The Contextual Scope of an Artifact's Meaning

I have to admit, I feel way more at home with this week's readings; although I found the quantitative and ethnographic research methods interesting, I was struggling to apply them to my own current research area. Thomas' Artifactual Study in the Analysis of Culture, in particular, struck an interest in me. 

One of the first problems Thomas' discusses is that of the substitution problem; can the study of artifacts be equivalent with the study of human behaviour? She points out two shaky assumptions this problem is built on: that of 'a direct method' (as if all of human behaviour is can be captured in one ultimate method) and that of attempted equivalency (as if artifacts are trying to be a pale reproduction of human behaviour). 

The substitution paradox, I think, rests on the hierarchical dichotomy of effable and ineffable. Rudolf Arnheim, a psychologists most noted for his work on visual arts, argues that this word-over-image bias rests in a linguistic-deterministic framework: the visual world is so chaotic and meaningless that the only way to liberate is to impose the structure of the language, a mold in which order and meaning is created. The implication of this, thus, is that the visual is innately chaotic and represents no meaning or order in and of itself. 

This seems to be where Thomas' problem with artifactural study rests: can artifacts, a physical realm, be innately meaningful or does it require linguistic, a rationale realm, to give meaning? While she argues no, and to which I agree, I wonder the scope of innate meaning lies (i.e. is this meaning culture bound?). 

The dehumanizing effect of critical discourse analysis

In the closing paragraph of his article, van Dijk writes: "this paper has sketched a rather simplified picture of power, dominance and their relations to discourse" (1993). Unfortunately, that is exactly why critical discourse analysis should not be used, in my view, for social research.

Dualistic frameworks about power and oppression, dominance and hegemony can be applied in the formulation of a research question, for example during an ethnographic study. They might also be useful in examining social phenomena, such Paulo Freire's popular education movement. However, they ideally should only represent a portion of the researcher's work.

Van Dijk's statement that: "critical scholars should not worry about the interests of perspectives of those in power, who are best placed to take care of their own interests anyway" is frightening, because it implies that there are two classes of human beings: the powerful and the powerless. It also indicates that the former class is less worthy of study, and even of human compassion, than the latter one.

I would venture that, in reality, power dynamics are much more complicated than this, and that human beings, whether they hold more or less power, remain multi-dimensional and unclassifiable. Any researcher that splits a population into two groups, discards one group and promotes perceived interests of the other, is not only misguided, but can also create serious damage in any community.

Dilemma concerning ethnography

I plan to make use of ethnography and am presently in the process of understanding how to “cover my bases” and be as transparent as possible and today’s class seemed to help a lot in this respect. Previously, I had come across some articles which addressed issues concerning ethnography that stated that it is a method which is not regarded to have as high a standing as certain other methods. And it is not just ‘quant’ researchers who have such views but ‘qual’ people share similar ideas. It has to be always substantiated by statistical calculations or concrete qualitative analysis. One of the basic reasons for this is the bias that a researcher or group of researchers can develop while conducting the field work. That is because, the research is analysed from one person or group’s point of view and their perception does come into play often. One of the ways of protecting ourselves from such criticism would be by being “extra super vigilante” while situating oneself into a culture or system. Thus the “importance of distance” plays an exceptionally major role in making the research credible.

Yet another attack against this method of research is that it studies one culture, organization, or system and tries to ‘see the world in a grain of sand’. This is true in some sense when the local provides an image of the global, the micro that of the macro. But it is also true that in a world as varied as ours, such study and its relevance can be highly limited. If I study one department in an organization, it is unlikely that the same gleanings from that study could be applied to another very different department. So studying one aspect of a company might not reveal much about the entire organization. It is difficult to defend ethnography in such a case. However, keeping in mind that all methods do have their drawback/s I guess conversely, ethnography too has its own (confident) position... enough to gain ground amongst the other research methodologies.

