ANTHMETHGRP2-2425-SIHAN-CAO

[Last modified: December, 11 2024 05:46 PM]

After taking this course, I have developed my research focus and my research method, as well as considering more on ethical issues.

First, at the very first post, I asked about if I should narrow down a specific group to research on. I was thinking about doing both women and lesbians. After taking this course, I believe that focusing on two different groups at the same time may lead to an unclear research topic. Therefore, I am considering only focus on Chinese Lesbian group and talk abut lesbian feminism so that I have only one direction not two.

For the research method, at the beginning, I was thinking about doing online ethnography, sending out questionnaires, and do focus group interviews. After taking this course, I think I may not use the methods I mentioned before, now I am thinking about doing one-to-one interviews with my interviewees. As the LGBTQ+ is still a quite private topic in China, The main thing I should do for my interviewees are keep their information private; therefore, focus group interview will be the most not suitable research method for my project, as this method require a group of people sitting together to talk about their experience. No one’s privacy will be ensure under this circumstance. I am also worried about sending out questionnaires will not get to learn about the interviewees well. Besides, digital representations, feminism-related questions may not be able to answer in one or two short sentences in a questionnaire. An interview may allow the interviewees to express themselves more comprehensive so that I can learn correctly about their thinkings. For the online ethnography, this method do help me observe people’s thinking through their comments under some lesbian or feminism related posts. By taking this course, I have also learnt that when using people’s languages, it is necessary to ask for their consent. Therefore, it will be difficult for me to ask people’s permission on a comment (do I need to ask the post poster? do I need to ask for permissions from people who comment under this comment?), things may be a bit complicated if do the online ethnography.

In addition, this course has also taught me to view ethical issues significantly. For example, the interviewees’ ages. It will be a high risk behavior to interview people under 18 years old. However, as I notice, the active lesbians online are mostly young women from 15-20 years old. Many of them are under 18. Since the participants may be able to lie, it is a big question for me to ask their ages without being offensive to participants. I will still need to figure out how to make my project more ethical and less risky.

[Last modified: December, 4 2024 01:04 AM]

For the last week group discussion, our topic was case three. One student would like to conduct a research with vegan activists. The first method the student would like to conduct was to join a closed vegan activists chatting group. However, this group required the students to answer several questions to be allowed to access by the administrator. If I am the anthropology ethics committee, I may suggest the student to be careful with the following possible situation. The first is, there may be a possibility that the student cannot gain access of the private group, there should be another back up plan for the student to gain access. For example, I may suggest to talk to the administrator and express the true reason and see if they would like to provide you an access. Second, as the student did not provide further information of the activists, if they are a group of people doing extreme activities such as splashing paints on arts in the museums, the student may experience struggling on reporting the activities before happening. Under some circumstances, hearing extreme activity plans expressing in uncivilised language may also cause mental issues. Finally, if this is a group of people doing positive activities, there might be concerns on if the student should get everyone in the groups’ consent before collecting chatting information. Under this situation, I will suggest the student try to reach out to individuals to get conversation with them to avoid difficulties on getting everyone’s consent.

The student has also mentioned other method to conduct in the research: viewing an Instagram account of a vegan artist who claimed herself as 18 years old. First, it is important to ensure that the vegan artist is really an 18-year-old adult. However, there will be circumstance that interviewees lie to the interviewer, therefore, proofs may required for this situation. Second, as mentioned in the class discussion, revealing a special-interest to the public, this behaviour may attract more people to pay attention on vegan activism. Sometimes there will be positive interests shown, however, sometimes there may be hate generated during this situation. As a public Instagram account, the student may need to consider how to protect the privacy of the interviewee to avoid the artist been recognized later after the research has been done.

[Last modified: November, 27 2024 11:44 AM]

During the last week observation opportunity, I chose to stay inside the building with one of the classmates because it was quite cold outside. We walked to the door of the building as it was a place that can see the outside and observe people coming in and out.

Firstly we noticed that two men went outside. We could feel the wind as the door open. Then the two men started talking. The door and the glass window seemed not sound-proof enough – we could hear their voice; however, their voice were not clear enough for us to hear what they actually talking. I believed that it was because the door and glass window have blurred the sound. Then we saw them light up two cigarettes. There were no people coming in or out therefore the door did not open. I could not actually smell the smoke, but I knew they were smoking by seeing the process of lighting cigarettes as well as the smoke produced by burning the cigarettes. This scene has given me a hint of “I do use the other sensation of my body”. I was so used to the existence of my visuality. Smelling something can be stimulating while encountering pungent smell. However, in daily life, it was hard to see something really stimulating. Visuality became a normal thing so that I have ignored the fact that I am actually using it.

