As national educational policies, economic imperatives, and institutional pressures to “outreach” and expand the relevance of research grow, more and more scholars and professional practitioners find themselves increasingly unprepared to reach out to wider audiences. Even though many researchers are willing to bridge the lexical mote surrounding the ivory tower, they find themselves unable to write for larger publics or are discouraged by the rapid technical development and widening choice in new media, new genres of representation, new ways of involving communities, and new processes for reaching different audiences.
This book is meant to offer both academic and professional researchers as well as advanced students a broad survey of ways to popularize research. As an edited interdisciplinary handbook accompanied by a website featuring samples of popularized research, it aims to tell its readers about new genres, new media, new strategies, and new imperatives for popularizing research, and to show how these new processes work in the end, what they sound like, and what they look like.
Contributors were asked to provide the editor with two products: a “show,” and a “tell.” The “show” is a sample of the contributor’s own popularized research. All of the “shows” are available on this website. The “tell” component is a reflection piece on how the “show” was produced and distributed. Each “tell” is a 5000 word chapter in the book.
Popularizing Research was created to work as a complent to research methods courses. It is priced at US$ 38.95 and it is 232 pages long. It can be purchased online at www.peterlang.com or through major online retailers, such as Amazon.com
The editor, Phillip Vannini, is Professor in the School of Communication & Culture at Royal Roads University in Victoria, BC, Canada and Canada Research Chair in Innovative Leaning and Public Ethnography. He is author/editor of 9 books and numerous journal articles.
Book Table of Contents
Introduction: Popularizing Research
Phillip Vannini
Part 1: Film
Chapter 1. Short Film as Performative Social Science: The Story Behind Princess Margaret
Kip Jones
Chapter 2. “People Get Tired”: African Australian Cross-Cultural Dialogue and Ethnocinema
Anne Harris and Nyadol Nyuon
Chapter 3. Sturgis 2.0: Crafting a Filmic-Web Dialogue
Carly Gieseler
Part 2: Visual Media and Graphics
Chapter 4. Cartoons as Praxis: Negotiating Different Needs in Adult Literacy Research Reporting
Frank Sligo and Elspeth Tilley
Chapter 5. Rollin’ and Dustin’: The Use of Graphic Images for the Dissemination of Study Results to Participant Communities
Jean J. Schensul, Colleen Coleman, Sarah Diamond, Raul Pino, Alessander Rey Bermudez, Orlando Velazco, Regina Blake, and Noelle Bessette
Chapter 6. Focusing on Community: Photovoice, Local Action, and Global Public Engagement
Gregory P. Spira
Part 3: Exhibits and Installations
Chapter 7. Mixed-Media Storytelling Installation: Embody
Brigid McAuliffe and Bryce Merrill
Chapter 8. Producing Multimedia Exhibits for Multiple Audiences at the Hokkaido University Museum
Guven Peter Witteveen
Chapter 9. Using Multimedia Artworks to Disseminate Psychological Research on Attacks on Firefighters
Vivienne Brunsden, Joe Robinson, Jeffrey Goatcher, and Rowena Hill
Chapter 10. Geographies of the Imagination: Engaging Audiences and Participants in Collaborative Interdisciplinary Gallery Installations
Lydia Nakashima Degarrod
Part 4: Audio
Chapter 11. Radio: Engaging Communities Through Grassroots Media
Kevin Howley
Chapter 12. Music of the Streets: Bringing Local Rappers to the Ivory Tower
Hinda Mandell and Carol M. Liebler
Chapter 13. Audio Documentary: Hearing Places and the Representation of Sonic Culture
Mark Neumann
Part 5: Periodicals
Chapter 14. The Relevance of Relevance: Why and How I Write Op-eds
John Llewellyn
Chapter 15. A Short Story About Female Characters in Egyptian Soap Operas
Aliaa Dawoud
Chapter 16. Persuasive Prestigitation: Exploring the Rhetorical Power of Magical Performance in a Popular Magazine Article
Joseph P. Zompetti
Part 6: Books and Reports
Chapter 17. Narrating Executive Development: Using “Writing as Inquiry” to Enrich the Coaching Dialogue
Daniel Doherty
Chapter 18. It’s What You Do With It That Counts: Emancipatory Research on Sex and Relationships for People With Learning Disabilities
Ruth Garbutt
Chapter 19. Public Ethnography and Multimodality: Research from the Book to the Web
Phillip Vannini
Chapter 20. Mobilizing Research Publications to (Re)Frame Neoliberal Welfare Reform
Shannon Daub
Part 7: Dialogue
Chapter 21. e-Dialogues: Real-Time Online Conversations
Ann Dale Jason Luckerhoff, and François Guillemette
Chapter 22. Using Social Media to Empower Parents in the Digital Age: Ask the Mediatrician
Brandy King and Michael Rich
Chapter 23. New Media, Participatory Methodologies, and the Popularization of Mètis History
Mike Evans and Jon Corbett
Part 8: Performance
Chapter 24. A Performance of Special Education Meetings: Theatre of the Absurd
Jessica Lester and Rachael Gabriel
Chapter 25. Learn Dis!: A Community Does Research on Itself Through Playback Theatre
David Jan Jurasek
Chapter 26. Moving Poetic Inquiry Beyond the Academy: How Two Poets Popularize Their Research
John Guiney Yallop and Sean Wiebe
Chapter 27. Personal, Powerful, Political: Performing Research With a Passion
Kimberly Dark
Part 9: Publicity
Chapter 28. Tips for Generating a Media Release and Media Coverage: How the Media Ate Up My Research on Aussie Horror Movies
Mark David Ryan
Chapter 29. Publishing and Publicity: The Path to Popular Audiences
Mara Einstein
Chapter 30. Reaching mainstream audiences: Media tips for academics and the challenge of storytelling
Philip A. Saunders
Chapter 31: Interacting with News Media Journalists: Reflections of a Sociologist
Christopher J. Schneider
Questions for the editor can be addressed to Phillip Vannini.