A face-to-face interview

Many of us have experienced with interview method which we had used in the assignment of INF1300. This assignment involves conducting an interview on the public's view of the library. Last week I have conducted the interview and have found that this class has really assisted me in determining the method I would employ as a researcher. The goal in this particular research is to discover what a person knows about libraries, library services and facilities etc. but while taking the interview , I had discovered that there is a lack of knowledge about the library gives a researcher valid information which can lead to questions of why there is such a lack of knowledge on the resources offered by the library. I have used an open-ended questions, it became apparent that there needed to be more structure than I had originally thought. The questions that I thought would have long answers were very short and I had to compensate by asking questions in different ways or being more specific without telling them what they know about the library and its services.
In other words, a face-to-face interview is the method most widely used in the research of any topic and based on a direct meeting between interviewer and interviewee. By personal communication it is possible not only to obtain much more information, but also to use visual materials (cards, pictures, logos, etc.) to encourage response.

Meenaxi

"In the midst..."

The view from the “vantage point” is what ethnography aims to provide. According to Shaffir, “hanging around” has been and can be the best advice for conducting such field work. Similar other terms have been coined or associated over time with ethnography to reveal what it truly is. “Aculturisation” is one such term, which means that one becomes a part of the culture which is being investigated. It involves “direct engagement”, interaction and integration into a system or culture. “Going behind the scenes” to conduct research can prove to be consistently interesting as it also involves being “present” and “participating” in the natural and daily activities of that which is being studied. The participatory aspect of this form of research consists of becoming something close to a “member” or part of the whole or even non member “participant-as-observer” (Stebbins)and "learning" the community or people or system practices. Of extreme importance is “fitting in”, as that is what makes those being studied to openly provide insights into their inner-workings. And acquiring “first-hand information" is no doubt valuable and can possibly reveal many unknown or unthought-of issues.

Even though ethnography can be regarded as one of the most in-depth of research methods, it does have several drawbacks: there lies the risk of over-participation and subsequent abandonment of unprejudiced work leading to a biased outcome; it is time consuming – not simply in conducting field work but in analysis as well; potentially expensive and therefore limited to considerably small scale research; lacking in range or breadth and so on. Hopefully, in my small range proposal, it does find a place and provide me with "truths" that can prove to be beneficial enough to answer the deadly “So What?”

Offline and online research

This week's readings made me think about how useful ethnography can be in studying online activity, as we talk more and more about 'online communities' and 'social networks'. However, they have raised one question for me, and that is, how do you set the limits to an online community? Physical communities, such as the one described by Shaffir, have perhaps more delineated borders. Often, in fact, researchers travel to a community and physically imbed themselves within it.

Online communities are a little different. I was recently studying the Etsy social e-commerce site; examining how buyers and sellers interacted with the companies and what kind of social dynamics were present on the site, if one dug a little. I soon realized, however, that the network had tentacles, which extended into many other social media, and through them, into face-to-face meetings. In this sense, an ethnography of the network might include observing how its members interacted on and offline. This tendency is made even more visible by websites such as Meetup, which allows users to network online before meeting in person.

Perhaps what is so daunting about studying online communities is that often, each member of that community is part of one or several physical communities, distributed around the world. A solution might be to examine how distributed communities are studied, such as international communities of practice. I may simply be pointing out the obvious - that in our current highly networked societies, framing the subject for an ethnography is a challenging endeavour.

Respect the Gap

This weeks readings, particularly the one by Shaffir, talked about the importance of distance in the participant observation methodology to maintain valid results. While I don’t personally plan on using PO in my current research, the discussion brought to my mind larger questions about the nature of scientific knowledge. 

In his book Pandora’s Hope (a reading I have been doing for a different class), Latour discusses the concept of validity of scientific knowledge through circulating reference. While the original context was that of physical sciences, I am going to (attempt to) present this concept through a more ethnographic lens, as applicable to the participation observation methodology. I’m not sure what I’m hoping to achieve with this, but I’m finding these philosophies of validity much more interesting than a step-by-step guide to execute method ‘x’.