To test this point, I looked outside the door and tried to recognise something I can tell only by my eyes. I was standing inside the building at the left inside of the gate machine, which I could not see any trees or could not feel any wind unless the door open. When the day light came out of the clouds, it created a shadow of the tree leaves. The shadow was projected to the white wall on the right side of the building’s outside wall. I could also tell the wind just past without the door opening as I saw the shadow of the tree leaves were shaking lightly. The whole process I only use my visuality. Therefore I believe that when observing things, it is better to feel all the sensations carefully, they give more information that I think.

[Last modified: November, 20 2024 12:49 PM]

On Week 5 we did an interview activity during the seminar period. The first thing was to group up with someone else. I was not sure who I might work with because the classmates sat next to me all grouped up already. Therefore, I looked around the classroom and tried to find someone who did not have a partner yet. Finally, I grouped up with someone, but I found the process was quite interesting. Firstly, I noticed that those who already grouped with someone else tended to talk to their partners; therefore, they would not look around like I did. With this thought, I started to look for someone who looked around like I did. Finally I have discovered a classmate. However, we sat far from each other, it was hard to ask by language as it was impolite to shout in the classroom. Therefore, I pointed at myself and her and looked at her (I believe eye contact happened here). She nodded back at me. I was quite happy when we grouped up and have discovered that eye contact was useful under some circumstances, it helps people to communicate or reach an agreement while talking was not suitable.

After we grouped up, we decided to sat outside the classroom for the interview. I remembered there were many people sat around but they were all working or only chat with a tiny voice. We both lower our voice as well as we both felt it was not suitable to talk loudly. To hear her better, I creeped my body forward to my partner. The interview was the first time I got to chat with this classmate alone, I felt a bit nervous to be honest, and I can remembered I sat in the chair but my limbs were all unstretched. My classmate was at the interviewer position therefore she sat very straight, I could feel that she viewed this interview as a quite significant things. However, after 15 minutes, I felt that we both relieved from the nervous as I noticed that she started to lean her back on the seat back; and I also started to add on body movement while talking such as waving my arms.

[Last modified: November, 13 2024 07:47 AM]

My project is based on the observations on current situation of lesbians’ representations in the digital world. I am currently not decided yet if my project will focus on Chinese lesbians or not, but if I do, there will be a potential politics-related problem in this topics. In China, the homosexual marriage is still at a illegal position, the government also forbids including any kind of LGBTQ+ images in news and films and television works. Lesbians can only communicate on social media under a hashtag called “le”. However this “le” tag was not the very first tag lesbians use for online communication. The tags before were banned because of online censorship. This is clearly a marginalisation to the lesbians’ voice, or on the political perspective, a lack of freedom of speech and respect to lesbian groups’ human rights. This project’s aim is to make the lesbian group more visible, to some extend, could be viewed as against the current unfair policies to the lesbian or I can say to the whole LGBTQ+ groups.

By observing the posts under the “le” hashtag, I have discovered another quite interesting thing: not only the outside world create stereotypes for lesbians, lesbians also create stereotypes for themselves. For example, today’s Chinese lesbians today will categorised themselves as either “tomboy” or “the one more feminine”, as well as similar hair style for “tomboy” and the one more feminine may also with long hair. However, they cannot represent everyone. I remembered seeing people posting complaint saying that “not only the society tries to silence lesbians, there is 10% lesbians that active in the digital world tries to represent the whole lesbian group with their appearances and habits, the lesbian group is always been silenced in some ways”. Based on this situation, as I am aiming to make the digital representation of lesbians more accurate, I will need to find out those who not really post online to ask how they would like to be represented and ask why they do not posts themselves online (maybe). Therefore, I may need to know more people offline, as I know not everyone would like to post their faces online or portrayed their online images. Therefore, knowing more lesbians offline maybe a good choice for me to learn about some invisible voices. Overall, if my project really workout, I may bring more diverse lesbian images to the digital world, let more people know about this group, and hopefully can against the marginalisation and voice-silencing situation to lesbians today.

