February 8, 2010
Just like the tortoise in the story of the tortoise and the hare, I am slowly but surely working toward my goal of plotting information in the table that will function as a snapshot of my research. At present, I am still plotting information, quotes and ideas in the generation category.
The most difficult part of this task is (more…)
February 2, 2010
Now I am tasked with categorizing my research. This is always a difficult task for me because it forces me to remove my analysis from the equation and simply chart my knowledge. This sounds like a fairly straightforward process but for an ever-wandering mind the process of slowing down is both a challenge and a necessity.
I realize that there is still a lot of creativity in an exercise of categorization because the categories are largely determined by my process of sorting through the information. My tendency to bring together disparate topics, in this case generation as a social phenomenon and the phenomenon of the digital divide, makes categorization anything but self-evident. Ultimately, I think that my analysis will centre around comparing and contrasting of the ‘gaps.’ On the side of generations we are dealing with a ‘generation gap’ which tends to characterize groups of people based on which generation they belong to, largely defined by age. On the other side is the knowledge gap referring to the digital divide.
One thing that is clear is that these names suggest that both the generation and the digital have/have-nots are bisected in their respective categories. It is precisely this type of dyadic argument that provides me with the leveraging point to begin to chip away at the existing frame surrounding these issues.
Plotting my knowledge into a grid formation will help to more clearly communicate my information to others and will help me to identify emergent themes in the research. Furthermore, it will help to illustrate where there are gaps in either my own research or in the existing literature.
Below is my first attempt at identifying the main categories related to my research. Over the coming days, I will start filling in the grid with my references and quotes. I expect that things will be added, changed, deleted and sleep lost as part of this process.
| Generations | Digital Divide | Analysis | ||
| Theme | Issue | |||
| Institutions | Workplace | |||
| Educational institutions | ||||
| Family | ||||
| Youth | ||||
| Aging | ||||
| Membership and boundaries | Inclusion | |||
| Exclusion | ||||
| Nation-state | ||||
| Economics | ||||
| Psychology and communications | ||||
| Nation state | ||||
| Resources – another way to identify this is as “experiences,” these can be spatial, temporal |
January 29, 2010
The table below is a quick (and unpolished) summary comparison of the generation concept and the digital divide. I would like to try and map this out in a more visual way because I think that many of these issues are interconnected. The side-by-side presentation does not give a clear illustration of how these issues are interrelated. (more…)