Interview Tactics

Much like Yuliya, I also found it difficult to address the “So what?” Obviously it's an issue that I feel matters, and since then I have thought about clarifying certain aspects of my larger question.

I am trying to tie the subject of ethnographic approach to my own interview approach. I admit that I'm a fan of the interview method- as Luker points out, I believe that resurfacing patterns of opinion amongst a substantial number of individual interviewees lends a lot of credence to research and suggests broader social implications. I was initially considering conducting an epic mixed method approach, complete with hundreds of interviews and thousands of surveys. Wouldn't that have been awesome?

Interestingly enough, I'm conducting an interview today for another class I'm taking! My main concerns are 1) to make the interviewee as much at ease as possible 2) to ask appropriately open-ended questions, and 3) to document the findings as quickly as possible (as Luker urges us to do). I am also considering using Luker's reverse-psychology tactic of asking intentionally leading question in order to illicit clarification – although I would have to justify this method to the professor. Shaffir notes that the idea of removing political views of the researcher is a “facade.” As such, in my own interview I will attempt to remain as receptive as possible, and then follow-up with a reflexive approach.

-Martin

I'm an ethnographer and I didn't even know it!

Ethnography. I've gone from never really hearing the word before to it permeating my weekly readings and discussions. This word has popped up in all four of my classes, it must be important. I come from a humanities background, where personal research was not forgrounded or necessary to get one's degree (in my personal experience). Ethnography was a method reserved for those in anthropology or social sciences, those studying actual people...where as I felt I was just investigating the artifacts or output created by people. Now I see that this was kind of a silly distinction that I made up in my head. I saw studying belief and studying action as divorced from each other. However, as Luker points out, that when belief and action are combined we get 'pratices' and this is what good ethnography studies.

In December of 2006 I began on my own ethnographic study...without even knowing it. Like many fresh graduates from university, I was unsure what to do, so I moved to Asia. I situated myself in a small town named Hualien in Taiwan to be an English teacher. Admittedly, I was very much overwhelmed at first. Reading Luker's explanation of living in a different culture actually made me laugh out loud, because it was so true. Everything was a puzzle, I couldn't read, write, speak or listen. I never ended up getting a bank account, because it was too confusing. I had local friends, but I still lived completely on the periphery and was recognized as an outsider just by how I looked. Obviously, I was not aware that I was doing an ethnographic study so I didn't keep field notes, but I did keep a sketch book and a journal where I recorded my thoughts about my life there. After living there for almost a year, being 'let in' to the culture to a certain degree, I believe that I can say I know a very minute bit about the Taiwanese small-town practices. In retrospect I wish I would have paid closer attention instead of just being in awe. It would have been interesting to study more of the subtle practices, rather then just the big obvious ones. For instance, I was the only foreigner working at my school, it was unclear to me how authority worked there. I was told in a very round-about way if I was doing something incorrectly. Using ethnography to study power structures would have been really neat (and probably have helped me out, as I was confused most of the time).

Using ethnography to study library and information science seems like an odd fit at first glance. But if you look at both libraries and information as the products of practices or entities in which particular practices happen, ethnography seems like a logical method of study to use.

Playing digital games after writing a SSHRC proposal

A perspective on the SSHRC proposal: I am afraid that in my proposal I didn’t answer the question “So what?” for the reader. Things discussed in it seem so obvious and connected, flowing from each other: (i) computer games are fun, (ii) work usually lacks this property (not that people don’t like their jobs; simply tasks they may have to conduct at the computer are not always exciting, engaging or providing possibility for personal growth), (iii) games have specific mechanics that are considered to be reasons of fun, and fun at work that doesn’t exclude work itself is a benefit for employees and consequently for organizations, (iv) why not to apply those game mechanics to work and observe fruitful results of work becoming fun? It is simply saying and it is all their but I am not sure that these ideas in proposal are fully interconnected to justify a proposed research, mainly because I somehow focused more on games than on work: was it the right focus for two pages or not?.. Also I now intend to reexamine my methodology and add more studying of context, documents, history of the organization or department (considering where to put boundaries will be a tough job, I guess). It is all under the influence of INF1003 course materials on interpretational research; I only have to figure out how to apply it to small scale research without luxury of several years to conduct it.

