Directed Research Group: The COVID-19 Information Landscape (Fall 2022)

The Directed Research Group
The Covid-19 pandemic has required us to navigate a challenging information landscape. How have our institutions responded, and how have people made sense of the information provided to them? What role have search platforms played in shaping this terrain?

In this Directed Research Group, you'll conduct a content analysis on search engine results collected during the pandemic. This work builds from work conducted as part of a previous DRG in Fall 2020 and Winter 2021. These previous rounds of the DRG resulted in a paper that was presented at the International Communication Association annual conference is currently undergoing peer review at a scientific journal!

The group will be run for 3-5 excellent students interested in engaging in faculty directed research. The research group will be organized by the Community Data Science Collective by Benjamin Mako Hill and Kaylea Champion and will be conducted for UW course credit. We'll analyze the data you collect and reflect on what it can tell us about our response to the crisis.

Prerequisites: Strong reading and writing skills in the English language, a computer you can use during the project, ability to attend team meetings through an online conferencing platform, and a commitment to high-quality results are required. Willingness to work both in a team and independently is required. We strongly prefer candidates with experience in social scientific research methods (such as COM 301). Familiarity with content analysis, R, and Python are all helpful but not required.

Applying: To apply to join this DRG, submit a cover letter and resume to covid-drg@communitydata.science. The resume might contain a brief list of recent courses and any relevant work experience, the cover letter could be a description of why you'd like to participate, including your academic or career interests, or what you hope to learn. If selected, you will be able to enroll for 4-5 credits, depending on how much time you can commit to the project (for 4 credits, you commit 12 hours, for 5 credits, you commit 15 hours per week).

DRG Responsibilities and Commitments
As a DRG member, you are joining an active research project, and you are expected to learn both through information presented to you as well as through your own initiative. What you get out of this project will match what you put into it. Communication is essential to keep our collaboration smooth, and your commitment to doing good quality work is essential. We are trying to develop knowledge that will be useful to the public, and that means holding ourselves to maximum standards of accuracy and ethics. Be honest and open about what you do and always do your best: life happens to all of us and we live in interesting times. Work that's a little late is understandable especially if you communicate early and often, but work that's not your best effort can't be accepted.

Key Text
The Content Analysis Guidebook, Kimberly A. Neuendorf. SAGE Publications, Inc. (2017)

Available for free from the UW Library: https://dx-doi-org.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/10.4135/9781071802878

Week 1:
Key Question: Who are we, what are we trying to do, and how are we going to go about it?

Preparation
 * Read through this wiki page!
 * Watch | this recording of Kaylea presenting the work of the previous DRG.
 * Read the pre-print of the paper from the previous DRG (will be sent via e-mail).
 * Read this description of content analysis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_analysis
 * Bring your questions! Be ready to ask about what we're doing, how we'll do it, what we did in the previous round, etc.

Meeting Agenda
 * Introductions
 * Commitments and communication ++ time tracking
 * Content Analysis: What is it?
 * What are your questions about the paper written with the 2020 DRG?
 * Important Issue: Qualitative versus Quantitative
 * Toy Example: "What's it been like living in Seattle this September?"
 * Tour and Overview of the Data

After-Meeting To-Do Items
 * Explore the week 1 sample.
 * Brainstorm alternate/new research questions.
 * Write up one (or more) of your questions in paragraph form (see example). Feeling stuck? Check out this list of  research question gambits drawn from Andrew Abbott's Methods of Discovery: Heuristics for the Social Sciences.

Week 2:
Key Questions:

Meeting Agenda
 * Week 1 sample: what did you notice? Let's talk about data!
 * Your research question ideas

After-Meeting Follow-Up
 * Read pp. 1-2, 18-34 of Ch 1 of the online version of Neuendorf


 * Look back at your memos from the first week and read your colleagues' memos. What did they see that you didn't? Given our collective examination, what feels most important, useful, or surprising about this data?
 * There are 6 new days of data to look at. You might do a memo per day, or all days in a single memo, or some other approach: organize yourself in a way that works for you.
 * We'll follow our same memo process from last week: free write, immerse yourself in the data, make notes in multiple passes, synthesize and reflect. Remember Mako's comment that it's ok to treat your memo as a journal: cut and paste, scribble, sketch.

Week 3:
Key Question: What are we seeing in this data?

Meeting Agenda After-Meeting Follow-Up
 * Research Protocol -- what's coming up next?
 * Discuss Reading
 * Read Neuendorff, Ch 2., pp. 36-44, and Ch 3. pp 70-84. Skim the rest of Ch3.

Week 4:
Key Question: Is this working? Can we synthesize these codes into themes? Meeting Agenda
 * Open codes discussion: what did you see?
 * Prep for next phase.
 * Discuss Reading

After-Meeting Follow-Up
 * Read Neuendorff p. 139-166.

Week 5:
Key Question: Can we make a codebook out of what we've seen?

Meeting Agenda
 * Codebook production discussion
 * Discuss Reading

After-Meeting Follow-Up


 * Read Neuendorff p.169-206

Week 6:
Key Question: Is this working?

Meeting Agenda
 * Discuss your experience coding data
 * Discuss our agreement levels so far
 * Update codebook as needed
 * Discuss Reading

After-Meeting Follow-Up
 * This is Pilot Round 1, and we are entity coding for agreement
 * Read Neuendorff p. 221-230, 234-248 (through just the first paragraph)

Week 7:
Key Question Still Is: Is this working?

Meeting Agenda
 * Discuss your experience coding data
 * Discuss our agreement levels so far
 * Update codebook as needed
 * Discuss Reading

Follow-up Items
 * Read Neuendorf p. 334-340, 394-403

Week 8:
Meeting Agenda
 * Discuss coding progress

Follow-Up Items

Week 9
Meeting Agenda
 * Discuss coding progress

Follow-Up Items
 * Keep Coding

Week 10:
Complete Writing and Coding Tasks

Finals Week:

 * Revision Task
 * Dissemination Task