Dominic+Feed+Back+March+1

Feed Back for Dominic's Core Categories Follow up from class discussion, March 1

__Karin's response__: Your core categories leave out ideas of "collaboration" and "experimentation" which might be a way that your informants would describe such tools. How might you incorporate this perspective into your research questions? The very general questions thrown around in class today might easily fit into your work: 1. What modes of (ethnographic experimentation) are in play and what motivates them? (i.e. why have they taken hold) 2. What modes of (communication technologies) are in play (in ethnographic-based research) and what are their futures? - What imaginaries sustain them and what are their futures? However, this doesn't really get at how you intend to establish best practices or models.

__Guy's response__: I wonder if it might be useful to focus on webs or semantics more broadly as a core category, rather than Semantic Web. Why is this kind of technology/method so exciting right now? How do designers of these systems conceive of //meaning// in a way that gives it meaning? Are there any other groups that are doing similar projects to the Asthma files? Hm. I like that the abstract involves the creation of a new ethnographic experimental framework...is that sorta based on the Asthma files? I want to hear more about how you plan to use analysis of Semantic Web projects to build a new framework. Also, I want to use that framework when you are done.

__Kim's response:__ I like "abductive information system" as a core category -- very much. Through your empirical examples, you'll show people what this looks like. But how is semantic web a core category? Is there something you want to add to the way the semantic web is usually conceputalized? I think you also want a core category about practice -- something like "digital ethnography" or "qualitatively digital" -- with the goal of describing what it looks like for qualitative research to be animated by digital tools.

__James response:__ In addition to the Asthma Files, perhaps [|these guys] would be a good source for case studies, typologies, etc. What are the "digital humanities" doing that qualify as "best practices" and where are they missing opportunities? As part of this project, I would want to ask: How do digital tools/semantic web affordances affect methodological imaginaries? Maybe it's beyond the scope of what you want to do, but maybe touching on it would be worthwhile...

__Ellen response:__ Like Guy, I am also curious about the new framework and where you will go with this. Having an outlook for future projects within the project/abstract gives a helpful viewpoint of what you intend to gain with this research. If this is the ultimate end goal, though, I wonder if getting more case studies in addition to the Asthma Files when gathering empirical work might be helpful (as James suggested). Thus you can have some comparison of how one institution/group of researchers handles the digital humanities and tools versus another such group. How do these different groups deal with categorization, metadata and the sharing of information that might not fit into the particular categories that are already delineated within the project? Maybe that's off topic, or not quite what your work will highlight, but for some odd reason I always have this curiosity about metadata and how to deal with it when considering information systems in the digital realm.

__Pedro's response:__ To build on what Ellen said: This article might be helpful in terms of potential "friction" that metadata creates:

I think there is room for this friction to actually be quite productive of new understandings at times, although it is presented in this article mostly as something that slows people down. Figuring out a way to make the disjunctures and inoperability between different methods and disciplines important data/texts in their own right could be helpful.