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22QRME0 - PAP2 - Qualitative research in Criminology: cutting edge methods - Session 1
Session Type: Pre-Arranged Panel
Category: 22. Qualitative Research Methodologies and Epistemologies (ESC WG) (WG-QRME)
Session Details
Qualitative research in Criminology: cutting edge methods (1)
This is the first of two thematic panels that will showcase some of the authors and chapters of the upcoming book “Qualitative research in Criminology: cutting edge methods” (Springer). Qualitative methods in criminology, often discounted or misunderstood, offer significant insights that frame our understanding of the narratives, events, theoretical perspectives, and realities of the world. This book includes cutting edge methods of how qualitative research can expand beyond traditional approaches. Such endeavours make even more sense at the start of the 2020s as social groups, communities, and individuals navigate climate crisis, global pandemics, new far-right trends, polarization of political discourses, refugees’ crises, the growing relevance of social media, while structural inequalities such as racism and class and gender discrimination persist. Diversity in methodology includes gender, race, and geographic sensitivities, that also takes into account technology as a means of achieving meaning in research. Social media, participatory videos, YouTube, Zoom interviewing, and photographic visual methods, as well as sensory approaches are creating innovative research that informs all social sciences and appeals to a wider audience.
In this thematic panel, authors will be presenting examples and discussing the virtues of approaches such as: virtual ethnography on Instagram; using the Internet to facilitate qualitative research on corruption and white-collar crime; and sensory methodologies as means of investigating practices of social control. Lastly, publishing qualitative research will be discussed.
In this thematic panel, authors will be presenting examples and discussing the virtues of approaches such as: virtual ethnography on Instagram; using the Internet to facilitate qualitative research on corruption and white-collar crime; and sensory methodologies as means of investigating practices of social control. Lastly, publishing qualitative research will be discussed.
Authors
Cosimo Sidoti
Università Cattolica - Transcrime
Abstract
This presentation provides a critical perspective on the use of social media platforms as crucial epistemic resources for field researchers in Criminology. Ethnographers have often been sceptical about their immersion in online settings because of the restraints in engaging experientially and emotionally with research subjects. Virtual ethnography is underestimated as a method of engagement to achieve the immediacy of crime. The presentation aims to debunk this misconception by highlighting my experiences with virtual ethnography on Instagram researching the meanings of crime within a deviant youth subculture in Italy, known as Italian trap culture. A journey towards a criminological verstehen will be provided through my experiential and emotional online immersion in the lived reality of deviance and crime. This journey includes also new epistemological frameworks on how to practically access and engage with online users, such as Instagram suggested friends to algorithmically sample participants. By virtually interacting with deviant, criminal, and vulnerable participants on social media, field researchers are subjected to ethical reflections different from those that traditionally guide physical ethnographies in Criminology. This contributes to considerations on new types of personal and professional risks, besides exciting and pleasurable experiences, underlying the deep involvement in crime situations on social media.
Researching Political Corruption and White-Collar Crime on the Internet
Authors
Henry N. Pontell
University of California, Irvine; John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Adam K. Ghazi-Tehrani
Abstract
In this presentation we illustrate how the Internet can be used to facilitate qualitative research on corruption and white-collar crime. The Internet provides increasing access to data that would otherwise be hidden and perhaps unknown in geographic locations throughout the world. In the United States, research on medical fraud, political corruption, financial fraud, and white-collar delinquency are aided by information available online. Research on corruption and white-collar crime in China is relatively sparse by comparison due to several factors including the lack of reliable and systematic data sources, which makes the Internet invaluable in gathering important data. The Internet allows for an increased democratization of data access. In the 1990s, the Internet provided a wealth of knowledge for research into the Savings & Loans crisis of the 1980s through government documents, regulators’ reports, and contact information for officials at various relevant federal agencies. Two decades later, the Chinese melamine milk scandal was publicized mainly through online social media and western news agencies, both of which were able to discuss a topic censored in local state-media. These cases and others are discussed regarding the use of the Internet in researching corruption and white-collar crime.
Sensory “Heteroglossia” and Social Control: Sensory Methodology and Method
Authors
Kate Herrity
Kings College, Cambridge University
Bethany E. Schmidt
Cambridge University
Jason Warr
De Montfort University
Abstract
Heteroglossia refers to the presence of multiple voices and views; exchanges that are central to the academic project (Bakhtin 1981, Clarke 2019). We use this concept in two ways: first, to bring Stanley Cohen’s book Visions of Social Control (1985) into conversation with more recent work in sensory criminology; and second, to demonstrate the ways in which the sensory can bring different aspects of experience into dialogue, enriching the research process. We contend that the sensory provides a means of investigating how practices of social control extend beyond our vision. Contrary to conventional understandings of how we identify, classify and process people defined as criminal – or “ways of looking” – we draw on wider academic literature and empirical examples to illustrate how our broader sensory palate is equally implicated in social ordering. We consider what this does for our assumptions about how we produce knowledge, as well as how we go about altering our research methods to make the sensory both the focus of, and the instrument of inquiry. The sensory has always formed various modes of understanding which we are unaccustomed to echoing in our research practice. Doing so has profound implications for how we ‘do’ social science.
Presenting Qualitative Research Data: Publishing the Journal Article
Authors
Mary Dodge
University of Colorado Denver, School of Public Affairs
Megan J. Parker
University of Colorado Denver, School of Public Affairs
Abstract
Publishing a qualitative journal article often takes a certain tenacity for a variety of reasons. First, extant research shows that top-tiered journals are less likely to accept articles that employ qualitative methods, though interview data are accepted at a higher rate compared to other approaches. Second, as qualitative researchers we may become a bit “sloppy” or complacent in the presentations of our methods and fail to provide sufficient details about the data analysis. Third, case studies, ethnographies, interviews, archival, sensory, social media, Internet, and photography, for example, are part and parcel of our current lexicon. Under these circumstances, progress demands a certain amount of recognition that may mean using a different lens of exploration. Finally, the time has arrived to reject the dichotomy between qualitative and quantitative research, which is passé. New and standard approaches to research means accepting and integrating unique and mixed methods that provide richer data, which may be missing from current data collection. Additionally, this paper examines many of the “dos and don’ts” that should be considered when submitting a qualitative article for peer-review.
22QRME0 - PAP2 - Qualitative research in Criminology: cutting edge methods - Session 1
Description
Please only choose to join as an attendee if you are NOT a speaker.Session Chair
Rita Faria
22/9/2022, 5:30 PM — 6:45 PM