EXPERIENCES WITH A SENSE-MAKING INTERDISCIPLINARY DIALOGUE AMONG RESEARCHERS AND PRACTIONERS STUDYING USERS/AUDIENCES: BEING DIALOGIC ABOUT BEING DIALOGIC

by

CarrieLynn D. ReinhardOhio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USAreinhard.27@osu.edu

Reinhard, CarrieLynn D. (2007). Experiences with a sense-making interdisciplinary dialogue among researchers and practitioners studying users/audiences: Being dialogic about being dialogic. Presented at Non-Divisional Working Symposium on "Making communication studies matter: Field relevance/irrelevance to media, library, electronic, communication system designs, policies, practices." May 24, San Francisco. Available at: http://communication.sbs.ohio-state.edu/sense-making/meet/2007/meet07_reinhard2.pdf

Reinhard, CarrieLynn D. (2007)

THE SUBSTANTICE CONTEXT: PURPOSE AND OVERVIEW OF RESULTS

For my Round 2 essay in this exciting endeavor, one of the things I spoke to was my concern over how the jargon researchers create and employ in their studies divides people who study the same thing. Consider, for the sake of this workshop, the concept of the audience/user. When we consider this phenomenon, we see a person who is engaging with some information or entertainment source1. Problems arise when people with different outlooks on some phenomenon try to talk about it. Using their interpretative positions, their own words get in the way if they are speaking jargon, focusing on the nouns they have learned and become habituated to use because of way they see the world.

This problem with jargon was both a result and an impetus of the interview database gathered as part of the IMLS-OSU-OCLC project. The interviews were constructed using Dervin's Sense-Making Methodology to reduce the impulse for researchers, scholars and practitioners to talk in nouns about the study of users. What resulted was a database of musings about the problems with research/practice, and researchers/practitioners, in terms of understanding users/audiences. These musings had as much reduction in jargon as possible. In reading the interviews, one would be hard-pressed to identify all the computer interaction scientists, all the communication scholars, and all the information science researchers because of the diligent removal of the nounings that would have identified people as belonging to this or that discourse. Instead one finds what this amalgamation of individuals see as the strugglings, confusings, muddlings, and hopings the field is experiencing.

One of the resulting underlying struggling/confusing/hoping centered on the problem with jargons. A number of those interviewed, and those who wrote essays regarding the interviews, called for a move away from disconnected camps doing separate, cloistered work, and towards bridge-building. Rather than burdening our research with a surplus of vocabulary all saying the same thing, we should look for the commonality in meaning. This is, understandably, a laborious process, and not one easily undertaken given academic tenure structures. Such a process requires individuals who are committed to becoming translators and bridge-builders and looking across the disciplines and discussing in state of the art reviews a) the similarities, b) the differences, and c) the potentials of the various ways a single construct has been constructed.

1 A dichotomy that is itself symptomatic of viewing the phenomenon from a certain discourse or discipline.

But whereas one individual can help put research from different disciplines into dialogue with one another, such a feat can amount to nothing if the individual is not able to foster dialogue between researchers of different disciplines. Communication spaces, such as provided in this workshop, are paramount for this operation. If researchers are feeling the pressure to be nondialogic in their creation of vocabularies, then they require a space where these pressures do not exist. If we see what can be communicated and how it can be communicated as constrained by some societal pressure, such as the researcher's academic tenure process, then the only way to ensure non-jargon, engaged dialogue is in a space without such pressures. In such a space, the exchange should be upon not defending the nouns but upon understanding each others verbings that created those nouns, each other's procedures and passions, with the same goals as the scholar who attempts to bridge the gaps in writing.

THE APPROACH TO DIALOGUE PRESENTED HERE

The dialogue of the interviews, and the subsequent essays, may not be seen as one in the common notion of what a dialogue is. Dialogue may be more considered as a session of give-and-take that occurs with relatively short turnaround time -- one person speaks, then the other person responds, leading to the first responding to the second's responses, and so forth. The time lag between the first person speaking and then speaking again is the consideration for the length of time the second person needs to speak. Such an exchange occurs between two people and becomes decidedly more complex as the number of participants is added, as in a focus group setting. With the interviews collected in this project, each person being interviewed was not in such a give-and-take exchange with the other interviewees, and thus they were unable to directly respond to the other interviewees' musings and interpretations. They did not have the option to respond until the second round of interpretive essays, if even then. Although those interviewed were never in direct communication with one another at the time of interviewing, at current time they are in dialogue with each other. They become such when the interviews are considered as a database. By housing the thoughts, questions and feelings of a multitude of people in one location, the database creates a space for potential dialogue. In facilitating the access to these interviews and the subsequent essays, the database creates a landscape of interpretations that surround the need for dialogue by providing an example of how such a dialogue could be attempted even without immediate, person-to-person locations such as this workshop.

