Showing posts with label media studies. Show all posts

Thursday, 14 April 2022

Behind 'Design principles for developing critique and academic argument in a blended-learning data visualization course'

Written for visual design educators and social semiotic researchers interested in students' use of data visualisations for argument.

Professor Arlene Archer and my chapter, 'Design principles for developing critique and academic argument in a blended-learning data visualization course', is to be published in 'Learning Design Voices'. Edited by Professor Laura Czerniewicz, Tasneem Jaffer and Shanali Govender. the book is produced by the University of Cape Town's (UCT) Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT). Its compilation aims to catalyse a discussion of key themes shaping practice in online learning design. Our contribution falls under the book's 'Learning materials, activities and processes' section. The book's other two tackle 'Learning Design as field, praxis and identity' and 'Humanising Learning Design'.

Our new chapter is a sequel to 'Exploring academic argument in information graphics' (2020), in which we proposed the framework for argument in data visualizations shown in Table 1. This social semiotic framework provides a holistic view that is useful for providing feedback and recognising students’ work as realised through the ideational, interpersonal, and textual meta-functions. For example, in addition to the verbal (written) mode that they are usually assessed on in Higher Education, students' digital poster designs must also consider composition, size, shape and colour choices.

Table 1. Framework for analysing and producing argument in data visualisation.
Designed by Arlene Archer and Travis Noakes, 2021.

When the course was first introduced, many students' were able to produce attractive posters, but there seemed scope to support them in developing better arguments by revising the course's contents. Our follow-up piece describes how using this framework proved helpful for changing a second-year journalism, blended-learning course and helping students' argument-development:

In five-weeks, the lecturer had to teach novices- data infographics, graphic design and Excel software, visual design aesthetics and multimodal argumentation via data visualization designs. Many changes were considered for improving the posters’ argument and the lecturer changed the 2018 syllabus structure by adding two new sections (for ‘Multimodal argument’ and ‘Creative ideas for infographic design’, see Table 2).

Table 2. Lesson topic changes from 2017 to 2018's course

A midway assessment was also introduced in which students’ infographic arguments were tested as works-in-progress. Reviewers’ feedback presented those who went for the wrong goalposts with opportunities for changing their direction by the final assessment. The new sections and mid-way assessment proved helpful for supporting 2018's students on aggregate with developing better arguments via infographic posters. The initial course was arguably weighted too much on using new tools for aesthetic design. By contrast, the new iteration was weighted towards teaching opaque discursive conventions and how to make a coherent, strong infographic poster argument using different modes that travel well as they traverse different formats.

To illustrate the benefits of this shift, our article focuses on two students, whose work differed from those of the 2017’s class in presenting meta-level critiques. As a result of some of the curriculum interventions, students began to engage with normative attitudes and societal discourses that shaped the information they shared. They began to flag how the graphs they shared might represent a numeric simplification of a qualitatively complex situation, and to point to the ways in which the categories for comparison may be blurred.

Before presenting two in-depth student cases, we described how several principles for learning design informed our analysis of student work using this framework:

1) Delimiting the scope of the task
2) Encouraging the use of readily accessible design tools
3) Considering gains and losses in digital translations
4) Implementing a process approach for developing argument and encouraging reflection
5) Developing meta-languages of critique and argument
6) Acknowledging different audiences and the risks of sharing work as novices

"Tumi" and "Mark" followed different approaches to metalevel critique in their data visualization project's. Tumi’s presentation (see Figures 1 and 2) critiqued the usefulness of Youth Explorer for exploring education in a peripheral township community versus a suburban ‘core community’. In contrasting the Langa township ward's educational attendance data versus the leafy suburb of Pinelands, she flagged why the results may be skewed unfavourably against Langa- children from peripheral communities often travel to core communities for schooling, so data for both core and peripheral communities “can be blurred to some extent”. Tumi also flagged that youth accused of contact crime were not necessarily ‘convicted or found guilty’.

Figure 1. Tumi's findings slide 2018

Figure 2. Tumi's limitations slide 2018

By contrast, Mark’s poster (see Figure 3) critiqued the statistics available for understanding ‘poor grade 8 systemic results’ and the reasons for higher drop-out rates in schooling between suburbs. His poster explored the limitations of what Youth Explorer can tell us about systemic tests and how these link to dropout rates and final year pass rates. He argued that a shortcoming is the dataset’s failure to convey 'the role that extra-curricular support plays' in shaping learners’ results. Mark's poster reflected the fact that many children from affluent homes go for extra lessons after school to improve subject results. This knowledge of concerted cultivation was based on his personal experience, but is unaccounted for in most official accounts of educational input.

Figure 3. Mark's data visualisation poster 2018

Both cases reveal how teaching a social semiotic approach for analysing and producing argument proved helpful. It informed changes to a data visualisation poster course that could better support students’ development as critical designers and engaged citizens- the two aspirant media professionals' meta-critiques flagged important challenges in relying on data that may be incorrect and incomplete, accurately spotlighting the inherent difficulties of simplifying qualitative complexity into numbers for their audiences.

If you would like to view a presentation on our research, please visit my earlier blog post at
https://www.travisnoakes.co.za/2021/10/the-presentation-developing-critique.html.

Acknowledgements

The research is based upon work supported by the British Academy Newton Advanced Fellowship scheme. Travis’ research was supported by a Postdoctoral Fellowship (2019-21) at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. Both authors thank the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Film and Media Studies for facilitating our research with students between 2017 and 2018. In particular, we thank Professor Marion Walton and Dr Martha Evans for their valued assistance. We also greatly appreciate the feedback from the editors and reviewers at Learning Design Voices.

