I had a very productive conversation last week with Eduardo in class. We talked alot about what form my final deliverable would take. He suggested that, rather than focus my final deliverable specifically on the interviews I had planned to collect within the South Bronx community, that I instead develop a type of web magazine that collects all the research I’ve done on the topic over the past year (he commented specifically that my blog had alot of interesting stuff, and that he didn’t want to see that go to waste!). Eduardo recommended my site take the form of a type of collection of Civic Tech-like experiments, where alot of the research I have been doing over the course of this semester definitely falls into that category. He suggested a type of cabinet of civic tech curios (probably because of the Museum of Jurassic Technology shirt I was wearing that day) but I’m not sure I’ll go that aesthetic route (though YOU should probably read the book about MJT by Lawrence Weschler) I’ll probably present it as a digest. The types of civic tech experiments I plan to include within the site are:
- Text/discourse analysis – using Voyant Tools, an individual and comparative analysis of corpus of texts generated from within the South Bronx and Civic Tech community
- Twitter discourse analysis – using Voyant Tools, individual and comparative analysis of twitter hashtags and accounts related to civic tech and the south bronx and technology
- Analysis of NYC 311 online service requests – Examining and analyzing 311 Online Service Request Map entries originating from the South Bronx
- NYC Open Data analysis – Exploring the amount of city provided open Wifi Hotspots in the South Bronx area
- Video Blog posts of experiences in the community (included possible interviews)
- (possible) NYC Open Data analysis – exploring the database for datasets related to the South Bronx
In addition to these experiments, the site will also feature sections describing the project and my process, a section featuring all of the links I have collected over the course of this year’s research, a section to house all the raw data I used in my analytic experiments, and a section articulating recommendations for further research.
In terms of the interviews I had planned to collect with local residents and organizations, I wouldn’t say that that component is necessarily on hold. If I am unable to conduct enough interviews, I plan to construct the South Bronx Technology corpus from posts I have found online, in a similar manner to how I have constructed the Civic Tech corpus. I would say that my focus now is bringing everything together into a presentation to show my partners at Microsoft for feedback within the Civic Tech community. I agree with Eduardo that my final deliverable shouldn’t hinge on whether or not I would be able to conduct local interviews. It should be said that my research colleagues in School of Media Studies are interested in continuing that part of the research with respect to local residents and their perceptions of technology. I am hoping to be able to gather a few interviews by the end of this semester, but if that doesn’t happen, I will definitely carry the research over into my future academic work.
