BCM241 Pitch

My Pitch Video

For my autoethnographic research project, I will be comparing my past experiences and interactions as a fan of the TV show The Simpsons with my present experiences and interactions with the show. All to try to identify, how my fan experience has changed over the past twelve years

The field site I have identified for this research highlights the four primary ways I interact with the show and therefore will help form some of the structure of my field notes as I mentioned briefly in my pitch.

I also briefly mentioned that some of my research involves observational research, set 2 field notes in particular. So, for ethical and privacy reasons I can not show or quote anyone I have observed but I can describe the interaction or observations. I mentioned I would utilise ‘active listening’ which involves engaging with the context of online articulations (Winter & Lavis, 2020) and ‘thick description’ which according to Geertz’s (1973) is a tool used to describe experiences in a manner that allows them to create new insights and knowledge, which should allow me to paint a detailed picture without overstepping.

I also briefly wanted to mention that I have given myself five weeks in total to collect my field notes, plus one extra week to compare them. I will then based off of my findings in my field notes look for additional research which can explain the results I found. I will then present this work in a series of 3 blog posts which will be my DA.

Reference list (including references used in video):

Airoldi, Massimo 2018, ‘Ethnography and the digital fields of social media’, International Journal of Social Research Methodology, vol. 21, No. 6, pp. 661 – 673

Geertz, C. 1973, Thick description: Toward an interpretive theory of culture. Turning points in qualitative research: Tying knots in a handkerchief, Vol 3, pp.143-168.

Mertens, D. 2014, Ethical use of qualitative data and findings, The sage handbook of qualitative data analysis, Sage, Los Angeles, pp. 510-523

Winter, R. & Lavis, A. 2020, Looking, But Not Listening? Theorizing the Practice and Ethics of Online Ethnography, Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics, Vol. 15, No. 1-2, pp. 55 – 62