Need support doing Social Semiotic research in Africa?

Both Arlene and Travis are members of the South African Multimodality in Education research group (SAME) hosted by UCT. Should you be interested in sharing your multimodal research project with its experts, please contact SAME.

I hope that you will read our chapter and find it informative. You are most welcome to give readers and I your feedback in the moderated comments section below.

Wednesday, 6 May 2020

'Exploring academic argument in information graphics' in 'Data Visualization in Society' from @AmsterdamUPress #Academicbooks #OpenAccess

Written for design educators and social semiotic researchers who are interested in infographic design and multimodal argument.

Associate Professor Arlene Archer and I wrote 'Exploring academic argument in information graphics', which was recently published in the book, Data visualization in society. Our chapter proposes a framework for analysing and producing argument in data visualisation. This framework is applied in the chapter for investigating two second-year journalism students’ semiotic and rhetorical strategies in making arguments via data visualisation posters. We then discuss the broader implications in Higher Education for teaching students to become critical citizens via infographic poster production and analysis.

Figure 1. Data Visualization in Society book cover, Amsterdam University Press, 2020.

The chapter drew on my fieldwork as a lecturer in the multimedia production course (FAM2017S) teaching infographic poster design to journalism students at the Centre for Film and Media Studies, UCT. I liaised with Professor Marion Walton and Dr Martha Evans in preparing a five-week course for teaching infographic poster production in 2017. Students learnt to explore educational inequalities between two suburbs in Cape Town using youthexplorer.org.za's aggregated data and to visualise their findings via infographic poster design. Arlene kindly volunteered as a guest reviewer of students' poster design progress. As novice designers, students' data visualisation arguments produced some interesting inconsistencies and disjunctures that helped inspire this chapter. Its analysis was also informed by a review of students' final posters and accompanying rationales.

In response to these concerns, Arlene proposed the framework for analysing and producing argument in data visualisation. Its components are illustrated in Table 1 below.

Table 1. A framework for analysing and producing argument in data visualisation. Archer, A. and Noakes, T. 2020.

This framework was applied in an investigation of how two infographic posters drew on semiotic and rhetorical strategies for realising argument: The semiotic strategies included their use of colour, typography and graphics, while the rhetorical strategies include establishing credibility and the use of citation. The effect that the underlying basis for comparison of data had on their contrasting arguments was examined, plus students' linked selection and processing of aggregated data. We also investigated the semiotic encoding of ideational material and the ways relationships were established within the discourse communities constructed via the data visualisations. The investigation highlights the complex entanglement of aspects of data visualisation. These include varied design processes, the underlying discourses and ideological work of data visualisations, as well as their pleasures and aesthetics. We concluded by arguing that this way of looking at academic argument has important implications for teaching these text-types in higher education in order to produce critical citizens.

We are very grateful to the book's editors, Professors Helen Kennedy and Martin Engebretsen, for their feedback and help in refining the chapter.

In 2018, I retaught infographic poster design to a new group of second years and adjusted the course to allocate more for considering argument and included this framework and the article's cases for students' consideration. Both interventions helped students to improve the critical arguments in their posters. Arlene and I are writing about these changes in a draft manuscript, 'Developing critique and academic argument in a blended-learning data visualisation course'.

There are three ways you can view Data Visualization in Society digitally:

1. Its e-book page is at https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789048543137/data-visualization-in-society.

2. Its Open Access version is at https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvzgb8c7.

3. You can download it as an Adobe Acrobat pdf book via http://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/22273.

Or to purchase it in hardcopy, you can order through your local bookseller, via Amsterdam University Press for Europe/Rest of the World, or via Baker & Taylor Publisher Services for North America.

I hope that you will find our chapter informative and welcome any feedback in the comments below.

Monday, 15 July 2019

Reflections after 'Young black women curate visual arts e-portfolios': a South African cultural hierarchy versus local practices...

Written for media studies researchers and educators interested in the challenges that young people in Cape Town face when formally expressing identities as visual arts students.

My first sole-authored journal article is published in the Learning, Media and Technology journal at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17439884.2019.1640738. Young black women curate visual arts e-portfolios: negotiating digital disciplined identities, infrastructural inequality and public visibility addresses the special issue’s theme ’Global Technologies, Local Practices’, outlined here. Please visit http://bit.ly/2NOxxiM to download one of the 50 free e-prints that Taylor & Francis has made available for download.

Dr Jeremy Knox and a few anonymous reviewers provided in-depth guidance that helped me to better address both the special issue’s theme and its international audiences. Over the course of two revisions, the article’s abstract became:

‘Despite the growing importance of digital portfolios for justifying creative work and study opportunities, little is known about arts students’ creative appropriation of online portfolios in secondary school. In particular, there is a research gap concerning the challenges that young black women face when curating portfolios as visual arts students. This paper describes the key challenges that three such government school students negotiated when taught to creatively appropriate an online portfolio software for curating showcase visual arts e-portfolios:

In formal contexts, art students’ e-portfolios are strongly shaped by assimilatory norms. Visual arts students who want to develop portfolios that follow local or global crafts and fandoms must negotiate their low status in, or complete exclusion from, the national syllabus. Students in under-resourced school and home settings may already be using other online portfolio solutions that suit their purposes better than the particular software prescribed in arts lessons. Online portfolios are public by default and young women negotiated this risk by using pseudonymous self presentations. Each student’s classroom practices were also constrained by a technology selected for its minimalist exhibition aesthetic. Students curated showcase exhibitions, but the prescribed service did not facilitate a wider exploration of contemporary digital practices.’