From doubts and intentions to pleasant thoughts. I was intrigued to hear a discussion at the lecture about digital games (it isn’t hard to guess why, if you’ve seen a glimpse of my proposal above). I have to admit that I’ve never reviewed literature on game violence research and found it insightful to learn about biases and politics involved that are especially distinct in observation: if games can aid in learning and teach good things, why simultaneously they will be considered absolutely neutral in regard to teaching bad things. My new, general, and probably greatly biased thoughts on this account are as follows.

I am conscious of the nature of skepticism in that observation, but can remember only very-very few games that actually “teach” bad things, meaning encourage them. If violence is present in games but is punished or regarded as a disgusting act (what is mostly the case; even if you chose “bad” path in the game, you don’t get attractive results or tapping on the shoulder; if you find destruction and tears, and pure power attractive, isn’t it your nature? if the game gave you a choice, isn’t it your choice? but I digress...), than game can mostly teach things about punishment and violence’s disgusting nature. At the same time people put a great effort in designing good teaching tools, and research, and debate a lot on how to do it; so, if we consider that violent game teaches violence, we can, with every reason, reward its game designers with PhDs of psychology and education. ...And on the other hand we have “susceptible” child’s psyche (“bad” path is easier, I always follow it in games, let me try it in the real life) and factor of getting used to things (there are so much violence on the screen, I can easily stand one more case in the real life) that are themselves full of contradictions. On the grounds of my opinion (sounds even too academically :) ) I would suggest that maybe researchers don’t need to learn so diligently from each other — those who study games as violence promoters and those who study teaching tools in the form of games — but rather apply their research methods to see how games do as right-things promoters and games as a form of having fun, respectfully. In my view, these studies differ greatly and the term “teaching” has to be used cautiously, that is why in one of the cases I chose to use “promotion”.

Last-minute observations

My initial crisis with the SSHRC proposal was that I felt it covered too broad a topic. It also seemed to me that a large-scale, mixed method approach (while ideal in my opinion) would be completely unrealistic for small-scale research. To remedy the situation, I reduced the scope of my research to a relatively small, specialized population.

I felt that a semi-structured interview was the most “suitable” for the kind of qualitative research I was thinking of. However, as a result, I feel that I'm in a position where my potential findings could be interpreted as “lacking generalizability” or, as Luker puts it, “spurious!” For a long time I was questioning whether or not it would be a struggle to draw greater implications from the potential research results, but I think addressing significance and specifying questions helped to alleviate that fear.

For me, the theme of the Kline article seemed to be that research is interpreted differently depending on the audience, and can be rendered subjectively insubstantial through this process. It seemed quite relevant to the concerns I had about my SSHRC proposal, because my topic also deals with legal battles around media freedom!

-Martin

(Re)shaping the question

My primary area of interest – other than archival studies – is English literature, and in particular Shakespeare and the English Renaissance. When writing my research proposal, the greatest difficulty that I found was how to articulate my interests, which are literary (and therefore belong more to the ‘humanities’ school) in nature, within the framework of the social sciences. In particular, the methodology section was confusing, as I am used to thinking of ‘the method’ as simply reading a text, thinking about what the work says, researching the criticism that has been written about the work, and then attempting to contribute to the scholarly tradition with my own analysis. I thus found myself having to think of how the project, originally entirely theoretical, might have some practical applications which could be researched and established through a more ‘sociological’ approach.

