Call it expanding and contracting, cycling and then recycling or moving forwards and backwards. That’s the way research goes. I am midstream a thick media reporting project. As I sort through my quasi-professional-identity crisis as a designer, journalist and researcher I have full warrant to borrow tools and techniques from all disciplines.
I borrowed elements of affinity diagraming to draw new conclusions about so much of what I have learned this semester.
1. I wrote short summaries of my research findings on individual Post It notes.
2. I stuck the post it notes on a big blank wall. I organized and reorganized them until they made some kind of subjective, judged sense.
3. Then, I gave each stack a topic. I now have organized clusters of thoughts and seeds of ideas about how to move forward.
Questions
- What kinds of people should I talk to next?
- How does language connect communities and culture?
- What are the analog things in our life that mimic the social layer?
- What gap is social media sharing expression filling?
- What filled the expression gap before?
- Will we get social media fatigue (too many chicken nuggets)?
- Social media satisfies impulsive behavior and thoughts. What other part of our life does this affect?
- Why do we gather where we do online?
- What gets left out when shared (broadcasted) content is personalized for us?
- How are people who share to social media like and unlike journalists?