The case studies for three young black women revealed the diverse, yet overlapping, challenges each faced in expressing their creative identities and interests. It balanced the need to provide a full context with the special issue’s concerns in under 6,000 words. Following this article's publication, I felt I should use this blog post for reflecting more broadly on why so few local practices from Cape Town (and South Africa) became shared by visual arts students in their e-portfolios.

Overall, such neglect of the local seemed strongly shaped by four cultural hierarchies in Cape Town communities, which may fall under a broader cultural hierarchy in South Africa:

South African visual arts education is dominated by a Modernist tastes for expressing a traditional version of aesthetic distinction.
Cape Town is an important creative hub in South Africa and there are many creative industries producing local content. However, students’ e-portfolios largely ignored it and other (South) African creations. This reflects how better-off homes typically prefer consuming global popular cultures versus local creative industries. Global media fandoms from the United States (such as Hollywood franchises) and Japan (Manga and Anime) influenced most of the fan art in students’ e-portfolios.
The lifestyle and vocational preferences of the middle-class dovetail with the cultural capital of secondary schooling. By contrast, working class culture was largely excluded in teens' e-portfolios.
There are 11 official languages in South Africa. Despite several of the students not speaking English as their home language, all used English to present their identities and work.

As my essay describes, young black women did face obstacles in using the "global" online portfolio technology, Carbonmade.com, for expressing their artistic identities. This technology was not designed to accommodate their under-resourced contexts.

By comparison, the strong shaping influence of the dominant cultural hierarchy seemed to exert a much greater influence on all visual arts students in my PhD research study. Most did not spotlight uniquely local cultural interests and practices in their portfolios. This suggests how South Africa's cultural hierarchy is a great obstacle for those Cape Town visual arts students and their expression of local practices via "global" technology.

Kindly comment on this post, or contact me with your thoughts.

Friday, 17 November 2017

Designing infographics on educational inequalities in Cape Town's wards- a new #UCT Media Studies project.

Written for Media Studies educators interested in teaching data journalism and infographic poster design.

A new infographic poster design course (FAM2017S)

Professor Marion Walton, Dr Martha Evans and I recently prepared a five week course in which I taught second year journalism students to design infographic posters that focused on educational inequalities in two Cape Town wards.

The course comprised the following lessons (which dovetailed with Martha's on article layout):
week 1: Introducing typography;
week 2: Designing an online identity using type, shapes and paths;
week 3: Introducing infographics and preparing a poster template;
week 4: Exporting data from youthexplorer.org.za and designing charts;
week 5: Short infographic poster presentations by students for assessment.

All students had access to the Mendi lab, where they could learn to use Adobe Illustrator for detailed design work and Microsoft Excel for chart design. Most students had already been to a workshop that introduced them to youthexplorer.org.za. I taught its use for exporting Excel files, cleaning their data and preparing various comparative charts. Students also had the option of using Adobe InDesign in class or a similar alternative at home.

A diverse group of students produced work in different infographic sub-genres in response to the lessons. The posters were shared to their blogs (see my Diigo social bookmark index for the public ones), as well as to other online accounts as part of the assessment process.

Fast facts infographic poster by Ester van der Walt, 2017

Infographic chart diagram by Jamie Kawalsky, 2017:

Academic research poster by Alana Schreiber, 2017:

These three posters exemplified the high-quality work that most students achieved and the innovation of those who departed from my academic research poster that I designed as an example for the course:

Recommended changes to the course

Being the first course of its kind, several ideas emerged in the process that could improve it for next year:

Technical recommendations:

#1 Support maximum flexibility in terms of software choice
Many students could not make every lesson due to anxiety over their safety. Violent protests at UCT by the #feemustfall movement and the near-militarisation of campus with private security and police resulted in students feeling anxious and unsafe. In response, they were granted increasing freedom to choose the software they had access to. While most students continued to use Adobe, several chose to use Microsoft Word, one Google Docs and another infogram.com).

#2 Prepare teaching materials on export options for best quality
Students found exporting imagery to be challenging and will require better support materials on achieving quality exports. This is particularly important given the varied software that students may need to use.

#3 Prepare support material on compressing files
For assessment, students had to submit six files to Vula, UCT's intranet. An upload limit of 4MB on particular file formats, meant that several students required email advice on compressing their files close to the submission deadline. Again, support material should be provided upfront for students on compressing the graphics in their files, creating compressed web-friendly, low-res versions and also archiving their work to .zip formats. Interestingly, the students who compressed their work in .zip files could upload large files.

#4 Organise that fewer files have to be submitted for assessment
Students submitted at least five files, which enabled the assessors to appreciate the process behind students' poster, rather than just the final project. While such insight proved valuable, it was highly time-consuming to assess, especially when combined with checking how students shared their work online. Consideration must be given to whether there is a more efficient way to assess the process.

