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? This quarter, our research question will focus specifically on mental health during the pandemic.

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

DRG Schedule

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 (city) this September?"
• Tour and Overview of the Data
• Research question proposal

After-Meeting To-Do Items

• Explore the week 1 sample.
• Brainstorm variations on the current research question. How would you expand/tweak/re-envision this question?
• Write up one (or more) of your variations 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 Question: When these results talk about mental health, what do they talk about?

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
• Review Week 2 sample

Week 3:

Key Question: What are we seeing in this data?

Meeting Agenda

• Research Protocol -- what's coming up next?
• Discuss Reading

After-Meeting Follow-Up

• Review Week 3 Sample
• Read Neuendorff, Ch 2., pp. 36-44, and Ch 3. pp 70-84. Skim the rest of Ch3.
• Write a list of possible variables: What's interesting here? What should we code and count in this data?

Week 4:

Key Question: Is this working? Can we synthesize these codes into themes?

Meeting Agenda

• Code proposals, codebook development
• Discuss Reading

After-Meeting Follow-Up

• Read Neuendorff p. 139-166.

Week 5:

Key Question: How many X and how many Y?

Meeting Agenda

• Codebook training
• Discuss Reading
• Sample Assignments

After-Meeting Follow-Up

• Read Neuendorff p.169-206
• Code data

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