Shakespeare Quarterly

2. A Brief Note on Methodology

Permalink for this paragraph 0 Because I do have an account with YouTube, I have not uploaded any videos, saved any videos as “Favorites,” nor added “Commentary” via “Video Responses” or “Text Comments.”[11] In addition, I have not contacted any of the people whose videos I cite. In the parlance of internet research methodology, I have been lurking on YouTube: that is, watching the videos and reading the commentaries, but not contributing anything myself. In addition, I have been harvesting both the videos and commentaries: that is, collecting and saving the ones I find most interesting for research and publication purposes.

Permalink for this paragraph 2 The three videos analyzed in this essay are not discussed because they are exceptional or representative of the best or most original productions on YouTube. Rather, they represent the norm. There are thousands of DIY video performances of Shakespeare uploaded to YouTube by high school and college students, and I narrowed that set down by focusing on Asian-American students performing Othello for the reasons stated above. Nonetheless, this was still a dauntingly large subset of videos. After watching around 100 videos, I noticed certain trends emerging in this subset of performance videos. Thus, the three videos discussed in this essay were selected because they both demonstrate and epitomize these trends. It is my hope that my analysis of them will exemplify the interpretative opportunities these videos offer for both new methodological and pedagogical practices. In other words, I am not arguing that these videos are necessarily important textual/performance artifacts in and of themselves; rather they become important when viewed as representative of the production practices, methodological challenges, and pedagogical opportunities they reveal.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 Although I attempt to follow guidelines for conducting ethical online research, as many scholars have noted, this area is extremely murky because it is relatively new.[12] The debates about online research are still ongoing: does internet research constitute human subjects research? Is cyberspace a private or public space? Are online communications private or public? Does reading, citing, and analyzing postings on internet sites, like YouTube, entail an “intervention or interaction” with the individuals who create them, and, thus, require oversight by an institutional review board (IRB)?[13] Even if an IRB determines that one’s research does not require oversight, one still must ensure that one’s approach to online communications is ethical.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 Heidi McKee and James E. Porter’s recent work has helped to inform the ethical and methodological decisions I made for this essay. Adapting Malin Sveningsson’s grid for mapping research data, McKee and Porter advocate for an approach that distinguishes non-sensitive information from sensitive information and private information from public information in order to determine the ethical dimensions for informed consent.[14] As the YouTube videos and commentaries I am analyzing stem from school projects that were not only graded by teachers but also shared with classmates both offline and online, and as these videos and commentaries are not about private, personal, and/or sensitive information (they are performances of Shakespearean scenes), I see them residing safely in the non-sensitive/public quadrant of the grid. Moreover, they fall within the half of the grid in which informed consent is not ethically necessary.

Permalink for this paragraph 3 That said, I am sensitive to the fact that I am working with the public and non-sensitive postings of young adults (many of whom are legally deemed minors), and the ethical dilemmas facing those who study adolescents online are even greater. The debates about whether online communications are private or public are exasperated when one asks whether minors have the capability to understand the public nature of the internet. In independent studies, Susannah Stern and Magdalena Bober conducted research with young adults, and they both determined that adolescents with personal web pages understood that their postings were public.[15] And yet both Stern and Bober warn against treating their findings too liberally. They both advocate protecting the identities of the young adults cited in research so as to ensure that no harm can come to them as a result of one’s research. Bober intones, “The identities of participants should, therefore, always be protected by rendering quotes anonymous or by using pseudonyms, especially when the research touches upon sensitive issues.”[16] As I noted above, I do not believe that an analysis of school performances uploaded to YouTube constitutes sensitive material. Yet I want to ensure that my research cannot be used to inflict any harm upon these students so I have taken steps to protect their identities. Aside from saying that the videos and commentaries were posted to YouTube, I do not cite the specific URLs or usernames. This is an important measure because many participants include their full names within the video and/or textual postings, despite the fact that YouTube discourages its users from posting this information online.[17] In addition, I only provide the year of the original posting and not the full date.

Permalink for this paragraph 8 This, of course, is a large methodological departure for a Shakespeare scholar. We are used to providing full citations for everything—texts, editions, performances, criticism, etc. Our work is often assessed by another’s ability to verify—that is, read, view, access—every citation. I know there will be many readers who will be frustrated by their inability to access and view these videos (without having to wade through thousands of other videos on their own). In this essay, however, I want to highlight that the verifiable source is not what is really at stake. Instead, what is at stake in this essay is the introduction of a more complex way of assessing our interpretative strategies and methodologies. By focusing on the close readings and analyses of these videos, I hope the reader is alerted to the ethical and methodological implications of researching performance and teaching through performance.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 Having said all of this, I want to emphasize that research that incorporates internet sources is still in its infancy. At the moment of writing this essay (August 2008), there are no critical essays or books that address how to cite YouTube postings. Consensus on the ethical, methodological, and theoretical issues involved in internet research is desperately needed, especially as a large segment of the user-producers of interactive sites like YouTube are minors. No doubt this kind of work is coming, but we as Shakespeareans and educators must think about our positions within this debate as well. After all, our students are the minors and young adults who are posting these videos to YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, etc. As I hope this essay will demonstrate, there are ethical and methodological implications for our work, and there are ethical and methodological interventions that our work can enable.