Content recommendations:

#5 Emphasise the importance of curation as a digital literacy with new slides
For students keen to work in data journalism, it’s highly important that they develop digital curation literacies. While this was spoken of in lessons and foregrounded through an assessment process that required students to evidence their process through uploading their source logo, chart- and poster files in addition to final work, it could be better emphasised. For example, the insights of Potter (2012) and his 'Curation and Media Education' manifesto could be drawn on for developing dedicated slides. These should highlight the benefits of having an archive of one's source documents and process, so that they can be refined, corrected or referred back in the case viewers raise concerns about their accuracy.

#6 Provide examples for students' diverse work in the infographic genre
Innovation was an important assessment criteria for students' work. The examples above should be used to suggest to students the wide variety of options they can choose from, rather than replicating my poster's look-and-feel, as a few defaulted to.

#7 Present a work-in-progress for early assessment
Rather than assessing all work at the end, a draft presentation followed by a final submission would work better next year. This will give those students who went for the wrong goalposts feedback they can use to adjust their direction.

#8 Introduce students to how South African sociologists in education explain local educational inequalities
To improve their analysis, students would benefit from being exposed to South African research into educational inequalities and relevant concepts from educational sociology. Students would also benefit from seeing examples of what not to do. For example, do not confuse correlation (i.e. high internet access..) with causation (... supports a high matric pass rate! Rather internet access is a marker of privilege that is often linked to households that can afford better schooling).

N.B. You are most welcome to suggest further recommendations in the comments box below, ta!

Sunday, 28 May 2017

Feedback on a workshop for coding research conference abstracts and exploring academic impact

Report back on the workshop focused on coding the SACOMM conferences from 2011 to 2016.

Over forty MA and Honours students attended the short workshop. For convenience, they split into five teams based on where they sat. No teams used software for coding (while two Masters students planned to use NVivo this year, neither had installed it or done training*), but rather used highlighters, pens or pencils.

Phase 1 Teams code conferences using key themes

In phase 1, each group focused on coding one whole programme (excluding their plenaries, workshops or sections without authors/titles) rather than a particular section. Teams preferred this approach as students tended to have very different individual foci, making it difficult for them to focus on just one section. The workshop’s timeframe proved overly-ambitious: the groups took longer than anticipated to define their shared themes and create a team coding index. There were also more basic queries; i.e. on what a conference is, who gets to participate, etc.

Each team coded one full program using common themes they chose either from their individual ones or new ones reflecting a shared team interest. Based on a review of the teams' coding choices, the themes for each were most likely:

Group A (2011 schedule) > marginalized groups, low income, discourse analysis, social media

Group B (2012 IAMCR programme) > social media, university students, media effects, health advocacy

Group C (2013) > social media, newspaper journalism, health, Africa

Group D (2014 & 15's) > social media, marginal identities, gender, race/decolonization

Group E (2016's) > social media, identity, fake news, discourse analysis

Despite individual diversity, it was notable that all teams shared ‘social media’ as an interest. Themes linked to social origins, identity and health advocacy also proved common.

Figure 1. Team A leader's notes: her interests (top), her team's themes (bottom) and impact notes

Such similar interests supported discussion of changes over time at SACOMM. In relating each team's feedback on what they found to the others, we learnt that:

Social media has been covered increasingly at SACOMM from 2011. It has risen from just a few to over 50 citations. However, in my review of their codings, it was evident that some teams used ‘social media’ too broadly (for example, covering any papers that included ‘internet technologies’ or ‘technical policy’, which would not accord with a strict definition of ‘social media’).
While advocacy was well-represented by many presenters at IAMCR, it has been poorly represented in SACOMM conferences.
Linked to that, issues related to marginal identities, decolonization and Africa were seldom focused on by SACOMM's presenters between 2011 and 2016.
In doing their coding, students had to decide on changing topical theme words (i.e. ‘fake news’...) to synonyms (... changed to ‘propaganda’) for achieving matches. Some students noted that the lengthy gap between conference submission and acceptance (6 months) would seem to pose an obstacle for "hot topics" to be addressed at SACOMM. By contrast, team E also identified where topical trends for the year, such as #feesmustfall, had been addressed by several speakers.

Such disconnects (2&3) between the teams' interests and the conventional foci of SACOMM's presenters seemed mirrored in students' disinterest in attending; at most, three would attend 2017's conference**. Its theme is 'Locating the power of communication in a time of radical change' and its presenters may well focus on topics that resonate better with postgraduate UCT media studies students' thematic interests. 2016 saw the emergence of a very energetic 'emerging scholars group' at SACOMM managed by a team of PhD students. They should hopefully also be highly visible at the Rhodes conference (email feedback from Professor Keyan Tomaselli).

Phase 2 Teams explore research impact using top five articles

Each team selected five papers that resonated most with their shared focus. The teams did online searches to explore different types of research impact; four focussed on which presentations were linked to online publications, while the fifth focused on researchers’ different types of social media presences and whether these were linked to SACOMM papers.

The overall feedback was :
1. For research articles, the impact following paper presentation was highly uneven.
2. It proved hard to source any of the original papers (or presentations) online. Such poor online availability seemed tied to the optional status of submitting full papers to SACOMM.
3. Most of the research articles linked to papers had few, or no, citations.
4. A well-cited paper on Arab bloggers seemed timely in presaging the major political uprisings of the 'Arab Spring'.
5. Researchers differed widely in using social media platforms, which ranged from Facebook to LinkedIn and ResearchGate. Few academics used a combination of platforms to create an overall online identity as an academic researcher.

Changes to the workshop

Feedback on the workshop was mostly positive as it provided many students with their first view of a conference programme and its coding assisted them to establish a broader view of local work done in their field.

