Storyhood

I scanned through Jean dissertation and found out there is a strong relation between her questions and design and that of mine. I have to look at it more closely, but here follow my first notes/ quotes:

Research question:

1. How are the everyday practices of vernacular creativity remediated in new media contexts, and with what implications for cultural participation and cultural citizenship? (…)
   1. What are the characteristics, affordances and constraints of the new media technologies and platforms that are marketed to and used by ordinary people to produce, distribute and consume creative content?
   2. In what way do these technologies and platform remediate everyday practices of vernacular creativity?
   3. Who is using these technologies and platforms, in what contexts, and what uses are being made from them?
   4. Does the practice of vernacular creativity in new media contexts constitute the practice of cultural citizenship, and if so, in what form, and for whom? (pp. 19-23)

The four subquestions are arrived at by the theoretical insights in chapter 2 and 3, but I put appended them here in order to compare them to my preliminary main question  and subquestions:

1. How and why does everyday citizenship* manifest itself within a community of practice like the Memory of East?
   1. How did the concept of everyday citizenship come about, what are its core constituencies and which factors influence it?
   2. Which groups and processes are constituting the community of practice?
   3. What and how are the members learning of the separate groups within the community?
   4. What is the relation between moments of everyday citizenship and what is learned within the community?
   5. What is the relation between factors like engagement, competence, reflection an safety with the manifestation of everyday citizenship with the community of practice?
   6. What roles do the neighborhood and the story website play in the manifestation of everyday citizenship within the community?

* Everyday citizenship (Hermes, 2008, among others) is close to Burgess’ cultural citizenship, although I have to scrutinize this more. For now, I note that: ‘good everyday citizenship’ entails participation in conversations in a reflexive, empathetic, respectful and accountable way. And ‘full cultural citizenship’ entails active cultural participation.

If I look at the questions above, I am interested in how participants (in real life: face to face or in digital life: story to story) in these communities  interact and what this interaction does with them. I would say that is focused at a micro-level. Burgess seems to operate more on a meso-level, but like I said, I have to look closer into this.

Burgess studies two cases with textual analysis, participant observations and ‘industry analysis’ (subquestion 1, Burgess: social and economic conditions). I am planning about the same. I will probably add interviews and my ‘industry analysis’ is hidden in question number 6. Interestingly enough, I am working on a field analysis which is a zoomed-out version of this question:

1. What is the variation among neighborhood story websites when it comes to aspects as initiative, aims, type of stories, affordances, course of the project and links?

I will interweave that in an article together with the theoretical perspectives that one can have on these cases. See e.g. this post with a concept abstract.

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