Overall, however, I found the experience of writing a SSHRC proposal extremely rewarding. In particular, it helped me to refine my interests and general objective. I will try to use this approach again (if I am ever put again in the position), when I write literary criticism. By thinking of how my analysis can be applied to practical, real-world questions, I should be able to present my work in a more convincing shape.

Interpretive research

In reading (most) of the Kline article, I was reminded of my undergrad that I did in theatre and film studies. Audience research was often referenced, but I remember profs complaining that there was never enough audience research and it was never conclusive.
Then I was reminded of my research proposal that I had just completed. It is essentially a bastardized (can I say that?) version of an audience research study. I'm looking to see how internet usage affects the identities of 36 women, comparing digital natives with non-digital natives.

I know that internet usage is exponentially more interactive than passively taking in a film or tv show, but there is still individual meaning-making going on. My aim, to look at the diversity of reponses of two particular groups to one cultural artifact...the internet, is similar to that of audience analysis. And I'm using a survey, focus groups and interviews with participants to inform my research, which are all methods of audience analysis.
Some of the complaints against these methods are that they are overly 'interpretive', and...well...they are. But how else can you measure feelings and responses? Some things just aren't easily quantifiable, that's why the 'media effects' debate that Kline investigates is still raging, it's impossible to directly link personal meaning-making with generalized causal effects.

So how can I make my study seem more substantial than me just asking 36 women about their feelings? Luker comes to the rescue, as she often does, with the suggestion that we can choose a sample "in such a way that logically, if not statistically we can generalize to some larger population" (pg. 125). While my particular study will not yield results applicable to the world as a whole, it would not be unsubstantiated to say that it may be generalizable to technologically active women in Toronto, Canada, maybe even North America. There is no reason not to believe that the 36 women chosen at random from around Toronto are not typical of the rest of the country. This puts the onus on the critic to disprove that logic...which comforts me.

Visual Research

On last Friday, I had attended Visualization Workshop organised by Eleonore and Jennette which was based on Gauntlett’s visual sociology methods. We built clay models of our research idea and explore with each other. This exercise facilitates more abstract thinking and more direct communication. Our research work is to develop a system for clay modeling supporting ways of interaction that are easy, intuitive and pleasant. Clay modelling helps to express our response and exchange of verbal information. It was interesting to see different approaches used to specify the visual research. This led to attempts to clarify, reframe and explore the research.

Visual Research is a wide variety of technical and creative expertise.Visual Research features a powerful blend of talented people and the latest technology allowing us to bring a compelling visual style to each project while maintaining the highest levels of reliability and security.Visual Research has been researching Internet traffic virtually from the beginning. The tools available for analysis today are very advanced and can be customized to detail every movement.

Online Research Methods

My research idea prompts me to conduct a considerable amount of my research work via the internet. Therefore keeping with the various discussions going on regarding various methods I decided to write about this special but increasingly important and interesting form of researching.

Internet has facilitated and arguably stimulated a trend towards research by ‘ordinary’ citizens (though there remains the need of learning social research methodology); just like it has made possible expressing individual ideas, developing new software, creating a new culture and so on by the masses. Online research methods are gaining popularity by the day even for professional researchers and it surrounds the process of researching in, on, and through the internet. “One of the striking things about online research methods is their versatility and their range. Researchers from many disciplines, with varying methodological preferences, deploy a wide range of online research methods to an impressive variety of research problems” (Lee et.al.). However, a research design has to be constructed that would help in generating reliable and valid data. There are various kinds of Internet or online surveys like web surveys and email. Virtual ethnography concerns applying ethnographic approaches and sensibilities to the study of online environments looking especially into the economic, social and political contexts within which online activity takes place. Blogs, networking sites, online interviews and focus groups can all provide channels to looking into such multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs). The internet also happens to preserve and provide an access to a large amount of data being archived in data sources of a size and complexity impossible for any one researcher to assemble on their own. Digital traces left behind by our electronic interactions are just one of the ways in which data is being created and it is very much an ongoing process. The huge archival resources of information on the net are not fixed, time-bound, geographically limited; are contributed/distributed by multi-user; and valuable to researchers from a wide variety of disciplines and interests. There exists a large volume of software today for developing, conducting and analyzing the data in the semantic web, for mapping networks and examining network properties, for data warehousing and data mining and other technologies, techniques and procedures. Keeping in mind the ethical implications of technological change especially privacy and confidentiality the internet with its ever growing repository of information and data has emerged as having a singular potential for ongoing social research.