Two changes could improve the workshop significantly: In hindsight, I should have prepared a worksheet for each team’s leader to complete as a target. Figure 1 was the best example of a hardcopy summary; the other teams' provided less information (for example, see Figure 2's summary) or even none.

Figure 2. Example of conference coding 25 May 2017

I briefly addressed using Google Scholar Advanced Search syntax, but should also have printed out hardcopy guides for students' ease-of-reference. Worksheets would also have been helpful for checking students' application of search syntax.

* One student plans to do a social media project looking at two international church groups’ Facebook page branding in South Africa, the other student plans to explore an under-resourced fishing community’s use of social media in Hangberg, Hout Bay.
** One student had submitted an abstract and one would attend as part of her job, if asked.

Friday, 30 December 2016

Advice for #UCT Media Studies students on sharing draft #research papers online

Written for UCT postgraduate Media Studies students interested in sharing their research projects online.

Three of my 17 postgrad students shared their Mobile Media and Communication projects online. One student had a highly compelling reason not to; her draft paper's topic focused on a rival to her new employer's magazine title! As a result of this low ratio, it seems that several exemplary projects will at best be shared via UCT's intranet for just future FAM5038S students to access. The small ratio of students sharing drafts seems a missed opportunity for them to gain recognition. More importantly postgrad students' projects miss adding to Media Studies literature: several of my year's projects were pathfinders that successfully explored under-examined topics. Such foci also provided interesting insights regarding research participants' unusual Capetonian contexts.

To help those Media Studies students keen to share their final research projects online, but who may be uncertain how, Nicola Pallitt and I recommend four options. For aspiring, emergent researchers, these are ideally considered after creating one's Academia researcher profile:

Creating a research profile on Academia.edu

Postgrads keen to progress to a PhD or working in research should create a UCT Academia.edu profile (ideally using their university work email address). Creating an Academia.edu profile and sharing their draft papers there first, enables one to basically say ‘this is mine’. While some journals won’t publish papers shared elsewhere {including Academia.edu!}, it is also helpful platform to link one's drafts from and join related communities. For example, a selfie researcher can search for the 'selfie' keyword and follow it. Ditto for the keywords, 'open access', 'special issue' – when you join such a network you might also connect with researchers who can advise on upcoming publications.

Joining communities on Academia.edu can also give you insights into who is reading your paper. Plus readers of your article might describe what sparked their interest in it. Just remember to add your email address in your draft paper to ease communication – super-interested readers may want to email you. For background on the benefits and limitations of academics using Academia.edu (with its marginal relationship to open access), read Kristen Bell's reflections at http://www.notkristenbell.com/academia-edu.

You should also consider searching for and joining closed Facebook research groups. Their members can be asked for publication advice, such as where to publish. Here, you can easily introduce yourself in a post to the group, share your draft paper and pose your questions.

P.S. There are other sites that you can create a research profile on (such as Google Scholar or ResearchGate), however these are most relevant for academics with a publication history. You should also consider sharing your draft paper via OpenUCT and reading its four-step guide for academics on taking control of their visibility.

Recommended options to submit one's draft paper for publication include:

1. To an Online Community or Conference.

The easiest option is to share one's paper to a community related to its focus (such as 'Identity and media'). The drawback is that such a publication (and many under point 3 below) will be unrecognized for academic publication points, et al (see

http://www.researchoffice.uct.ac.za/publication_count/downloads/). You can also consider presenting at a local conference. Just be forewarned that you may have difficulty finding one focused on popular postgrad themes, such as 'identity and self presentation' or 'mobile gaming'.

2. To an Open Access Journal.

Use your research keywords to search in https://doaj.org/ and identify the most suitable journal(s). Open Access journals may not be as prestigious as the next two options, but you are more likely to have a positive response from them.

3. To a Special Issue of a Journal.

Student contributions may have a real advantage in Special Issues focusing on emergent media services (such as Snapchat and the 'ephemeral selfie' phenomenon), which few (if any) established academics could be doing research in. You can search for any upcoming special issues calling for contributions (for example, ephemeral selfies would suit special issues covering 'Gender' and 'Self-Presentation').

4. To a Journal.

It is preferable to start off in local publishing before attempting to publish in international journals. Local journals often offer a forum for debate in the field and are an entry point to it. A list of the IBSS (International Bibliography of Social Sciences) accredited local journals is on UCT Library’s website at http://www.lib.uct.ac.za/lib/journal-list. An important consideration for journals in choosing to publish your article is whether it contributes to the dialogue taking place between a journal's authors. So, in choosing a journal to submit to, you should look through your references to check those journal(s) you mention the most. Alternately, you need to find several new references in the journal you want to publish in, then include these in your argument. It is also important to consider your purpose for publishing – choosing a journal can be about networking with a particular group of people. It’s like saying ‘I’m with these folks’... or want to be!

Future Media Studies students may benefit form you sharing research online; publishing it moves it from being just a 'textbook exercise' (that "fridge magnet" which only your educator gets to view) towards being a contribution to the Media Studies community. The latter may help ensure that your project is not redone by other students, but they might build on it. For example, by following the future directions for research your paper suggests.

N.B. Consider the RISKS before sharing.

