Integrating OnlineOffline Activities: Instant Messaging

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Integrating Online/Offline Activities Instant
Messaging

• Pre-conference Workshop Presented at NCTEAR 2005
  Midwinter Conference
• Columbus, Ohio
• Gloria E. Jacobs
• St. John Fisher College
• Rochester, NY

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Research Question

• What are the language and literacy practices of
  adolescents as they use instant messaging?
• What is the object(s) or goal(s) of Lisa and her
  friends as they engage in the various instant
  messaging practices?
• What participation roles are available to Lisa
  and her friends as they engage in the various
  instant messaging practices?
• What language and literacy rules are constituted
  and reconstituted during an instant messaging
  session?
• What is the outcome of the interaction of these
  roles, rules, and objects?

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Framework

• Instant messaging is a locally situated social
  practice.
• As such it is necessary to develop a study that
  focuses on the local use of instant messaging
  while developing an understanding of the large
  societal contexts in which the instant messaging
  occurs
• Additionally, it becomes necessary to consider
  online and offline activities as constituting the
  local.

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Research Design

• Ethnographic Case Study
• Participants
• Lisa 15-17 years old, female, White,
  middle-class
• Five of her friends. Same age. 2 males, 3
  females, 4 White, 1 Puerto Rican/Jewish, all
  middle-class
• All attend public high school in a urban district
• Arts Magnet High (Lisa, Samantha, Tonya, Jenny,
  Max)
• Science Magnet High (Ben, Brianna)
• Setting
• Den in Lisas home
• City neighborhood

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IRB and Consent Issues

• Permissions and Assents attained face-to-face
• Anonymity not an issue
• All participants had face-to-face relationships
• Participants informed of researcher presence
  whenever online activity was being videotaped
• Pseudonyms assigned to given names and screen
  names
• Two participants changed screen names in the
  middle of the study

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Data Collection

• In order to situate instant messaging in local
  and global contexts
• 15 hours of observations/field notes of instant
  message sessions
• 14 hours videotape of online activity
• 4 hours videotape of offline activity
• 3 observations/field notes of non-instant message
  activity
• 4 face-to-face formal interviews
• 4 instant message interviews
• 1 face-to-face focus group
• 1 virtual focus group
• 132 Away Messages
• 7 Profiles
• 4 Instant Messaging Session Logs
• 11 samples of writing done for school
• 18 articles from popular press

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Videotaping

• Two cameras
• One focused on computer screen to capture online
  activity
• One focused on Lisa to capture offline activity
• Lost data when offline camera broke
• Still able to capture some offline data by using
  audio cues and field notes

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Transcription

• Frame by frame transcription of online activity
  to capture
• Composing, Corrections, deletions, revisions
• Interruptions
• Management of turn-taking
• Transcription of physical (offline) activities
  including (where available) body language, facial
  expressions, vocal intonations, pauses, other
  activities (such as telephone conversations)
• Integrated online/offline activities using
  multi-column formats in various arrangements
  depending upon what I wanted to
  foreground/background
• For details refer to
• Jacobs, G. (2004). Complicating contexts Issues
  of methodology in researching the language and
  literacies of instant messaging. Reading Research
  Quarterly, 39(4), 394-406.

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Transcription Conventions

• Bracket indicates one utterance interrupted by
  posting from an online interlocutor or offline
  activity
• ? indicates backspace used to delete letter
• Transcription conventions borrowed from
  Conversation Analysis (Atkinson Heritage, 1984)
  to document qualities of offline talk

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Saturation

• As the study progressed, ongoing analysis
  indicated that Lisas instant messaging was
  changing as she changed.
• Therefore I did not expect nor achieve the point
  of theoretical or data saturation.
• Rather than attempting to reach saturation, I
  found that the multiple data sources and the
  knowledge gained from my ongoing relationship
  with Lisas mother and my own participation in
  instant messaging provided sufficient data to
  meet Ericksons (1986) evidentiary warrants.

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Coding and Analysis

• Open coding
• Categories of instant messaging use
• Attitudes toward instant messaging
• A priori codes informed by

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Issues Identity IM Use

• Simultaneously broaden and focus populations
• Developmental (Age) issues
• Longitudinal studies
• Gender issues
• Male/male conversations
• Socioeconomic class
• Race/ethnicity
• School achievement
• Disabilities

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Research

• Applying this method of data collection to
  understanding the composition process.
• Greater understandings of what happens across
  time/space/place.

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Pedagogy

• How can teachers use what we know about
  adolescent use of digital literacies in the
  literacy instruction?