[Last modified: October, 30 2024 02:20 AM]

For the field activity last week, I chose to go to the closest Starbucks near the classroom with one of the classmates. This Starbucks is the place I will personally choose to spend time when I am waiting for another class. I am quite familiar with it and it was the first place flow to my mind.

Observation 1: the seats at the door. Key word: location

So we entered the Starbucks, each of us grabbed a drink. My drink came first therefore I was wondering around and thinking where we should sit to collect as much information as we can. I have noticed there was a group of elderly men sitting at the door. They seemed that were not belong to this store’s vibe: 1. most people came in for work or study, with their laptops or iPads in front of them, but these three men were talking quite loud. 2. they were quite focused on their drinks (all the drinks were hot), I was thinking they may walk outside for a while and entered the store for something wrong. 3. they seemed not planning to stay for a long time, as most of the working people or students were sitting more inside but they were sitting next to the door. Not surprisingly, they left after my friend got her drink. Therefore, I felt that the store location may be a big reason that who will more likely to come in. The choice of seats may reflect one’s willing of staying.

Observation 2: people around my seat. Key words: gender, kin(friend)ships.

Finally we took seats at the very inside of the store. Here is a hand-drawing seating map in store at that time:

From this map, we can see that there were sofa tables and chair tables. My friend and I were at one of the sofa table (highlighted in yellow). Seemed people preferred sofa tables more than chair one, as sofa may be more comfortable. People there were mostly girls. Only three tables were alone with no partners. Rest the tables were sit face-to-face. The table on my right, two girls were sit next to each other on the sofa, they were on their phone at the beginning and later started to talk in both English and Cantonese. The table on my left, two girls were talking more about gossip, reading week plans but not study. They seemed to be closer than classmates as they were talking more casual things instead of studies. In addition, I could not hear other table very well. However, based on the observations I got, I was wondering why girls would like to come in more than guys? Why they chose this Starbucks but not a school coffee shop or book a library silence zone? Will kin(friend)ships affect their choice (they may want to hang out at a better/nice place)? These were the main question I would like to ask but I did not interview people in the store, I was there taking notes with my iPad, which did not seem wired at all, people may think I was just studying.

[Last modified: October, 22 2024 08:19 PM]

Before taking about the positionality thing, I think my topic may now more focus on queer women, not sure if it is the lesbian group yet. Based on this, recalling the discussion in class last week on queer interview. I remember that our tutor said that the queer groups will usually concern more when they are asking to participant in a research, as they may easily feel nervous, afraid of exposure. After class, I was asking myself about this: as a queer woman myself, am I really willing to attend a research as a participant? And I feel the same thing. As a Chinese queer woman, where the society and social norm do not accept the queer identities, telling others your identity means there is a chance you are going to be exposed by someone. It is risk to my reputation and may lead to many troublesome. Therefore, if I am really going to interview a Chinese queer woman, or queer women from other culture perspectives, I will firstly research on their culture background and will promise their identities will be kept 100% private.

Another take away from our tutor’s words is that as queer women may easier to accept the invitation from queer researchers. Therefore, I am thinking if I am going to ask a queer to join my research, I will show my queer identity to them first to relief their stress or vigilance, and pull closer the distance between each other. I have also heard this suggestion from my course director when I join the office hour. He said that if I feel embarrassed or do not know how to start the conversation with others, I will firstly need to become one of them to relief my embarrassment. In addition, he also gave me an useful suggestion on getting participants, which is social networking. I remember that “when you go straight to someone and say I am studying on xxx and are you interested in become one of my participant, people may say no; but if you asking people for a participant recommendation, they may bring you to their friends. At they time, the ‘friends’ are more likely to accept the invitation. I felt like this method is a quite interesting one and I believe that I can try this in the future if I have a hard time looking for a participant.

[Last modified: October, 16 2024 03:48 AM]

Since I was still not sure which group (women or LGBTQ+groups) I would like to focus on for my research, I was looking for both of their trails while I was wondering around the UCL main campus.

Women

After I entered the campus, I was looking for something or a place that may contain a lot of information. Then I found several notice boards around the place that the welcome fair was held. I have looked through each one and discovered that these notice boards were for students to announce the activities of their discussion groups or societies. By browsing all the posters, there was one caught my eyes (see figure 1).

The poster in the center of Figure 1 was produced by a Chinese reading club which aimed at discussing multiple topics including feminism. I was exciting to learn this information as not every woman in China will be so criticising to the current women’s situation and point out the potential dilemma women may face in China. A feminist may be more willing to point out problems. Therefore, I have scanned the QR code at the left bottom and saved the contact information. I believe that I may have a high possibility to find my potential interviewees from this club.

