Reflection post

After six weeks worth of themes, lectures, seminars, reflections and discussions, there are various things I have taken away with regards to the different methods that exist to conduct research. More specifically, I've learned that although they're often primarily associated with a very diverse range of research and academic traditions, they are not exclusive to one another in the way that I had previously assumed.

To give some background; my bachelors degree was in Media and Culture at the University of Amsterdam, a programme belonging to the Faculty of Humanities that had all but no overlap with technical fields of study. Through Foucault, Butler, Saïd, McLuhan, Kant and many others, schools such as postmodernism, post-structuralism, orientalism, metaphysics and third-wave feminism rather explicitly represented, whereas, among others, natural sciences and other more empirically oriented fields of study where for the far majority ignored.

In line with this, the methods commonly employed by myself and my fellow students were rather one-sided as well, with content analysis of film, literature, series or video game texts being by far the most common. In some cases, this would be complemented by reception analysis through surveys or (unstructured) interviews, though even these were quite rare.

It was rather interesting, then, to not only consider six different approaches to the subject of theory and methods for media technology, but also to discuss those with fellow students coming from a wide variety of academic backgrounds. In some cases, this has led me to confirm my own convictions by finding confirmation in other people's opinions, whereas in other cases I instead found entirely new ways of looking at academic research; applying specific methods; placing my own research in a context or many other situations.

The one concept that I found especially powerful, and that resonated with me significantly more than anything else discussed within the past six weeks, was the concept of dialectic, as opposed to the debate that I long considered to be without alternative. For me, approaching research, knowledge-gathering and philosophical debate as a means of together finding the truth, rather than rigidly trying to convince others to come closer to your standpoint, is for me at the core of academic and personal development.

To me, allowing yourself to be convinced by opinions or arguments that give you cause to reconsider is a quality that is often greatly underestimated, and might even be considered a sign of weakness in social context. To me, though, it is at least as important, if not significantly more so, to being able to defend your standpoint if you believe it should justify doing so. I would even go as far as calling it a prerequisite to excelling academically, being entirely independent of methods, fields of study or petty rivalries between the various schools of philosophy. It is, however, not only true in performing research, studying academic texts or having philosophical debates, but just as well in matters of everyday social issues, personal relationships and even pedagogy.

Another field that I thought was interesting was the case study, which I've also quite extensively discussed in my comments on other people's blogs. To me, before this course, a case study was a way of using a (or multiple) single instances of a research subject, and then to a certain extent generalizing it to describe all other instances. What I hadn't considered until the seminar - even after reading the texts - was the idea that it could also be done without already having a research (or at least a research question) at hand, but instead going into it open-minded hoping that something scientifically relevant might reveal itself.

This, to some extent, coincides with the change in mindset that I experienced shifting from debate to dialectic, in allowing for the possibility that rather than one of the answers (or, in this case, research questions) being right, it might be the case that it has as of yet not been formulated. To then dedicated yourself to it regardless, informed by the mere possibility of something significant being revealed, to me signifies an entirely new level of passion and dedication, and thereby the true foundation for groundbreaking research.

I've tried, throughout my comments for the week, to apply this transition in my approach of other people's blog posts and interpretations, offering my own takes on the subjects discussed or questions that I fostered in reading their posts, rather than focusing on semantic confusion or irrelevant chit-chat. Admittedly, this was significantly easier for some weeks than others, especially seeing as some weeks entirely lacked seminars and lectures were canceled.

One I specifically recall was regarding the virtual reality drums simulation, where the blogger expressed contempt that the dark-skinned avatar was dressed in a hoodie whereas the light-skinned equivalent was dressed in formal attire. While I did, to some extent see the impulse and underlying frustration - i.e. 'why is it considered natural for an Afro-European to be sloppily dressed, whereas a Caucasian is considered natural when well-groomed?'- it went beyond the reasoning within the research context. Being Afro-European and casually dressed both, individually, were considered natural for the context of playing this specific drum, the instrument being West-African originally and the activity of playing music usually taking placing in a casual setting.

This, to me, went to show what is probably the biggest take away after these past few weeks: that whatever choices you make as a researchers; however you choose to combine theories and methods: clearly justifying your choices can make all the difference. It is tempting to assume all others come from the same backgrounds and academic fields as you do, but it has been proven to me that is rather hard to imagine the assumptions they may implicitly or explicitly make.