Wonderful World of Academia: Let's try this thesis thing again.
So I had a meeting with my thesis advisor today and it went... eh, it went.
Alright, it went okay. I told him what I already have - theoretic background is set, content analysis of Stargate and HALO stuff is done - and what I'm still lacking - the actual sociological content, which, given that it's supposed to be a sociological thesis, is kind of... not good - and told him of the difficulties I was having with said sociological part.
We discussed a few approaches since the one that seemed the closest to go to - quantitative research, surveys, the whole shebang - would actually have been the hardest to realize. The longer I looked at it, the clearer it became that the only way I could work it in the context of the thesis would be quick and dirty, which really, really rubbed me the wrong way so I rather wanted to go without any quantitative at all than do some sloppy, half assed thing that I will regret the moment I start writing it. Problem was: what the hell am I gonna do instead?
I batted around maybe using the Master's thesis as some kind of preliminary research for a possible bigger research... thingy (mainly, something involving the three letters P, h and D again), but as we have established before, I'm not considering this three letter thing (I'm saying that a lot for someone who isn't considering it, ain't I?) so...
Wait, where was I?
Oh, right, approaches. So my usual MO would be to do an outline on how I would go about it if I were to do an actual quantitative analysis but honestly? That only gets you so far and it really gets boring after a while. And we do not want our academia to be boring, right? Right.
Anyway, long story short, after a bit of going back and forth with my advisor, he had the genius, and it really is genius, idea of turning the whole thing kind of upside down. Or, as he phrased it, look at it from a different angle. See, I mentioned to him that I did a short poll on the matter on here and that the one thing that stuck out to me was that basically everyone, even the people who said they watched shows like Stargate and JAG - shows with female soldiers in them - didn't think that those shows had any impact on how they view real female soldiers. I told him that I thought it was because the questions were to point-blank and that in an actual survey, I'd have to go differently about it, more indirect questions etc. and he agreed that yeah, that wouldn't work for a Master's thesis.
He also said that maybe what we should look at transference, meaning in this case the transfer from fictional material to reality. I then mentioned that apparently, my one mistake with the poll I took here was assuming that watching shows with female soldiers automatically led to being interested in real female soldiers because you know, that's what happened with me (okay, not precisely. I was interested in female soldiers before getting into Stargate and JAG and M*A*S*H but watching it really got me interested in US female soldiers. Eh, and look where I am now with that). My advisor suggested then that we don't look at what fans think of real female soldiers, but rather at what might them make think about them.
Basically, my new working hypothesis is that there are several groups of fans, such as casual fans who like to consume but keep out of fandoms, people tapping into fandom and its sharing economy and the metas and stuff, people who very actively participate in fandom with creating fanfiction, fanart, metas, etc. and that those fangroups go about the source material differently. Mainly, what I'm looking at here is the intensity they devote to the source material, as in, how much do they research in-universe source, how much do they research real world facts and issues if they're contributing to the fandom share economy in any way, that kind of thing. So the idea is that the more intense a person views and works with the fictional source material and they more involved they are in the active and creative aspects of fandom, the more likely it is that they might also care about the real world versions of the issues played out in the source material (that is, the more a person gets into say Stargate fandom, and the more they write fanfic, metas, etc., the more likely it is that they keep starting to get an idea of the real world version of say... female soldiers, as in female soldiers in combat, the challenges female soldiers face in the very male dominated world of the military, etc.).
My advisor suggested doing something kind of like a discourse analysis with looking into online discussions and blog entries made by fans about the source material, to see if and how they relate issues in the source material to their pendants in the real worlds, to see if anything carries over from their dealing with fictional source material into caring about related real world issues.
The only problem I have is that I'm not sure if maybe this whole transferring issues in fictional source material to real world issues isn't rather something recent or if it's not so much how much a person gets into the source material but rather how bold and directly a fictional product deals with real world issues (case in point: Scandal. Like, Grant's first presidency is basically Obama's second presidency. Shonda Rhimes wrote a lot of stuff into Scandal, especially in the later seasons, that looked like it was written right off the news cycle. Equal marriage rights, police brutality against black men, abortion, military sexual trauma... #IStandWithMellie, for heaven's sake! It's like she didn't even care about coding it or rewriting it so it might fit her narrative. Instead, she bent her narrative to fit with current issues. That's some really good shit, right there. Sadly, I'm not gonna get to write that sentence into my paper. Unless I quote myself. Mh...) and how much in the face it gets with its viewers. Um. Any ideas about that?
So, err, yes, new angle on my thesis, one I can actually work with (since it involves zero surveys. Yay!). Finally, it seems like I'm actually moving forward with this whole academic stuff and man, am I relieved about that. And no, that's not because I am now supposed to actually, really write a giant seventy page meta on fandom. That has nothing to do with it, I swear. No, really.
