Sungsoo's Questions

Questions (10/18)

Q1. As Stuart Hall says in Grossberg interview, modernism and post-modernism are essentially and wholly based on western constructs. How can the people who do not have experience of modernity or Society that have not reached to the modernity be analyzed by the perspective of postmodernism?

Q2. In these context postmodernists are based on the perspective of linear and developmental historical assumptions: modernism and postmodernism in time series. This character seems to let modernist to have a kind of historical goal: criticize and overcome the capitalistic oppression.

Q3. As Marcus notes (p509), the “hackers’ may have produced some of meanings such “nobleness,” “creativity,”, or their anti-institutional logic overwhelms the possibility of this objection being given legitimate voice in the early 1990s, is it still in effective today?

Q4. Fursich’s suggestion on text-only analysis that we need more flexible research method seems to me very interesting articles. I agree on his notion that textual analysis has to evaluate media content in its own right as a creative (and often collaboratively-produced) moment in the circuit of culture often beyond the intentions of the actual producers. Accordingly, media content is not just raw material that can only be authenticated in specific audience readings (p 246). I think that traditional cultural studies can be fall into the fallacy that the media running by capitalist have absolute power over the audience: Owell’s Big Brother or Hobbs’ modern version of Leviathan.


Q5. As van Dijk notes, most of our knowledge and beliefs about the world derives from news reports. However not all information that enables us to deal with the reality comes from media: we are living in reality, that is, we interact with the nature and society, not just reading or viewing or surfing. Many deviants come from the information-controlled country such as Soviet in the past or North Korea today say that people do not believe government-running media, maybe only media they can read or view, it show the limit of the media: media is not all-mighty.

Questions (10/11)

Q1. Potter points out that it is important for researchers to maintain marginality- a distance between themselves and that what is being studied. However he notes that it cannot be answered in general manner that which way is better than others. He just shows three available options: passive observer, active participant, and active observer (p 102~103). In my opinion, the stance which the researchers choose affects the conclusion. So we need established standard for choosing adequate research activity to obtain validity of qualitative research.

Q2. Potter notes that qualitative approach essentially relies on three types of evidence-gathering methods: document examination, interview, and observation (p 95). Some qualitative works which based on document examination argue that their researches are analyzing macro level. How can these kinds of research be justified?

Q3. Regarding to researcher identification (p 100~101), can deception be justified in term of academic ethic?

Q4. Potter notes that good conceptual leverage lies in the correspondence between evidence and conclusions (p 129). How about the researches of the critical scholars who usually use a high level of inference, such as Schiller who argues broad changes in culture as a result of corporate control of media or Meehan who argues that the industries are only providing “artifacts” that are designed to assemble the consumerist cast for measurement and sale? Do they use adequate conceptual leverage?

Q5. In chapter 9, Potter introduces the 20 possible methods analysis in qualitative approach. His conclusion is that method is tool so they acquire their value according to how useful they are in helping the researcher move from evidence to conclusions. In my opinion, the methods tend to decide conclusion, so Potter should have been more critical to deal with each methods: what is strong and what is weak point of each methods.