Adapted from “The Internet as a Research Medium” by Raymond M. Lee, Nigel Fielding, Grant Blank.

Confusing the Map for the Terrain

It was something abut Luker’s discussion of generalization that clicked for me this week. All this time, while I have been struggling with a scope/frame/focus, I’ve been neurotic about leaving an important aspect out of my research, studying things out of their context. To cover my bases, consequently, my research daisy had every discipline attached to it, my clay model included pretty much everyone in the world, and my research question kept branching out into a horribly complex question tree.

But I’ve realized something during these past two weeks about small-scale research: it was never meant to be a forum to test my theory directly. Rather, I have to study a manifestation of it, something concrete. 

In my case, I’ve been trying to construct a test to research the generalization that ‘the visual design of information is a powerful venue.’ I needed to approach this from the other end, however, and study a particular ‘case study’ that illustrates this generalization. With this basis, I can ‘logically’ generalize (as Luker reminds us is equal to the canonical’s ‘statistically’ generalization).

This might sound simple and obvious, to be honest, I’m not sure why its taken me this long to figure it out. I think I just got so caught up with making something ‘relevant’ I immediately went to these grand sweeping theories. While Luker discusses the importance of abstracting the study to make it relatable, I had to concretize my abstraction to make it study-able. It's a weird thing to get so caught up building a map that you forget about the terrain. I’m glad I found land again though, just in time for assignment 2 :)

The Importance of Limits

I am not doing a thesis. It feels sometimes like I'm the only one in class who isn't, because it seems that most people have great, well thought out, clear research projects, unlike me. I never realized how difficult it would be to come up with a research project completely on my own, which is what I'm having to do for this SSHRC proposal. Without a pre-planned project, this mock proposal is essentially an exercise in imagination: what I would do research on, if I had the desire to do a thesis. Because I have no foundation of already-done research or a plan for a future SSHRC proposal, it's been difficult to rein in my interests into one potential research project, seeing as I am not constrained by research guidelines or course material. At the beginning I thought it would be awesome, to do whatever research project I wanted. But when you have unlimited space to work in, it gets difficult to find that one small thing you want to focus on.
This process gets even more difficult as the research process begins, because (as I mentioned previously) I have a tendency to get of track with my research - whatever catches my eye, I have a need to follow, sometimes until the original topic of my project is almost forgotten. Without a clear idea of what I'm researching, or at least with an idea that's very malleable and up to my own discretion, any source I find that is only halfway related to my topic but nonethless seems interesting, I will follow. I guess this project will be, for me, an exercise in self-discipline, as I force myself to finally focus on one thing and follow one track to the end.

The Visualization Workshop

On Friday, a few students met in the Inforum to take part in a hands-on visualization workshop, based on Gauntlett's visual sociology methods. As many of you know, we built clay models of our research ideas in order to externalize our proposal and share it with other students for feedback.

The following agenda was used: introductions, icebreaker, research visualization and debrief. The icebreaker consisted of asking each participant to build her favorite animal our of clay. This stage was very interesting as each person created a unique model with a very personal story attached to it. The trust and comfort this created set the stage for the more complex research visualization stage.

Although there were no rules given to how literal or abstract the model had to be, it was interesting to see different approaches. Some people kept to quite literal figures (virtual library = a person with a computer), others resorted to conventional signs (money = dollar sign) while others kept to incoherent figures that could not be read without explanations (balls of clay representing people). Each student explained her research idea in detail, and the conceptualization was critically examined by the other students. This led to attempts to clarify, reframe and explore the research.

