Discussion #3: Creating a Research Community
After reading about Moya Bailey’s advisory board, I hope you are thinking about how you might practically incorporate this practice into your own research. So before you get going on your project fully, I want you to consider how you might create a community of support for yourself and for the project. The goal here is to hold yourself accountable and to get important insight from stakeholders and from other researchers, audiences, and persons who may be able to advise you in the area of research ethics. This process will be three-fold.
First, develop a list of 2-4 people that you know and that are trained in or are beginning the process of being trained in digital research. You need not see this as very formal – simply a shortlist of people who you can call upon to ask specific questions and gather advice when you feel conflicted or stuck in your research project. These may be colleagues, cohort members, or friends you’ve met at a conference.
The second step, though, is to begin the process of broadening your research community beyond people who do similar work or were trained similarly. Identify what areas of digital research make you most uncertain. Is it working with different cultural communities? Issues of privacy? Do you feel less informed about data curation? Informed consent? Now your task is to seek out scholars, popular writers, activists, and community members whose public work you might begin to follow more closely. This may mean following on social media, like Twitter. It may also involve setting up a Google alert so you can follow their public scholarship. If it is someone who regularly blogs, perhaps following their blog. Identify a list of 3-8 people who you would ideally want to be a part of your community of advisors based on their proximity to your topic, relationships to the community you want to study or their expertise. While you may eventually feel comfortable reaching out to contact or develop a two-way relationship with them, for now, let their public documents guide you. If you follow researchers or activists on Twitter or read their blogs, you will likely get a good sense of their perspectives on things like agency, privacy, content control, etc.
Finally, develop a shortlist of stakeholders for your specific project. If you are working with a collection belonging to someone deceased, might their family be a stakeholder? If you are gathering tweets about a movement, might members of a grassroots organization be stakeholders? What about voters? Audience members? For this group, you may or may not be able actually to speak to them. However, this does not remove your obligation to consider them as you being to plan your project. They are a part of your research community as well.
Once you have established your research community, begin thinking about this group as your advisors moving forward on your project. Some you will/can consult in real-time, others you will have to do the work of understanding them through their public work, for yet others; you will have to consider potential harms and benefits. Write down specific names. Consider this group as actual people who are now connected to this project. Answer to them (both literally and figuratively) moving forward.
Once complete, post your list in our discussion. Share how you formed your list. Include specific requests from feedback from your peers, and offer feedback on at least two (2) of your peers’ posts.