While there can be personal benefits to sharing your research online; such as recognition, receiving constructive feedback and protecting your authorial rights, be prepared for negative outcomes, too. In particular, you must be sure that the privacy of your research participants remains protected, especially for controversial projects (such as Tindr and sexual relationships). You may receive negative feedback, experience rejection of your submission or have it plagiarized. Worse, you may be trolled by undesirable audiences, such as chauvinists and/or racist trolls! If such risks deeply concern you, rather pursue an offline approach, asking your lecturer or supervisor for guidance.

Share and comment

Nicci and I hope that the benefits described above will outweigh any such risks and that reading our post has given you a sound appreciation for the 'how and why' to share draft papers online. Add a comment below to let us know if you have any questions, concerns or suggestions that could improve this post, ta.

Thursday, 15 December 2016

Pilot research projects and draft papers by #UCT #CFMS Mobile Media and Communication students in 2016

Written for Media Studies researchers interested in postgrad media students' pilot research projects and draft papers.

I supervised 2016's Mobile Media and Communication postgrad students in doing a short research project and writing up their articles. Students that did not object to their work being listed are indexed below, under their respective research grouping:

< Identity and self-presentation via mobile media >

1. 'Women's Self(ie) Curation on Snapchat - Normative discourses of femininity on ephemeral social media' by Elena Aiello.

2. 'Exploring the performance of professional identity online' by Garrett Farmer-Brent.

3. 'Swipe right for friends: The adoption of Tinder by South African university students to form friendships in an online space' by Aisha Karim.
4. 'The Representation of Self across Social Media- a study into how two students' social media profiles reflect how they represent themselves' by Grace Thomson.

5. 'Aesthetic visual prosumers construct aesthetic niches: the use of Instagram to design emergent, aesthetic selves' by Tayla-Paige von Sittert.
6. 'Will you be my Tinderella? How the mobile dating app, Tinder, has turned traditional dating on its head for South African university students' by Lauren Voster.

< Broadcast media, marketing and communications meet social networks >

7. 'Zimbos on WhatsApp: perceptions of WhatsApp use among Zimbabwean women living in Cape Town' by Shuvai Finos.
8. 'Understanding a Black, South African hashtag community and its memes: The example of Sunday Twitter and Our Perfect Wedding' by Vuyisile Kubeka.
9. 'The never-ending (un)strategy: Social media related public relations crises in the South African entertainment industry' by Jessica Latham.

< Journalism and politics meet social media >

10. 'The construction of digital publics in Twitter replies: a study of Eusebius McKaiser’s tweets' by Bronwynne Jooste.
11. 'Like or share that news: Facebook users' interaction with South African news organisations' Facebook posts' by Mariska Morris.
12. '#Asinavalo: The Role of a Twitter hashtag during the election and beyond' by Mmatseleng Mphanya.

< User experiences with free internet and gaming >

12. 'Towards an understanding what is ‘free’ about Free Basics: Assessing the quality and technical aspects of the HIV360 website' by Tasneem Amra.
13. 'Ingress means access: using the game Ingress to explore the correlation between access to high-end mobile gaming and spaces of play' by Kyle de Villiers.
14. 'Pokémon Go: illegal user appropriations of Location Based Augmented Reality Gaming' by Mishka Loofer.

As their supervisor, I helped students identify potential contributions related to their interests that might help close research gaps in Media Studies. I encouraged each student to share their pilot study online and have offered select students support in submitting theirs to research communities, conferences or journals. For example, I advised students to look at SACOMM 2017 as a potential opportunity. Six students' projects readily related to speakers on its 2016 program (as shown in my scribbled links in Figures 1 and 2). Such projects concerned Twitter and politics; social media and PR; online content linked to HIV and AIDS; female beauty; migration and... the My Perfect Wedding television show!

Figure 1. SACOMM 2016 program page 1 - links to FAM5038S draft paper authors

Figure 2. SACOMM 2016 program page 2 - links to FAM5038S draft papers' authors (or X for none)

By contrast, there seemed to be limited scope to address the issues of 'identity and self presentation' and 'mobile gaming' at this pre-eminent, South African conference. So, eleven students would need to explore other local opportunities.

If you are interested in any of these papers, please use the link provided. Alternatively, add a comment below, listing the paper you are interested in. I will then ask its author to contact you.

Friday, 8 July 2016

Unexpected ethical challenges in using screen grabs of youths' #participatoryculture productions #visualresearch

+ Written primarily for researchers interested in the ethics of sharing young people's visual culture productions :

Advances in online image and text search may pose unexpected ethical challenges to researchers in protecting the privacy of their participants while sharing visual productions. I mistakenly assumed that depersonalising screen grab imagery would be sufficient to conceal teenagers' identities. However, in testing "depersonalised" screenshots of my participants' online portfolio screen grabs, I learnt that the ever-growing accuracy of text-and/or-image searches (i.e. via Google Image, TinEye, Bing, Pinterest et al.) requires additional steps for dis-identification. Without these, sharing webpage screen grabs can potentially be used by undesirable audiences to locate young people's websites and contact details. Screen grabs may also pose reputation risks in potentially being shared long after participants might want them to be. Both types of risks will be weighed up against the benefits of sharing select students' e-portfolio productions in my thesis. These include visual representations making it easier for readers to become familiar with the online portfolio genre. Screen shots also provide visual support for research themes emerging from young people's choices.

Background to my visual research ethics challenge.