Clay proved to be an effective medium. While it was perhaps more intimidating than lego at first, requiring students to be more artistic than some of them might be used to, after the icebreaker students seemed much more at ease. It was commented at the end of the workshop that clay is much more flexible and tactile than lego, which lends itself to linear structures. All in all, we concluded that this method could be useful both in the practical setting (community workshops) and the academic setting (research).

Thank you to all who participated!

Ones proposals inspiring others

Reading examples of SSHRC proposals interestingly gave me good exposure to sociological research methods. In the course we are still only starting to explore vast variety of them and trying to apply interviews to the needs of my enquiry made me think that I can successfully use them but that they are not the main and far not the only tool I need. Also Luke almost convinced me to look for a “juicy case” where my semi-ethnographical research will bring to light exactly those elements and processes in the world I am curious about. Along with all that I felt that I need either experiments or prototyping, but without doubt something that can test a practical side of my research and developments that result out of a part of it. Several SSHRC proposals gave me an answer (I think so at this stage) in such a terms or phrases like “test-case” and “research will take place in the context of the development of a tool”. Their meaning for me resides in possibility to in a way create a case myself and study it, turning one of the research components into preparatory phase where I try to more deeply understand what needs are there and how my system will address them. And yes, system. I am very glad to finally see a way how I can pursue my chosen path of Information systems in this course without being too theoretical and exploring ways of designing them better.

One more thing to say about read SSHRC proposals: they turned to be very diverse, which freed me from worrying about number of citations, complexity of language, and size of the allotted place to different sections. The other thing is now outlined for me as more important and even advisably necessary, and simultaneously so simple and obvious: making an accessible and interesting story/statement about my research interest and demonstrating a question with a potential answer bringing a useful outcome.

Music SSHRC Proposal

Since I'm tearing my hair out trying to get this research proposal to make any sense, I figure for this weeks blog I will deconstruct the hardcopy SSHRC proposal example that I have and am currently using as the template for mine. Maybe it will help me to break it down further. And other people wrote about their proposal examples :)

I like this proposal because it is broken down into very clearly labelled subheadings: Program of Study Statement, Context, Objectives, Methodology and Contribution to the advancement of knowledge. A nice clear template that I can use for mine.

Program of Study Statement: This person is a fellow master's student with a passion for music. She/he wishes to use their own experience with music to inform their proposed research of how musical knowledge is being transmitted through the use of information communication technologies.
-it sounds like this person has a keen interest and know-how on the subject matter

Context: They then go on to write about where they came up with the idea, what relevant courses they've taken and a current collaboration with a specific professor in the field. Other research that discusses issues in the same realm but are different than the proposed research are also mentioned.
-I'm having a problem with this section as I have no names to drop, I feel like naming a professor you have already set up a working relationship with would give you more authenticity (brownie points). Since I'm not actually applying for a SSHRC, maybe I can make it up to sound more convincing?

Objectives: This is where the applicant discusses the focus of the research: where, what, who. What they want to understand from the research and the concepts that they are going to apply to their research. Also, they discuss what they are going to do with their findings.
-I have no concrete concepts of which to apply, in fact I'm a little foggy on what exactly that means. The concepts that this applicant mentions are not discusessed in any detail nor linked to any actual part of the research. This bodes well for me as I excel at being vague.

Methodology: Here is where the applicant informs us about the methods they will be using to conduct the research. This person prefers an ethnographic approach. They state how they are going to document the research both in real life and online. They state again who their testing group will be.
-this part was actually okay for me...I think. However I got confused in the proposal example when they cited a name after every method, do we actually know who made up the unstructured intereview?

Contribution to the advancement of knowledge: This section is exactly what it says it is.
-I'm having trouble with this section...

All in all I thought this proposal was interesting, but not super ground-breaking, which actually gave me hope for mine. I like that they mentioned Paco de Lucia in it.