However, it is more than just the construction of a database that allows for outsiders to see the exchange of similar and different ideas through the juxtaposition of such thoughts. The dialogue was inherent in the construction of the interviews under the Sense-Making Methodology. The structure impelled interviewees to focus on their interpretations of the status of their field's study of the user. The interview was designed to place the interviewee in dialogue with her field, even with herself as part of that field. As the database is a collection of interpretations that surrounds the topic, so too is the single interview the surround of a person's struggles with that topic. To a similar extent, each interpretive essayist was asked to put the interviews into dialogue with each other when considering what was being said, and to then place their selves in dialogue as well with what was said.

At every step of the way, there was dialogue. There was a give-and-take occurring. In some instances, the time-lag was nearly instantaneous, as the interviewee or the essayist had this exchange with herself. In other instances, the time-lag was protracted, as interviews and essays had to be assembled, read across and considered as a collection of interpretations. And now, at this workshop, we have the more traditional notion of dialogue, with the give-and-take time-lag occurring as one speaks and another listens and responds. No one version of the dialogue is more or less important than the other. In fact, when each form of

dialogue is placed in dialogue with each other to surround the notion of how to approach the study of the user, we see a model for bridge-building that, while taking time and effort, can result in understanding of the nouns and verbs as we come to experience each other's interpretive positions.

WHY A DIALOGIC APPROACH

Why is it so important for these various disciples to be in dialogue with one another about audiences/users? Again, I call upon the interviews, where a number of benefits were discussed. Chiefly, there's the benefit of not repeating research that has already been done, although using different nouns. Opening a conductive conversation helps to prevent researchers from either reinventing the wheel or rotating threadbare tires on the car, both being processes that hinder forward progress. How best to accomplish this type of progress? The interviews and the essays both call for bridge-building, for dialogue, for the fostering of understanding.

The idea of separate schools of thoughts being housed in separate brick buildings is deconstructing all around us. In the natural sciences, great advancements in knowledge and technology have occurred due to cross-pollination of -ologies -- biochemistry, neuropsychology, paleogenetics, and the like. When our object of study is human beings as audiences/users, we are dealing with potentially more complicated noumenon than our natural science counterparts. To understand complexity, one needs to think complexly. Having a dialogic disciplinary approach empowers such complexity.

REFERENCES AND LINKS TO RELATED DOCUMENTS

Dalyrumple, P.W. (2006). Red threads of connection:  three communities speak on user studies. Round II impressionistic essay. Available at:  http://imlsproject.comm.ohio-state.edu/DIALOGUEessays/DALRYMPLEessay.pdf

Dervin, B. (2006). The (im)possibility of dialogue. Round II impressionistic essay. http://imlsproject.comm.ohio-state.edu/DIALOGUEessays/DERVINessay.pdf

Dervin, B., Case, D., Dillon, A., Fisher, K., Normore, L., Tenopir, C, with numerous co-authors (2006). Being user oriented: Convergences, divergences, and the potentials for systematic dialogue between disciplines and between researchers, designers, and providers. Panel session at American Society for Information Science and Technology annual meeting, November 3-9, Austin, TX.  Available at: http://imlsproject.comm.ohio-state.edu/imls_papers/asist06_panel_list.html

Dervin, B. & Reinhard, C.D. (2006).  Researchers and practitioners talk about users and each other:  Making user and audience studies matter - paper 1.  Information Research, 12(1), paper 286. Available at:  http://informationr.net/ir/12-1/paper286.html

Dervin, B., Reinhard C.D., Adamson, S.K., Lu, T.T., Karnolt, N.M. & Berberick, T. (Eds.).  Sense-making the information confluence:  The whys and hows of college and university user satisficing of information needs. Phase I:  Project overview, the Three-Field Dialogue project, and state-of-the-art reviews.   Report on National Leadership Grant LG-02-03-0062-03, to Institute of Museum and Library Services, Washington, D.C.  Columbus, Ohio:  School of Communication, The Ohio State University.  Available at: http://imlsproject.comm.ohio-state.edu/imls_reports/imls_PH_I_report_list.html

Dillon, a. (2006). Discussing use and users: indistinguishable generalities, or a dialogue in need of venues? Round II impressionistic essay. Available at: http://imlsproject.comm.ohio-state.edu/DIALOGUEessays/DILLONessay.pdf

Reinhard, C.D. (2006). A meandering musing on our muddling with multiplicities and millstones: general observations by a woman from the trenches. Round II impressionistic essay. Available at:  http://imlsproject.comm.ohio-state.edu/DIALOGUEessays/REINHARDessay.pdf