LGBTQ+ groups

After the notice board, I continued my way and went into the student center. I was thinking that I might be able to find some trails of feminism/LGBTQ+ – related student societies here. However, there was no activities going on. But I have noticed a rainbow sign on the wall at a corner of student center with “out@UCL” (see Figure 2). I felt this may related to one of the LGBTQ+ societies at UCL.

After the campus observation, I went online and search for Out@UCL. I found that this is a UCL LGBTQ+ organisation formed in 2009 and is opened to all the post-grads and UCL staffs. It also provide social opportunities for LGBTQ+ people to know each other. Therefore, I feel like if I finalise my research focus on LGBTQ+, I may be able to attend the social events, observe what people do, follow people online to see their digital images, connect with people during events, and develop them as my future interviewees if possible. Overall, here was my experience looking for the trails of feminists and LGBTQ+ groups on campus.

[Last modified: October, 9 2024 02:51 AM]

Topic and background information

During my undergraduate study in journalism and communication, I have discovered that in today’s digital world, some of the advertisements and digital marketing strategies are still creating stereotypes and stigmatizations to women and LGBTQ+ groups. For the LGBTQ+ groups, some countries or regions may remove their representations based on censorship. Therefore, missing representation is also another problem going on in todays’ digital world.

I have also noticed that more women and LGBTQ+ groups today have stand out to say no to such misrepresentation. For example, I can frequently see people discuss and show negative attitudes to the misogynistic advertisements on one of the most popular Chinese social media. Recently more social movements on women rights, queer rights, and body sizes appeared on mainstream media such as Twitter and Instagram. I can feel that women and queer groups are requesting more respect and more accuracy ways to represent themselves.

Therefore, this project will try to explore on women and queer people’s satisfaction on the digital images that others created for them and how they would like to be represented. In addition, what cause the misrepresentation or missing representation.

 

Research question

1. How satisfied are women and LGBTQ+ group people to the current digital images that others created to represent them?
2. How do women and LGBTQ+ groups would like to be represented in digital world?
3. What has cause misrepresentation and missing representation on women and LGBTQ+ groups?

For research questions, I do have questions.

The first one is can I do multi questions for the dissertation?

The second one, I am wondering if I should specify a particular group (either women or LGBTQ+ group, if it is LGBTQ+, which group?), a particular country, and a particular media to keep my research focus and go deep in one thing? And from last seminar I have also learnt that different countries may have different cultural and political background, which may affect the research direction and result, that is why I would like to specify everything.

 

Methods

I am thinking about online ethnography on the group I am going to research on, to observe their discussion on the particular app.

I am also thinking about sending out questionnaire or do focus group research to ask people from group about their feeling about the digital images, how it may impact their lives (making friends, building relationships, personal safety; for LGBTQ+ group may add questions such as if digital images will affect them on coming out, the way they define themselves, homophobia, doing gender).

 

Ethics

1. The privacy of people’s information, people may not want to tell everyone their identities, or under some cultures, it is not safe for people to disclosure their identities.
2. Asking the impact of lives may have potential risks on recalling people’s bad memory or traumas, therefore, some risk assessment or question should be reviewed to keep it unharmful.
3. Please comment more about the potential ethic problems I did not mention here, thank you so much.

 

Potential findings

For the first two questions, I do not have idea about people’s thoughts now, but for the third one, I can say a bit based on my previous observation when doing internship (may count as ethnography?)

To find out if this issue is as severe as the academic essays have stated, I did two internships in Chinese advertising agencies. I have discovered that the clients (brands) we serve only want to maximize their commercial values, therefore, most of them were thinking which marketing strategies will maximize the money I can make. Human right problems are not even in the conversation.

From my colleagues and my perspectives, our workloads are quite big, we also need to extend the working hour to complete the work. Besides, we, as agencies, were working to satisfy our clients’ need, therefore, even sometimes I tried to mention can we put some feminism or LGBTQ+ elements in the strategies, my mentors will say “the clients would not want to see it so let’s do not waste the time on these topics.” It is sad but the huge workload and clients’ attitudes will keep the human right ideas away from current production process of marketing strategies.

However, my observation only limited to four mentors and their opinions, therefore, biases may appear. And this is also something I would like to ask, how can I keep my ethnography more objective and not full of personal opinions?