[11] These terms and phrases are YouTube’s.

[12] For an overview of the ethical issues facing those doing internet research see: Elizabeth Basset and Kathleen O’Riordan, “Ethics of Internet Research: Contesting the Human Subjects Research Model,” Ethics and Information Technology 4 (2002): 233-247; Amy Bruckman, Ethical Guidelines for Research Online (April 4, 2002): http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~asb/ethics; Elizabeth Buchanan, Readings in Virtual Research Ethics: Issues and Controversies (Hershey, PA: Idea Group Inc, 2003); Charles Ess and Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR), Ethical Decision-Making and Internet Research: Recommendations from the AoIR Ethics Working Committee (November 27, 2002): http://www.aoir.org/reports/ethics.pdf; Heidi McKee and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss, Digital Writing Research: Technologies, Methodologies, and Ethical Issues (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2007).

[13] This language comes from the Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP), “Human Subjects Regulations Decision Charts” (September 24, 2004): http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/guidance/decisioncharts.htm.

[14] Heidi McKee and James E. Porter, “The Ethics of Digital Writing Research: A Rhetorical Approach,” College Composition and Communication 59 (2008): 711-749, esp. 732.

[15] Susannah Stern, “Studying Adolescents Online: A Consideration of Ethical Issues,” in Readings in Virtual Research Ethics: Issues and Controversies, ed. Elizabeth Buchanan (Hershey, PA: Idea Group Inc, 2003), 274-287; Magdalena Bober, “Virtual Youth Research: An Exploration of Methodologies and Ethical Dilemmas from a British Perspective,” in Readings in Virtual Research Ethics: Issues and Controversies, ed. Elizabeth Buchanan (Hershey, PA: Idea Group Inc, 2003), 288-315.

[16] Bober, “Virtual Youth Research,” 308.

[17] See YouTube’s “A Word on Safety”: http://www.youtube.com/t/safety.

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andrewmurphy 16 March 2010 at 5.15 am

I was confused by the opening sentence here. Should it begin ‘Though I do . . . ‘, instead of ‘Because I do . . . ‘. Sorry: not meaning to be pedantic!
1. ayannathompson 7 April 2010 at 11.55 am
  
  Oops, yes, it should be:
  “Because I do not have an account with YouTube…”
  Sorry for the typo!
Shakespeare Quarterly’s Experiment in Open Review « Uncollected Thoughts 26 April 2010 at 5.02 pm

[...] an analysis of YouTube performances of Othello by Asian American students, Thompson decides not to release URLs or any other information that could be used to link the videos she describes to the students who [...]

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2 Comments on paragraph 2

leosborn 20 April 2010 at 2.56 pm

This part of the paper makes the claim that these examples represent an important norm in YouTube Shakespearean performance, and I would like to see this claim carried through more concretely when the essay reaches those examples.

The analysis later in the paper addresses those videos very specifically — and in very intriguing and valuable ways — but the overarching argument may benefit from more connection to the 100+ videos, i.e., body of work that makes up the normative trends the paper engages. This seems to me particularly important since this section identifies their representative status as part of the logic for using them as well as a key feature that renders unnecessary direct references to these particular performances. Given that readers will (presumably and paradoxically) have less access to these online primary materials, I think that even general references to this array would be useful as the argument unfolds. I will try to note places in those sections where connections to “the norm” uncovered in this research might elaborate the insight into the archive. In general I think this essay does a fine job relating the readings to the larger theoretical and pedagogical concerns.
Katherine Rowe 6 May 2010 at 10.07 am

“After watching around 100 videos, I noticed certain trends emerging” —

Perhaps (?) a methodological FN here that at present this is the only way to analyze such video texts, “by hand”, as it were. We do not yet have automated search functions for video that allow us to aggregate or show patterning in vast amounts of text that has not already been tagged — as Hope and Witmore can, for example, using Docuscope (see their essay elsewhere on this site). The MIT XMAS platform allows this automated searching of Shakespeare videos for repeated patterns, but only because its discrete sets of video texts are already tagged in a finely-grained way. At present, automated video searching is the holy grail of many new media development quests.

