Speaking with things: encoded researchers, social data, and other posthuman concoctions

Abstract

We apply our heuristics for ‘interviewing’ non-human research participants to the digital things of qualitative research itself: recording devices, data analysis software, and other sociomaterial concoctions recruited at different stages of contemporary research projects. We suggest that these ‘inorganic organized’ entities participate as co-researchers that inevitably extend but also disrupt research practice and knowledge construction, introducing new tensions and contradictions. Counterpointing phenomenology and Actor Network Theory, we usher some of the hidden and coded materialities of research practice into view, and glimpse unexpected realities co-enacted. Such immersive entanglements raise ethical questions about the posthumanist fluencies now demanded in social science research practice, and we outline several considerations.

Keywords:

• actor network theory
• coded materialities
• interviewing objects
• phenomenology
• posthumanist fluencies
• qualitative research
• sociomateriality

Notes on contributors

Catherine Adams (PhD) is an Associate Professor, Faculty of Education and Coordinator, Masters of Technology in Education program at the University of Alberta, Canada. Drawing on links between phenomenology, philosophy of technology, pedagogy, and media scholarship, Dr. Adams' main research program addresses digital media technology integration across K-12 and post-secondary educational settings; ethical and pedagogical issues involving digital media in schools.

Terrie Lynn Thompson (PhD) is currently a Lecturer in Digital Media in the School of Education at the University of Stirling, Scotland, UK. She recently completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Centre for Distance Education at Athabasca University in Canada. Her research focuses on how professional work-learning practices and pedagogical spaces are changing globally as web and mobile technologies increasingly infuse work and everyday life routines. Her research explores questions of digital inclusion/exclusion, digital fluencies, and the politics of technology.

Notes

1 Both Adams and Thompson contributed equally (‘50%’) to the writing of this article, as was the case in Adams & Thompson (2011). While the ‘equal contribution’ (EC) norm – whereby authors are listed in ‘alphabetical sequence to acknowledge similar contributions’ (Tscharntke et al., 2007, e18) – is a helpful convention, we worry that over time this may inappropriately highlight one author's contribution over another's. Thus, our preference is to alternate order as one method to acknowledge equivalent contributions.

2 The term ‘in vivo’ – Latin for ‘within the living’ – is more commonly used in microbiology to distinguish between different types of experimentation with living cells and organisms (cf. ex vivo and in vitro), and can be traced back to Glaser and Strauss's (1967) grounded theory.