I’m on the radio tonight, talking about children’s books. Among the many hats researchers wear is that of storyteller, so I thought I’d look at the different stories research ends up telling.
The Bedtime Story: Comforting, safe, and familiar - it’s a story you’ve heard a hundred times before, simply told, with lots of nice chunky illustrations. Very useful for an audience who’ve already decided what they want to do and just need a bit of confidence. Aww.
Yesterday Faris Yakob put up a blog post, “All Research Is Wrong”. It’s worth reading partly because - like all the best blogs - there’s a lot of meat in the comments section (and Faris - like all the best bloggers - gives as good as he gets). The arguments in the main post aren’t unfamiliar and aren’t wrong: we don’t know why we do what we do, and there’s a huge gap between what people say they do and what they actually do.
Remarkably enough, market researchers are already aware of these things, and react with a certain amount of eye-rolling whenever we see them presented as astonishing revelations. When I was but a tiny researcher I remember learning how an awful lot of the techniques we use are attempts to get beyond direct questioning and towards deeper “truths” for exactly this reason.
I was delighted to find out this morning that my synopsis for the Festival of New MR - “Game On: How game mechanics are changing the consumer world, and how researchers can play” - has been voted onto the Main Stage at the festival. I had a hunch it would be of interest, and it seems I was right: thanks to anyone who voted for me, especially given the incredibly high quality of papers submitted. You can see the line up so far at NewMR.org
Now for the - enormously pleasant and stimulating! - job of actually pulling together the bunch of notes, sources, ideas etc. I have for the presentation. I’ll be using this blog to try out some of the ideas as I go.
The Festival of New MR, a virtual research conference organised by Ray Poynter and others, has closed its submissions process - all the presentation synopses are up now. There will be a voting process soon apparently, but meanwhile the list is a fine showcase of where researchers’ heads are at right now.
I have a synopsis in consideration myself, but I thought it would be nice to highlight the summaries I think are most exciting or intriguing from the current list. I’ve left off mine (obviously!) and also anything I’ve already seen at a conference (which includes some great ones). And this is a list which caters to my own peculiar tastes in research work, so if you’re not on it, that certainly doesn’t mean I thought your paper was under-par or boring! (And I’m not on the festival committee so it hardly matters anyhow!)
So - in order of appearance on the synopsis page, my top 13 - it could easily have been 25, but I have a pub to go to:
I spent a few hours the other day exploring Formspring and how people – teenagers, mostly – were using it. I was keen to do this for two reasons. First off, Formspring is a site based on the very simple principle of people asking each other questions, and I work in an industry based on us asking people questions. So I thought I might learn something.
Secondly, Formspring has the reputation for being a conduit for cyber-bullying. As a parent, and a friend of other parents, who knows a bit about social media, I’m quite keen to stay informed about this – even though (touch wood) I’m a decade off having to worry about it directly.
So here’s what I found out, from both these perspectives. A couple of quick caveats: this is not a proper research project or anything like it. I’m not an ethnographer or anthropologist, I’m just browsing and hypothesising. And I’m not going to quote or link to any of the Formspring pages I looked at: I’m paraphrasing what was written there, and you’ll just have to take my word for things.
I have been putting together proposals for upcoming Market Research conferences.*
For Ray Poynter’s Festival of New MR I’ve pitched a paper/presentation about gaming and game mechanics. I have colleagues who’ve been doing interesting stuff in this area and I’ve been promising myself to develop the “surveys are videogames” ideas I was blogging about for Research last year. I have loads of ideas and will be canvassing support for this (so be warned!).
For the MRS conference next spring I’m pitching a workshop and/or paper with the very awesome Nick Gadsby on Nerd Culture - RPGs, fandoms, “extreme communities”, and so on. This is very self-indulgent - Nick and I have been plotting this at every conference party for the last 2 or 3 years - but there’s a serious point behind it, which is the hypothesis that researchers have been looking in the wrong places (at least partly) when trying to understand ideas of cool, cultural transmission, trends etc. Again, more on this to come whether or not it gets accepted, I’d guess!
*I have a personal rule about these events which is that I never - if I can help it - submit the same proposal or talk about the same thing twice. I recycle individual points and slides but I try and make sure the thrust of the presentation is new each time. This is not because I think this is the best way of doing things - there’s little more engaging than seeing a slick presenter in full command of his material - but because I have a low attention span and like to improvise a bit.