Maybe this is obvious, though, and doesn’t need any glossing.

andrewmurphy 16 March 2010 at 5.30 am

I understand the ethical issues here, certainly, and this does seem like a bit of a minefield, but it seems strange to me that you are not providing URLs. I was, in fact, expecting the videos to be embedded in the article and had been thinking how good a use of the site that would be — and feeling that the print version of this issue of SQ would be a poor substitute, as a result.

But isn’t there a scholarly problem with your decision, in that what you’re proposing (unless I’m misunderstanding) feels like the equivalent of quoting from a primary or a critical text without providing the publishing details? We can’t look at the YouTube clips ourselves and so must take what you say or leave it, without having the opportunity to come to our own conclusions.

It’s an interesting methodological conundrum, at any rate!
1. ayannathompson 7 April 2010 at 12.14 pm
  
  Yes, I am intentionally creating a methodological conundrum. I am attempting to see if we can apply social science methods (protecting the identities of minors) within a traditional humanistic methodology (reading/analyzing a primary source). The moments of tension and friction, in which expectations are disrupted and thwarted, are precisely what interest me. For me, these tensions are productive because they reveal precisely how difficult it is to disentangle an ethical stance (not wanting to provide/be a hyperlink to videos created by minors; not wanting to create the hyperlink that may enable the video to go viral) from our methodological ones (how we evaluate the validity of research when the texts are inaccessible). Of course, I know that diligent readers and YouTube users will be able to find these videos on their own (my graduate students found them within minutes!), and I do not object to that independent searching. I just don’t want to be the hyperlink (a la Michael Wesch’s work on how videos become viral).
  1. bhodgdon 25 April 2010 at 12.30 pm
    
    Incorporating your response to Andy might clarify the issue of not wanting to be the hyperlink.

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andrewmurphy 16 March 2010 at 5.36 am

Ah, okay, golden rule: read on before you start typing. But I do still feel uneasy about the idea of not being given access to the primary materials — for precisely the reasons you identify.
Katherine Rowe 28 March 2010 at 12.58 pm

I want to echo Andy’s reactions — I had/have very similar ones. There are two ethical pulls here, as I see it, not just one. The first is the core issue about what Michael Wesch’s group calls “context collapse”: these students put their videos out — they know they are publishing. But they have little sense of the diverse uses to which those works might be put. Here, where uses involve critical analysis of racial dynamics, this may feel (outside of our context) as if deep structures of ethnic identification and representation were being “called out” — made visible and denigrated — in ways that harm the students. Have I put this correctly? This ethical call is to understand the different status of the interpretive object, and protect its creators in a way that the platform itself does not?

One might counter that this has always been true of publication — context collapse is present in any medium and more intense at periods of media revolution (advent of cheap print?) where the discursive community that once was small and known (or imagined to be) becomes larger and less known. Yet in this new medium, we combine extension and archiving in ways that intensify this effect. (Imaginary evil scenario: someone tracks down this analysis 30 years from now and uses it in an attack video against one of the students, who is running for Congress).

Here’s the second ethical pull. One quotes not simply to present evidence but to make that evidence available for the reader’s examination and potential dissent (as opposed to assent) to ones argument.
1. ayannathompson 7 April 2010 at 12.38 pm
  
  Andy and Kathy, while I agree that there are two pulls presented by this essay, I think they are actually two methodological pulls instead of ethical ones. The methodological pulls are between social science research methods which advocate for protecting, shielding, and disguising the identities of minors, and the humanities research methods which advocate for revealing, citing, and documenting every source. While ethical debates are frequent within discussions about social science methodologies, they are not prevalent within discussions about humanities methodologies. I want to force a discussion about the ethics of methodology in our field. What does it mean that we expect immediate access to sources, especially online ones? While we acknowledge that online sources are ephemeral, what happens when those sources are gone (when those URLs are no longer available)? Does that change in availability alter the ways we assess the validity of the argument/reading?
  1. Timothy Francisco 8 April 2010 at 9.57 pm
    
    Great point Ayanna,
    The issue of the ephemeral nature of the sources came up in the Shakespeare 2.0 seminar, and one of the helpful conclusions the group arrived at was that we could think abut this the way that treat performances.
    The other point here, which is more thorny and therefore more interesting, is the one you raise about methodologies, which also came up in both the 2.0 seminar and the “new media” sessions. I think attention to the different ethical dimensions between the two methodologies (particularly when perhaps the most exciting element of Shakespeare 2.0 is the opportunity for immediacy and access to live subjects) is really useful. In this, your post here is incredibly important and begs some larger questions, which of course would be impossible to address in one essay– how do we integrate, or, for some, do we want to integrate “real” social science methods (instrument design, data collection, protocol, etc.) into Shakespeare studies and what are our motivations and limitations in so doing? And, just a thought, is it ironic that when studying the technologies of immediacy we should not (for some good reasons you cite) insist on access and immediacy?
  2. Katherine Rowe 5 May 2010 at 10.59 am
    