I had developed an original method for multimodal content analysis that used screen grabs to reverse-engineer the choices that 29 visual arts students made in using Carbonmade. To keep the rich nature of my visual data, I analysed these privately using NVivo. I then sought to de-identify select web page screenshots for sharing in conference presentations. I followed a process for visual anonymization, which was not extensive as I wanted to preserve most of the screen grab for accuracy. The anonymizing process involved Adobe Photoshop's blur function being used on several fields of every webpage. This ranged from the web address and portfolio name on every page to all mentions of their name on their profile pages and their contact details. It also involved checking that the e-portfolio's creator was not identifiable from their portrait picture and that no images disclosed their school's identity (i.e. school poster designs or uniforms). To further protect anonymity, image files were titled using pseudonyms.

"George", 'depersonalised' About page, 2012. A participant who gave permission for portfolio screen grabs to be shared.

I also added select screen grab, two per A4 page, into my draft thesis's case study chapters. During their review, Associate Professor Marion Walton advised me to remove screen grabs that might expose its creators to ridicule and also to check the reverse search-ability of all images. She was concerned that these might not be truly anonymised. In checking, I learnt that the depersonalisation measures I took were insufficient. A 'visual specific dilemma' existed whereby my participants could still be traced through the following types of internet searches:

An internet text search using text used in students’ self-descriptions under their About Us page;
An internet text search using the folder titles shown by the screenshots (i.e., in Google, using <e-portfolio software name> + <folder title>);
An internet search using the image titles shown in the screenshots (i.e. in Google, using <e-portfolio software name> + <image title>);
An internet image search using the screen grabs (for example in 'Google Images');
An internet image search of the images inside the screenshots;
In addition, location information and other information in the case studies and school backgrounds could be used in narrowing image and text searches.

Testing the first four types revealed I had not successfully de-identified several screen grabs.

Ethical concerns and considerations.

This was concerning as it held ramifications for my future and past publications. It also had consequences for the ongoing e-portfolio pedagogy at the independent school research site:

I warned the e-portfolio educator, "Mr Proudfoot", that he should take additional steps to better protect student privacy via revising their e-portfolio pedagogy: my action research project found that teaching students to hide their contact details did provide a false sense of security, since teachers mistakenly believed that this made their students difficult to contact. Simply using students’ real names in online searches quickly served up their social network profiles. Some of these were public by default. Teachers must better support students with resources and examples of effective privacy protection that can at least minimise the dangers of ill-considered self-disclosure. This could include case studies of bad examples and in-depth advice on constructing pseudonymous personas. Schools should also provide support, such as policies and staff that young people can readily refer to in case of unsolicited online contact.

When my fieldwork began in 2010, I did not ask for student permission to use screen shots of their work. This was simply not a focus at the time. However, during my fieldwork I pioneered a screen grab analysis method that became heavily used in my 'Evidence' chapter. I also thought that screen grabs would prove helpful in adding a rich visual context to readers of my content analysis and eleven students' case studies.

I recently asked an ethics expert about protecting students' privacy and his advice contrasted to the cautious visual research feedback that I expected. He advised that since the screen shots are of web pages they are in the public domain already, I actually do not need these students' permission. Despite it not being a legal or institutional requirement, I remain mindful of the assurances that I gave to schools and students on protecting the research participants' privacy. Such assurances helped me overcome one challenge in securing ethics approval from the Western Cape Education Department/Department of Education and my two research sites. I am also aware that only a few of my case study subjects responded to Facebook or emailed requests for retro-active permission to publish anonymised screenshots in my thesis.

My concerns around potential disclosure and lacking participants' explicit consent resonates with Prosser, Clark and Wiles' (2008) contention that concrete contextual issues and a researcher's individual moral framework must be added to legal and institutional requirements in making ethical visual research decisions. The risks to participants associated with disclosure may be small, but it does not sit well with my moral compass that the screen grabs in my thesis might provide visual evidence for subverting past assurances. Particularly now that the thesis itself is easy to source and search. In the past, the provision of UCT thesis hardcopies were mostly limited to its library. However, these are now automatically digitised for sharing post-graduation online via the library's website (and possibly Open UCT). Further, since I have already shared many screen grabs online in conference presentations, I must also explore reciprocal measures to protect my participants' privacy. For example, by replacing the screen grabs I shared in old presentations with properly anonymised ones.

To find out how other researchers have tackled the problem of depersonalising screen grabs, I did Google Scholar searches for guidance on anonymising 'screen grabs', 'screenshots' or 'screen captures'. I could not find relevant content, which seems to mirror the reality of screen capture techniques being mostly used for exemplars rather than in the research process itself. Lacking a matching example to follow in visual culture research, I found Dr Kirsty Young's discussion of her research experiences with young people's online spaces (2013) particularly informative. It highlights several ethical dilemmas posed by new forms of research enabled by the internet.

My research project is unusual in being human subject research focused on public texts. It is the former as I have been involved in developing a new syllabus and doing face-to-face research with youths throughout e-portfolio lessons. However, I am also researching public texts since all my participants Carbonmade portfolios have no privacy restrictions. Given its unusual position in straddling both methods, I cannot expect unanimous agreement in the academic community regarding how the ethical principles of consent and anonymity pertain to my study. The public text argument versus one for the more onerous rules governing human subject research could easily be argued in both cases. This may pose unexpected problems for the publication of my visual research data. If research data cannot be shared it becomes redundant, which itself is unethical in wasting participants' time (Young, 2013).