And with that... I'm off to bed. Ta ta!
Alright, it went okay. I told him what I already have - theoretic background is set, content analysis of Stargate and HALO stuff is done - and what I'm still lacking - the actual sociological content, which, given that it's supposed to be a sociological thesis, is kind of... not good - and told him of the difficulties I was having with said sociological part.
We discussed a few approaches since the one that seemed the closest to go to - quantitative research, surveys, the whole shebang - would actually have been the hardest to realize. The longer I looked at it, the clearer it became that the only way I could work it in the context of the thesis would be quick and dirty, which really, really rubbed me the wrong way so I rather wanted to go without any quantitative at all than do some sloppy, half assed thing that I will regret the moment I start writing it. Problem was: what the hell am I gonna do instead?
I batted around maybe using the Master's thesis as some kind of preliminary research for a possible bigger research... thingy (mainly, something involving the three letters P, h and D again), but as we have established before, I'm not considering this three letter thing (I'm saying that a lot for someone who isn't considering it, ain't I?) so...
Wait, where was I?
Oh, right, approaches. So my usual MO would be to do an outline on how I would go about it if I were to do an actual quantitative analysis but honestly? That only gets you so far and it really gets boring after a while. And we do not want our academia to be boring, right? Right.
Anyway, long story short, after a bit of going back and forth with my advisor, he had the genius, and it really is genius, idea of turning the whole thing kind of upside down. Or, as he phrased it, look at it from a different angle. See, I mentioned to him that I did a short poll on the matter on here and that the one thing that stuck out to me was that basically everyone, even the people who said they watched shows like Stargate and JAG - shows with female soldiers in them - didn't think that those shows had any impact on how they view real female soldiers. I told him that I thought it was because the questions were to point-blank and that in an actual survey, I'd have to go differently about it, more indirect questions etc. and he agreed that yeah, that wouldn't work for a Master's thesis.
He also said that maybe what we should look at transference, meaning in this case the transfer from fictional material to reality. I then mentioned that apparently, my one mistake with the poll I took here was assuming that watching shows with female soldiers automatically led to being interested in real female soldiers because you know, that's what happened with me (okay, not precisely. I was interested in female soldiers before getting into Stargate and JAG and M*A*S*H but watching it really got me interested in US female soldiers. Eh, and look where I am now with that). My advisor suggested then that we don't look at what fans think of real female soldiers, but rather at what might them make think about them.
Basically, my new working hypothesis is that there are several groups of fans, such as casual fans who like to consume but keep out of fandoms, people tapping into fandom and its sharing economy and the metas and stuff, people who very actively participate in fandom with creating fanfiction, fanart, metas, etc. and that those fangroups go about the source material differently. Mainly, what I'm looking at here is the intensity they devote to the source material, as in, how much do they research in-universe source, how much do they research real world facts and issues if they're contributing to the fandom share economy in any way, that kind of thing. So the idea is that the more intense a person views and works with the fictional source material and they more involved they are in the active and creative aspects of fandom, the more likely it is that they might also care about the real world versions of the issues played out in the source material (that is, the more a person gets into say Stargate fandom, and the more they write fanfic, metas, etc., the more likely it is that they keep starting to get an idea of the real world version of say... female soldiers, as in female soldiers in combat, the challenges female soldiers face in the very male dominated world of the military, etc.).
My advisor suggested doing something kind of like a discourse analysis with looking into online discussions and blog entries made by fans about the source material, to see if and how they relate issues in the source material to their pendants in the real worlds, to see if anything carries over from their dealing with fictional source material into caring about related real world issues.
The only problem I have is that I'm not sure if maybe this whole transferring issues in fictional source material to real world issues isn't rather something recent or if it's not so much how much a person gets into the source material but rather how bold and directly a fictional product deals with real world issues (case in point: Scandal. Like, Grant's first presidency is basically Obama's second presidency. Shonda Rhimes wrote a lot of stuff into Scandal, especially in the later seasons, that looked like it was written right off the news cycle. Equal marriage rights, police brutality against black men, abortion, military sexual trauma... #IStandWithMellie, for heaven's sake! It's like she didn't even care about coding it or rewriting it so it might fit her narrative. Instead, she bent her narrative to fit with current issues. That's some really good shit, right there. Sadly, I'm not gonna get to write that sentence into my paper. Unless I quote myself. Mh...) and how much in the face it gets with its viewers. Um. Any ideas about that?
So, err, yes, new angle on my thesis, one I can actually work with (since it involves zero surveys. Yay!). Finally, it seems like I'm actually moving forward with this whole academic stuff and man, am I relieved about that. And no, that's not because I am now supposed to actually, really write a giant seventy page meta on fandom. That has nothing to do with it, I swear. No, really.
And with that... I'm off to bed. Ta ta!