager to share their answers when we would also chime in. They brought some interesting points to think about.
- The use of textspeak in real life or how that has transferred from online to everyday face-to-face conversation
- Real life vs online/text persona
- Different identities within the virtual world
- Who/what kind of people we communicate with? – One of the respondents spoke a lot about how she mostly chats with a gaming community and they have their own slang/messaging habits that is very different with how she will message friends from real life.
I realized afterwards that though we had a very good discussion about online messaging and texting, we did not talk much about millennials. I am wondering how much of our podcast should include a conversation about how we as a generation engage in this form of communication. Taking a step back, we are still not specifically sure of our research question. We are curious of how millennials talk to each other in terms of online messaging but what are we really trying to find?
Michelle and I also thought of how we would organize this podcast. We will have hours worth of recordings but not everything is necessarily relevant. We also had not discussed in length how we would present our findings. Should we cut important/interesting parts and combine it together to make one whole audio file? Michelle had suggested taking pieces from the podcasts then recording ourselves responding to those cuts. However, I feel like we might have replied enough in the latest podcast. I am not sure how much of our own opinions really matter in these recordings unless the recording itself is the analyzation. We also have to decided on having or needing a visual representation of what we have learned about millennial language/online messaging.
The research is certainly evolving after every recording. Michelle and I have more questions after every time and so every interview or podcast have been very different, because we keep adding more. Michelle and I considered focusing on certain themes for each respondent or pair of respondents but I felt that because not everyone has the same sentiments, it is better to touch on every topic in every podcast rather than only get two opinions on it.
Where to go from here? Michelle and I decided to pick pairs from senior studio class or the other Sociology senior seminar because of our success from this week’s podcast. Pairs seem to be less intense when there are two of us interviewees. Respondents can bounce thoughts off each other and there is also less recording to do. This upcoming week I hope Michelle and I can record a few more people and to start looking at other studies or sociological theories that can be applied to this topic.
Bettina,
It sounds like you are eliciting a lot of interesting data about the nature of these online interactions. It is good that these interviews generate new questions for you and Michelle. At the same time, I hope that you don’t try to overwhelm yourselves too much by asking too many questions. After all, the final project you want to produce will hopefully focus on one particular aspect of these interactions.
I don’t think you need to concern yourselves too much about whether your interviews ask direct questions about Millennials. After all, if the students are talking about their own practices (and not necessarily about their generations in general), they are giving you plenty of feedback about Millennials. I believe that it will be up to you and Michelle to connect the dots and consider what your responses have to say about Millennials’ use of social media communications.
It might be helpful for you and Michelle to do more focused interviews as you continue. Instead of doing the entire interview schedule, you might zero in on the questions that are of interest to you. This might help you narrow down your topic a bit ore to something you both find manageable.
That said, this is transforming into a very interesting project. I look forward to reading more about it.