I really found resonance in David Silverman’s discussions on the “audience”. My question has always been one of “who is my audience for this submission and beyond?” Research is new to me. It is interesting that the post-graduate level in architecture, one often has his or her first formal introduction into research methods. Architecture is such a practice-oriented field that one of my colleagues in my department at the university and none of my department administration have doctoral degrees. So, rather than just my peers, I assumed a larger population of interest for my work. I joked to one of my cohorts here that I want my work assessable to the ‘masses’ even if that means being reprinted in the American Airlines in-flight magazine. In the meeting with my interviewee for this class, she proudly pointed to her hardbound dissertation (it was very thick). I wondered if that was one of two printed, the other one shelved in the bowels of the Lesley University library. However, as Eric Clapton sings, “I don’t want to fade away.”
Therefore, I really enjoyed and look forward to my first “bases loaded home-run leverage” as Silverman states on page 360. I did take a class research project that I co-wrote at Harvard last year and we re-worked it and submitted it to a peer-reviewed symposium. It was accepted and printed in the proceedings and I presented it in Innsbruck a few months ago (seehttp://ambient.media.mit.edu/transitive/papers/tsigaridi.pdf). It was enormously fun sitting around a table of fellow researchers in Austria chatting about great futuristic possibilities! Unfortunately, to keep up the fun, you have to keep producing. Maybe that is why it was so difficult for me to settle on a Research question for this class – it is such a burden to consider each thing I do as a potential “time up to bat”.
But, Silverman’s sports analogy really refers to crossing into several genres. He gives great comments on page 395 about how you have to treat qualitative research different from journalism, and gives four GREAT suggestions as to what to know and avoid. His comments to lead you away from the ‘sensationalistic’ tendency are supported by a study of medical research included in the newspapers that found that “Headlines in both the London Times and the Sun newspapers tended towards an emphasis on entertainment value rather than on importance to public health” (Seehttp://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/325/7355/81 ). Therefore, with this in mind, I do look forward to producing relevant work, also assessable and interesting to ordinary people. I hope that I have the creativity ofDean A. Anderson, who in excerpt from his article, The Art of Repackaging says
“For instance, let's say you put in hour upon hour of research on bunions for a medical journal article. Even if the article is purchased, it probably won't pay the mortgage. But what if you could repackage it?
It just takes a little imagination to take that research and put it to other uses:
For Reader's Digest: "I Am Joe's Bunion"
For Cosmopolitan: "Ten Sexy Truths About Bunions"
For Sports Illustrated: "Accounting for Bunions in Your Fantasy Football Picks"
For Humpty Dumpty: "Barney Bunny and the Big Blue Bunion"
For Christianity Today: "Bunions as a Metaphor for Sin"
For Entertainment Weekly: "The Top Ten Bunion Movies"
For Motor Trend: "Gas Pedals Designs"
For Cat Fancy: "Feline Bunions: Worse Than Worms?"
For Arizona Highways: "Amazing Rock Formations That Look Like Bunions"
For Penthouse Letters: "Dear Editor, Who would have thought my bunion would get me action with a Swedish stewardess?"
For The Weekly World News: "Alien Bunions: Medical Miracles or Threat to World Peace?"
So remember, that long labor at the library and on the Internet for one article doesn't need to go to waste”.
So the core point that I found so compelling is to truly consider the audience for your work at hand, discerning your position to them and what they need to get from you, framed by the nature of the genre.
-Mikael
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