Television on the Borderlands

Dear all, I am very, very happy to announce that my first book has been published :) I had a great stage-fright when it came out in December but now I got used to its presence in bookshops. It is the end of a very long journey. I am particularly enthusiastic about the cover, which looks like this: .

. The funny TV set on the cover is the artwork by Erno Bartha The Triptych from the TV Mania series. I am happy that Erno allowed me to use his work. Firstly because I believe his work, the TV set opening itself is the metaphorical representation of the main argument I make: television by the act of letting in the Other and his own representation (even though within the narrow niche) into the broadcasted main stream communicates interculturally and opens itself and its viewers to the other point of view. Secondly I really enjoyed the TV Mania exhibition that I visited when in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. I found it extremely funny on one hand and theoretically interesting on the other. It is a game with the object that is no longer used and lost its initial function. Now being an empty shell may be filled in with different content, different uses and roles. I have already written about this exhibition earlier on this blog. If you want to see more Bartha’s works visit his site. . The book itself is the shortened version of my Ph.D thesis defended in 2010. It is based on analysis and research conducted in 2008 and 2009 so as TV texts are rather ephemeral ones it is in fact it is rather historical book now. I treat it as a representation and critical analysis of a television scape in a given historical moment. . The main aim of the book is presenting various strategies the Others are presenting themselves in the main stream of television broadcasting. I was not interested in the images of the otherness created by the representatives of main stream television programmes (as travel series) but the selfportraits the representatives of the nondominant societies and groups are allowed to present – even though these representations can be found mostly in niches. In spite of that one can still perceive cracks on the monolith surface of the mainstream media. . The book consists of four chapters. The first one is a methodological one, where multimodal text analysis, content analysis and ethnographical methods are presented and justified. The latter three chapters are case studies of abovementioned cracks in the mainstream media ordered by the geographical scale. . The second chapter regards television texts moving in global scale above administrative borders of states and mental borders of nations: the country promotion spots. They are only one way of national branding but, as I see it, the most global and influential as transmitted by the worldwide news channels as CNN or BBC. I analyse them as Arjun Appadurai’s mediascape elements that has the power of setting in motion the human masses (tourists and investors) due to the stir of collective imagination. . The third chapter regards the phenomenon that I call the trasnborder television. These are the television programmes that are realized in co-productions by the neighbor states. All analysis in this chapter is based on programmes produced by Polish television in cooperation with German, Ukrainian, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian and Byelorussian broadcasters. Some of them are stable and are still on air, some survived only two or three episodes (Ukrainian ones), some did not survive the political tensions (the case of Byelorussian series). . The last chapter is the longest and represents all the methodological equipment I have suggested in the first chapter. It is a monograph of the local scale otherness self-representation in television and regards the national and ethnic minority series in the local subsidiary of Polish Public Television in northern part of Poland Podlasie. It is the most culturally diverse part of the country with Poles, Byelorussians, Ukrainians, Russians, Lithuanians, Roma people and Polish Tatars live together, where three religions – catholic, orthodox and Islam – meet. The research I conducted covers the content analysis, ethnography of the Byelorussian viewers and the journalists creating the minority programmes. . Even though I am now so far away from these issues, into totally different groups and media really love this book :)

The d(D)eaf and the Technology

During my stay at York University the emerging idea of my forthcoming project took more concrete shape. Now I can quite confidently state that the main core of my project is the usage of the technology by the deaf communities in Poland.
There are several tricky issues regarding this topic, that I will consider in the following posts. The first one is the group of the deaf itself. It is a very diverse community. The deaf, are not the same as the Deaf, hard of hearing or people that lost their hearing as adults. In fact all these groups are different and separate to the great extend. It seems that the crucial feature here is the disability. While deafness is very often considered as illness, as a kind of lack the group of Deaf, perceiving themselves as language minority, they won't see their bodies as damaged or disabled because of deafness.
It is very hard to find a common ground for researching and analysing the deaf considering this great difference in self-perception and identity creation. It will be - as I suppose - hard to investigate the technology usage within such a heterogeneous group of people. For sure the Internet usage will be the crucial ground for investigation here (including the usage of social media, vlogging, forums) but also the technologies such as hearing aids or implants will be taken into consideration.
So far I have started the participant observation on one of the most dynamic online deaf community, which is the deaf.pl.

November in Schulich School of Business

That is the problem I have always had with writing diaries - discipline and regularity. But now, almost half a year after my last post, here I am again. Last week I have received mail from new media researcher from Budapest proving that actually someone is reading this blog :) So after long months of lack of enthusiasm (and activity here) I am starting up again.

For the whole November I have left my homeland Poland and (thanks to grant from my university) went to York University in Toronto, Canada. The main aim of my visit was Schulich School of Business and especially Robert Kozinets, the author of nethnography method and this book.

I have already discussed the netnographic method of the Internet research here expressing some doubts. Now I had great opportunity to discuss my questions with the team of researchers actually coding and developing the method.

Netnography seems to be most suitable tool for researching online forums. Here the possibilities of observation, interaction, analysis of discoursive practices (access to archives!) and simply gaining access to community (for interviewing) are the best. Netnography however seems to lose its impact when it comes to investigating social network sites as Facebook. How to apply the method to this new form of online social activity?

In this case participation (so obvious and easily achieved on forums) is much more complicated. The researcher can follow some fan sites and groups - as easy as clicking Like it button. But how can he or she participate in a social group gathered on Facebook? Great amount of users protect their sites from the stranger's eye. First researcher need to become online friends with members of the community he/she is investigated. This situationa quite dramaticaly changes the classical researcher-researched relation.
In traditional ethnographic filed researcher is present in a given (limited) time frames. The relation with the observed community might have been intense and close but ended some time. What should I do with my researched FB friend after my research project is finished? Should I delete him/her? If I "keep" this relationship it will include the field in my everyday life much more than in case of offline filed research. On the other hand deleting such "friend" when the research is done points out vividly the objective, exploitive aspect of the relation (with getting rid of the informant researcher no longer needs).
In general the idea of becoming friends with respondents, gaining access to all their private comments, posts, photos, lists of their friends and their posts, photos is a little bit redifining relationship between researcher and his/her object in offline inquiry. This change is even more dramatic as far as amount (and quality) of information the investigated community has about the researcher. In the offline field researcher plays his/her social/professional role. Researcher shapes the relation with the community basing on this role. What is new in Facebook field is the threat of the loss of authority of the researcher. Not only he/she has open access to community members' profiles but also vice versa. Respondents can easily find researcher's easy comments, favourite songs and films, photos from crazy parties. I do not state it has bad influence on the researcher-community relation, maybe it can even make the communication smoother and easier but I do see some very basic differences between ethnographic and netnographic procedure and researcher-field relation.

It came as a surprise to me, that (as far as I know) most of the netnographic research actually performed by Kozinets and his team is not as participatory as I have expected from the method. It seemed to me that it is rather content and discoursive analysis followed by the interviews than becoming part of the community, "being one of them". To tell the truth it was where I have seen the biggest charm and value of this method.

The chance to talk to the "nethnographic team" at York University was a great opportunity to express my doubts - as it turned out they have similar. Robert Kozinets is now working on application of the method to the SNS as Facebook. I am really looking foreward his new text. At the York University I had opportunity to present my research project (where netnography is one of the core tools). Within next few days I will present it here as well.