metaphors in political speeches

as I mentioned previously, I've been spending a lot of time recently working on metaViz, a computational system designed to identify conceptual metaphors in political blogs. metaViz also includes analysis of the campaign speeches from McCain and Obama (presidential candidates from the two major political parties). there's a UCI press release that gives an example interpretation of some of the results. I think the major value of the press release is that it shows how the system is meant to be used and how one might go about interpreting the metaphors that it identifies. check it out, and let me know what you think.

research instigating critical thinking

I just saw an idea come up again that I've noticed in a couple places: the notion that research (generally academic) is not only beneficial, informative, and potentially transformative for the researcher, but also for the participant.

I don't recollect all the other places in which this idea has arisen. in my brief look at action research, it seemed that research as an agent of social change was a central concern in that approach. that is, research is not just about the researcher learning something about the subjects, but the subjects actively participating in, and contributing to, the research, somewhat a la participatory design. the experience also came up in my own research on blog readers, wherein participants became more aware of, and reflective about, their own blog reading practices and habits as a result of participation in the research. most recently, while reflecting (further) on questions about knowledge attribution in blogging and ethnographic research more broadly, Lilia Efimova points out that "often it’s not only the researcher who learns new things, but also people who participate in the research, when their thinking on a subject is triggered as a result of an interaction" [emphasis added].

it seems that doing research is particularly good at getting people thinking, not just the researchers, but also the participants. rather than seeing this as a side benefit, what if we were to engage in research where the sole purpose is to get participants thinking critically? how might research look differently if the primary goal was not making a "novel and significant contribution to knowledge" but rather fostering critical thinking and reflection on the part of those involved in the research? I'm not saying that forsaking knowledge making in favor of flipping bits in people's heads is necessarily desirable. rather, I'm wondering aloud how research might look and feel different if creating a particular type of experience for participants' was made a concern of greater importance. how would this different approach manifest itself, and what might it be able to tell us about the purpose and place of doing research?

metaViz (i.e, what I've been up to lately)

I'll admit, I haven't been blogging as much as I'd like to this summer. most of my time has been spent developing metaViz, an application designed to allow blog readers to see potential conceptual metaphors in political blogs. here's a blurb about the project:

metaViz is a system that finds conceptual metaphors in political blogs, displays the metaphors in an interactive visual fashion, and lets you look at the different ways in which many concepts are framed in those blogs. For example, a 'campaign' is often talked about like a 'war' -- both are 'fought,' 'won,' 'lost,' 'survived,' etc. The goal is to foster critical thinking, getting people to think about what's being said not just by the words themselves, but between and behind the words.

if you have a chance, check it out, and feel free to pass it along to anyone you think might be interested. if you have any thoughts about the project, drop us a line, we'd love to hear from you.

...and effect

about a month ago, I posted about the political views slot on facebook profiles and the somewhat puzzling set of options it presents. later, Sam notified me that apparently facebook had expanded its political vocabulary. instead of listing not a spectrum from conservative to liberal (with libertarian tossed in for good measure), they now provide a free response slot, similar to that for religious views, except that facebook now has a compendium of political parties in almost every country around the world from which users can choose. while the party system has its own problems, this is probably an improvement over the single conservative-liberal dimensions, especially for countries where there are more than two large, dominant parties.

this also made me wonder, did facebook really read by blog, as Sam had suggested? the more likely story is that on the official facebook dispatch about the feature, that "users have often asked for the ability to select from more options to describe their political viewpoint, so [they] expanded the list." furthermore, I highly doubt they could have compiled that extensive a list of political parties from around the world in the 10 days between my post and the announcement of the feature's release. still... it sort of makes you wonder (or at least it makes me wonder).

unmediated publics?

this summer, I've been spend a significant portion of my time doing some blog-related research. I don't want to blab too much about the specifics, but essentially it's a project that focuses on blogging from the reader's perspective and examines the role of the reader in the activity of blogging. if that sounds cool, let me know and we can chat.

what I want to talk about is something that's come up during our lit review. in reading other stuff about blogging, I came across this notion of mediated publics, particularly in some of danah boyd's writings. if I follow, it's the notion that blogs, SNSs, and other sorts of social (usually digital) media create means of public interaction that are in one way or another mediated. blogs create a method of being public, but that public presence is mediated by the digital medium in which it's manifest. similarly with SNSs, virtual worlds, or, I gather, most any virtual interaction.

however, I'm left with the question, does this imply that offline, face-to-face, physical interaction is unmediated? on the one hand, sure, I'd be willing to buy that. in most (though certainly not all) cases, people aren't using a wearable heads-up display or interacting with a physically collocated person through some sort of digital intermediary. however, on the other hand, there are lots of things other than digital media that mediate our social interactions. (as a side note, there are interesting etymological relationships between medium and mediate, but as much as I love an etymological interlude, I won't go there at the moment). perhaps it's just because I've got activity theory on the brain, but I can't help but think of the Vygotskian notion of mediation. daily activities and interactions of all kinds are riddled with all sorts of mediators: language, culture, history, the physical environment, and even to some extent our bodies mediate our activity. indeed, any and every activity is mediated by something; unmediated activity simply does not occur.

I'm not saying that the notion of mediated publics is not a useful one. I think it is, as I think it draws into focus important ways in which virtual interactions are mediated by the medium in which they occur, fact that can be lost in some analyses. however, I think it misleadingly implies that physical interaction is unmediated. since pretty much all activity is mediated in some form or another, mediated publics might be something of a vacuous term. I suspect the term "digitally mediated publics," though somewhat more verbose, better captures the topic at interest. if what's really of interest is any sort of mediated public interaction, then, since all activity is mediated, what we're talking about here is really any sort of public interaction, and I don't think that's the point. I think the point is to look at the way that digital mediation affects public interaction, comparing and contrasting it publics that are mediated in other, different ways.