Research Statement
Mike Ananny
My developing research program in Stanford University’s Communication Department focuses on better
understanding how individuals and communities use forms and forums for civic communication. By "forms
and forums" I mean symbols, technologies and organizations that shape how citizens represent new ideas
and create novel associations among old ones. By "civic communication" I mean modes of discourse in which
participants are deliberative and, in some way, mindful of those not present in immediate discussions.
My proposed dissertation work is situated within a contemporary thread of Communication research that views people not just as recipients of messages, but as active creators of meaning. I claim that new media forms and forums for civic communication demand relational skills that both support and reflect large-scale organizational and institutional shifts occurring in contemporary democratic cultures. I am investigating how technologies and cultures co-construct rituals of citizenship that define fundamental concepts of political culture, for example, notions of representation and constituency. When do people choose to exercise public voice and when do they let others speak for them? By understanding how citizens themselves construct, adopt and appropriate tools and techniques for communication, old and new media become lenses through which to see civic development.
This framing is in its early stages but aims to address questions like:
- How do particular forms of representation (e.g. public narratives versus opinion polls) support different kinds of civic conversations and to what extent do representations serve both strategic and expressive functions?
- How do creators of civic communication use media to imagine, design for and construct publics?
- How are designers and system administrators of civic forms and forums de facto political representatives and how do they articulate notions of representative responsibility?
- What opportunities do non-designers ("mere" participants or constituents) have to dissent or rebel against the organizational and technological forms designed to support their civic communication?
Methodologically, I plan to conduct fieldwork in communities that are actively creating, adopting and appropriating forms and forums for civic communication. I anticipate constructing comparative case studies among communities that differ in their civic traditions, uses of communication technologies, cultural contexts, demographic characteristics and stages of media creation or use. Field sites have not yet been identified but may include locations as diverse as town council meetings, globally distributed bloggers and wiki authors, NGO collective action groups, or citizen journalists. I have a particular interest in understanding traditionally isolated civic cultures (e.g. native communities in northern Canada wanting voice in federal discourse), how they conduct civic discourse within their communities and how they connect to groups with whom they have traditionally not had relationships.
My broad aim in this dissertation is to understand how we -- as designers, participants, authors, audiences and constituents -- make sense of our public roles and identities as we practise and perform civic communication.