Discombobulations and Transitions: Using Blogs to Make Meaning of and From Within Liminal Experiences

Abstract

holds an MSc in Counselling Studies from the University of Edinburgh and is currently a doctoral researcher focused on Family Secrets within the School of Health at the University of Edinburgh. Her research interests include writing as inquiry, collaborative writing and performative methodologies. Recently, she has become interested in how technologies such as blogs, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram will impact and influence qualitative research methodologies.Liz Taylor is a research fellow in ECRED, Edinburgh Centre for Research on the Experience of Dementia at the University of Edinburgh. Liz The overall focus of her research interest is the experience of people living with dementia and in engaging people with dementia in research and the co-production of knowledge. DISCOMBOBULATIONS AND TRANSITIONS 2 AbstractWe live in a digitalised world, where social media have become an integral part of scholarly life. Digital tools like blogs can facilitate various research-related activities, from recruitment, to data collection, to communication of research findings. In this paper we analyse our experience of blogging to suggest that they provide a useful resource for qualitative researchers working with reflexive accounts of personal experience. Through our personal story of engaging with blogging while travelling abroad to participate in a conference, we explore how we used the blog in different ways to concretise transitional processes, to engage in public storytelling, and to form a network of relationships (self, others and blog). We argue that the technology of blogging is particularly suited to creating sensemaking narratives from liminal or discombobulating experiences; and highlight the usefulness of understanding the production of data through blogging as culturally located within networks of relationships and normative discourses.

Digital Tools for Qualitative Research: Disruptions and Entanglements

“…She argues that these binaries contribute to inaccurate understandings by overlooking the complex entanglements where researchers and technologies meet. The ways in which digital tools might foster, inhibit, or alter our reflexivity is a theme addressed by Jackson and also by some of the other authors in this issue (e.g., MacLaren et al, 2017). Both Jackson (2017) and Le Blanc (2017) help us see how a return to an arts-based perspective is complimentary-rather than antithetical -to the emerging understanding of QDA software and the larger world of digital tools in qualitative research.…”

“…She considers how ethical practices might function in these spaces (McGeeney, 2015), and her article is a must-read for anyone pondering social media research. MacLaren et al (2017) share their team's experience taking up blogging as a digital space in which to engage in public storytelling and to form a network of relationships, which, they argued, "opened up opportunities for reflexive research practice." Davidson et al (2017) illustrate how QDA software became a site for multiple interpretations as individuals and groups of researchers wandered through the project and/or gathered in it for analytic activities.…”

“…Byrne (2017) demonstrates that even the fairly basic understandings of public versus private spaces (and data) are reconfigured in virtual communities, with accompanying implications for disclosure and consent. Davidson et al (2017), MacLaren et al (2017, and Robins and Eisen (2017) identify the new kinds of communication and collaboration that occur when groups of researchers engage in analysis while leveraging digital tools. These three papers depict the construction of data through the processes of normative, virtual discourse (MacLaren et al, 2017); the relationship between diverse researcher views and the construction of a conceptual continuum (Davidson et al, 2017); and the possibilities for conducting social justice research with high volume, rapid turn-around qualitative data (Robins & Eisen, 2017).…”

“…What's more, this special issue disrupts common conceptions (and persistent misconceptions) about the relationship between digital tools and qualitative research and illustrates the entanglements that occur whenever humans intersect with the nonhuman, the human-made, or other humans. These papers disrupt the notion that technologies are theory-neutral, instead we see authors engaging with a variety of theories to make sense of digital tool use-such as practice theory and the social shaping of technology (Jackson, 2017), postmodern pastiche (Le Blanc, 2017), and liminality (MacLaren, Georgiadou, Bradford, & Taylor, 2017).…”

The invisible paradox of inflammatory bowel disease: An analysis of men’s blogs

“…Unlike traditional biographical stories or illness narratives, stories told via blogs may be ‘partial or fragmented’ (MacLaren et al, 2017) as they are not limited to a linear beginning-middle-end structure. Similarly, blogs are not reliant solely on text, but can contain other materials, such as images and music (MacLaren et al, 2017). As chronic illness can lead to a sense of disruption (Bury, 1982; Gomersall and Madill, 2015), the blog may offer a more useful space in which to engage with it.…”