In response, I must be cautious and take steps to ensure that my project's ethics in sharing screengrabs cannot be faulted from a human subject research perspective. While all participants and their parents/guardians consented to my research, some were only asked after my fieldwork concluded for permission to re-publish their work. I had not considered the future need to use young people's webpages publicly in academic publications. Given that the webpages are the intellectual property of their authors and that their content would be displayed more widely than the youth possibly intended, I intend to secure written consent for their academic use. This consent will address the timespan that informed consent is given for and afford options for the level of anonymity required. I will show my case study subjects examples of their dis-identified webpages to assist their decision-making.

Additional steps for depersonalising or anonymising screen grab images

Given the ready availability of image search sites and image reverse search applications, it is important for researchers to take steps to fully depersonalise images for participants' anonymity. As web page design is multimodal, it is also important that researchers filter both images and text. For example in my research into students' e-portfolios, I had to avoid mentioning folder titles verbatim in my thesis. I also must try to avoid quoting students’ profile descriptions verbatim for longer than three words.

The two alternate options (A - B) I tested for depersonalising screen capture images were:

A. Black out all text and replace profile image with silhouette outline

Option A. "George" depersonalised About page with with all text blacked out and profile image in silhouette outline, 2012

All text is blacked out, making it impossible for viewers to copy text strings in their searches. The blurred outline image is replaced with an outline drawing to add some visual information.

B. Only add depersonalised screen grabs at small thumbnail sizes, organised inside tables

Option B. "George" de-personalised e-portfolio pages from 2012 reduced into thumbnail images in a table

Here the size of each image is reduced to a thumbnail size for making their recognition via reverse image search more difficult. I tested each option in reverse image search engines and neither options A nor B produced results linked to its creator, let alone Carbonmade.

Google image search result for option A's image, 2016

Google image search result for option B's image, 2016

Both options enabled sufficient levels of anonymity in their results being linked to generic software entries. I then tested what would happen if a thumbnail image of student's work was selected from the table of thumbnail images. At such a small size, the highly-pixelated image results did not link back to their creator or Carbonmade during a reverse image search.

Google Images result for "George" depersonalised thumbnail painting crop 2016

While the process of dis-identifying over 80 images will be lengthy, I am pleased that I can use heavily anonymised imagery, rather than none. In addition to changing these thesis' images, I must also reciprocally update them in old presentations, which need then to be reloaded to Slideshare.

Request for comments... or turning this post into an academic paper.

This post was written to stimulate discussions on ethical issues related to the use of screen grabs.
It heeds the call to engage the general internet publishing publishing population in debates about the use of content for research purposes as this can ensure the ethical use of online content, (Young, 2013). Kindly add your thoughts by commenting below.

There is also a gap in the literature concerning ethical issues related to sharing screen grabs of young people's participatory culture as research evidence. If you would like this post to be upgraded into an article for helping close the gap, please get in touch. For updates on my research, follow this site or @travisnoakes.

Thursday, 26 November 2015

Online Content Creation. Looking at students' social media practices through a #ConnectedLearning lens.

Written for researchers interested in students' social media practices, creative content production and how both can reflect indicators of the Connected Learning educational framework.

Cheryl Brown, Laura Czerniewicz and I wrote 'Online content creation. Looking at students' social media practices through a Connected Learning lens' for the Learning, Media and Technology journal. Our paper contributes to closing research gaps concerning: the Online Content Creation (OCC) practices of African university students; how indicators of the Connected Learning (CL) pedagogical framework are present in university students' non-formal creative productions; and the potential benefits that becoming digital creators might have for supporting students' social trajectories.

While previous studies have addressed creative production by university students for specific purposes, there is a research gap concerning OCC in the everyday lives of African university students. In analysing both the formal and informal ICT practices of 23 first year students at four South African universities, the use of online networks was pervasive. However, just three undergraduates described developing and/or using online presences to pursue interest-based activities.

We followed "Jake", "Vince" and "Odette" into their third year and learnt about: the social media they utilised; their trajectories; their linkages with career interests; and the types of online presences they created, maintained or discontinued. The pedagogical framework of CL proved an appropriate heuristic since all case studies spanned digital practices that, although non-formal, were: peer-supported (PS), interest-driven (ID) and academically oriented (AO). The cases also demonstrated the production-centred (PC) and shared-purpose (SP) of using openly networked (ON) new media for self-expression. PS, ID, AO, PC, SP and ON are all important indicators for CL.

There has been a tendency in CL literature to focus on secondary school youth, aged 12 to 18. We show how this emphasis can be extended to university, as students are likewise engaged in forming new interests and emergent social identities. By engaging in OCC, Jake, Vince and Odette could expand on the academic creative production interests they were formally taught. We describe how each student leveraged non-formal OCC practices for orientating towards new learning opportunities and social trajectories. Complementing these three student's formal production interests with rare OCC practices, seemed likely to give them an edge in our globally competitive society, as digital creators:

Jake used his productions as a student journalist, editor, poet and book writer to develop an online presence as a writer. He currently works as a communications trainee for a state agency. Vince's successful video production in an extra-curricular, online Ghetto Film School of LA course resulted in him being sponsored to present his short at the Sundance Film Festival Showcase. He currently works in multimedia and directs video-productions. Odette strategically developed separate online presences to promote her availability as an actor/model and scriptwriter. She also shares productions as a fiction writer, poet and personal journal diarist.

For more on African students' online content creation and social media use and how both reflected Connected Learning indicators, click on http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/SqgVIjCFNzhQsXx5TKRF/full.

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