Erik OBrien

Week 9
In class exercises:
What I have in my wallet
I have 5 groups of things. All of them incredibly sandy
Group 1: Out doorsy stuff Moleskin and a national parks pass
Group 2: Stuff with my face on it U id and drivers license
Group 3: Money 15$ and some quarters
Group 4. Miscellaneous: Buy one get one free movie thing to Jordan commons and a AAA card
Group 5: Transaction Cards: Library Card, Medical card, REI Card, and Credit card

What speaks is how I decided to group these things. I could have just as easily grouped them
materially. Plastic in one pile, non-plastic in the other. I wanted to make a group called
outdoorsy stuff because I wanted people to think that I was an outdoorsy dude because for
some reason I think there is some identity capital in being perceived as outdoorsy. However the
actual existence of those outdoorsy things in my wallet is practical. The category is theoretical,
the material is practical. I have cash. It is an exception category, 99% of the time I do not carry
cash (there is some socioeconomic and class info there) but for some reason I have cash I
cant remember why. I think someone paid me for gas money or something.
This exercise demonstrates what Dr. Anderson was talking about in terms of when you code
you deny another code, the margins show the boundaries of the code, that is the interesting
part of the data. I can see through my categorization that I have coded my objects in an
attempt to make an argument to those who see it. My code shows I go out doors. It could
have just as easily been something else but what is most interesting is group 4: Miscellaneous.
Me not being able to catagorize my free movie ticket and AAA card just shows that my
enjoyment of free movies and auto insurance is not a priority. What they say about me is not
something I am excited to broadcast.
Exercise 1: Write analytic memo,
Dr. Anderson is right, why write a memo when I can just write it into the article or
what ever it is im writing? This exercise asks me to remember what I did recently, I cant
remember anything of worth from that long ago from one interview. I can barely remember to
lock my door everyday let alone remember a conversation in enough detail to do anything
worthwhile with. If a good methods section is just writing everything down that you do then
why arent the insights from the analytical memos included? Separating the two is not including
everything that is going on in your method and coding phase.
The second phase of the exercise when asked about the relationship I have with the
participant I can certainly remember. I guess it just shows that people are more important than
any data I remember. My first interview was with Max and I could describe him fully fairly
quickly, same with my interviews with Noah, Allie, Jacob, and Keith. I already wrote on this
subject when I did my self-reflexivity with the interviews. The codes I would guess to use would
be Approval, disapproval, identity, Level of understanding, individual use, organizational use,
DAD operations. Parts 4, 5, &6 of the exercise I do not think I can actually answer unless I
actually did some real analysis and had a lot more data. However, I could talk at length about
the problems and personal issues but I have already done that in previous writings and
submissions for this class.
This will be my last reflection from this weeks lecture but it is more of a reflection of
what this class has done to me. I now know for sure that this is not the career path for me. I
have consistently gotten the nudge from faculty and even those outside of our department that
I should go for the PhD. I always would say I plan to do it eventually, I just need to take a break
after this. I now know this break will be permanent (please do not tell anyone). This line of
work is interesting, and even pretty funny at times, but I know this is not the line of work for
me. I am still very happy and proud that I am pursuing the masters, it is more for myself than
any special career goal or something but now that I know how the sausage is made and though
I do not know what I want to do, I know I do not want to do this.
Saldana
This book is not joking around when it says it is a coding manual. It probably lists every
conceivable type of coding there is with a step-by-step instruction on how to use it. This
cookbook format is not interesting to read, and I am sure this approach has lead to some more
critical and difficult parts of the coding process being left on the way side but I am not
experienced enough of a coder to know. Out of all the coding types the one that sounds the
most fun and one I would like to implement in my own study is that of emotion coding.
Like Saldana says emotion coding is appropriate for almost all-qualitative work and is inherently
interesting, much like conflict is inherently interesting. I think I could use emotion coding in my
piece when talking specifically about peoples use of the DAD software and then later when it
comes to DJs identities. For example I can even remember from my interviews I did earlier in
this class some DJs called the software silly and stupid and their voice intonation changed.
This book is basically a cookbook and despite chapter 3 being basically the whole book I have
very little to say about it. There are many tools and codes that seem useful, but I have no way
of knowing until I have collected my data for my study over winter break.
Coding Assignment
The experience of coding the Black Jesus Adult Swim fansite was marginally interesting. I first
did verbal exchange coding and coded to see if there were any discrepancies between veteran
users and new users and if veteran users were likely to respond to new users. Veteran users
were very accommodating. However, while coding how on topic people were I noticed and
interesting discrepancy. The moderators of the forum were allowed to uses any words they
liked, however, non-moderators language was censored. Jesus is one of the censored words
on the site so no users other than the mods could use the word Jesus, the word Jesus was
replaced by the phrase nyan. This is funny because it is interesting to have a network have a
show called Black Jesus but no one in the forum can talk about it without being censored. I
then made a code for every time the word Jesus had been replaced by nyan or the user had
found an alternative way to say Jesus. For example they would say J-Man Big dude in the
Sky and so on.