    That’s a helpful clarification for me, Ayanna. What I’m hearing from several commenters (Laurie, Diana) as well a you, is that this essay is an attempt to test out a mixed methodology suited to a mixed publishing platform (YouTube is performance platform and publishing platform and text archive). I.e., this is a close-reading essay (lit methodology). But it has chosen examplary cases (lit methodology behind which lies something more like the beginnings of social science aggregation of instances, but as both Tim and Diana point out, this isn’t where you are yet prepared to go). So your governing question is something like: “when we take as our texts the dynamic works posted on YouTube, do we have an obligation to borrow some constraints from social sciences? If we borrow those constraints, can we do our basic (lit / close-reading) work?”
    
    In some ways, the question of pedagogy then serves as background and context, rather than primary concern. That is to say, this essay is really testing out a hybrid methodology (asking what’s new/what’s not new about our encounter with this mode of student publishing). It’s not so much invested in making recommendations about pedagogy. Nor is it really invested in an ethical intervention (it takes as given that there are ethical concerns here, rather than investigating them). Am I right? If so, might the conclusion go in a very different direction: reflecting on the strengths and limitations of this hybrid method (as experienced both by an author/scholar/researcher and by scholar/readers in this forum)?
    
    I wish we had some undergraduates posting replies. I’d be hugely interested in their readings of the ethical issues you touch on. I’ve tried to enlist some, but with no take-up.
leosborn 20 April 2010 at 9.30 am

Have matters progressed since 2008 and how do we keep up with the guidelines through the process of review and publication? Actually, YouTube has been thinking about these issues and identifies conditions of us in ways that do not directly take into account academic research: http://www.youtube.com/t/terms. One question worth asking is whether you need permission from them and/or the responders that you identify from YouTube or the YouTube participants. This essay itself could prove a very useful test case for determining what constitutes fair use of this website. Looking through the YouTube guidelines and such raised for me the question of whether YouTube researchers should be “lurkers” as opposed to participants in the site. Is research on this kind of site a form of fieldwork? Perhaps we should confer with our colleagues in Anthropology and Sociology!
1. ayannathompson 20 April 2010 at 6.17 pm
  
  Thanks Timothy and Laurie! I think your posts really get at the methodological issues that this essay is attempting to raise. Is lurking an ethical methodological stance in and of itself or should participatory research take its place? And how comfortable would Shakespeareans be with this move?
  
  On a personal level, I am not sure I am ready yet to conduct participatory research (with IRB approval, etc). And yet, this is the direction my graduate students are moving (with my awe and respect!). So the upcoming generation of Shakespeareans may move us in methodological territory that is currently located in the social sciences instead of the humanities.
dianahenderson 5 May 2010 at 10.20 am

Clearly this section has prompted a lively discussion which cries out for a much fuller analysis in another place: for the purposes of this article, I think the most important issue is that your method matches your claims, and that it allows your audience the tools to judge the accuracy of your presentation of evidence and the persuasiveness of your argumentation. If we are really raising questions of social science research, the issue of 3 examples standing for a field as normative is problematic without a lot more apparatus (maybe closer to the practices of linguistics and some forms of anthropology, but the way the evidence is used still differs: I still think we’re solidly in humanities-land here, so this analogy may be a bit of a red herring). I agree with Kathy that, regarding publication and creative ‘control,’ it was ever thus, and that the ethical (as distinct from formal) issues are not entirely new –but if your goal is to remind us of these complexities, that’s great. Clearly the age of the participants is a crucial point, and also a topic that might fruitfully recall for us the participation (exploitation, use, talents) of the youthful ‘boy actors’ for whom SHakespeare wrote. Finally, ephemerality is what theatrical performance history has always had to grapple with–here the difference seems that we are in the murky arena of semi-ephemerality, akin to the tapes of performances kept in theater archives, but not quite; the t.v. shows sometimes preserved and sometimes not, from the live era; home videos sent to t.v. shows; and yet not…lots of formal and phenomenological nuances to be explored over time, I suspect. All of which to say: more issues raised here than one essay needs to take on, and I look forward to hearing which ones you wish to target and which to leave for others in the future, with a bit more pointed specificity on your own match of method to the substance of your pending argument.

2. A Brief Note on Methodology

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