So ... last year I created this matrix of articles that I plan to / should write based on the data I had collected / planned to collect, the analysis methods I wanted to use and the general research questions.
Plans are, obviously, just a way for yo to see how things change. After having actually analyzed sections of my data for various purposes it's become obvious that instead of every article planned I could write 3. And there were about 7 in the original plan. So that would be a 21 article dissertation. Which even I understand is undoable and bonkers.
So now I need to adjust my plan to make sure I don't end up in a situation where I have the necessary AMOUNT of articles by the time I need to defend, but that they are kind of random in terms of the material, research questions etc they cover.
The original plan kind of went like this (and I just counted them and it seems that I was planning 9. 9 articles. not a normal person).
1. Bloggers’ identity narratives – how is online experience informing our sense of sexual self? - book chapter, analysis of 10 representative (of experience types) interviews in full. Narrative analysis. Narrative identity POV. This one counts towards my PhD and I am quite happy with it in terms of depth etc.
2. "Profiling the sexual self - identity narratives of NSFW bloggers on tumblr." - this one was for a conference and then conference proceeding and will not really count towards my PhD because of the ranking system. It is also not too deep, kind of a skim-the-surface overview of different sexuality narratives on NSFW T. Thus ... I should probably redo that. In a deeper way. Combining it perhaps with an analysis of other material than interviews.
3. No crazy, militant, hateful heterosexuals from this point forward, NSFW bloggers from a post-subcultural perspective. - this one I still want to do.
4. Sex, Blogs and Rock’n Roll, music’s role in NSFW blogs. - this one I wanted to do with Andy Bennet, who doesn't seem to have time for it and I will not do it alone, it doesn't feel crucial from the POV of explaining identity in relation to a NSFW online experience.
5. Working title: Teaching others, teach yourself? Lesson’s learned from an online research methods course. - this one I can do later, it won't count towards the PhD anyway.
6. A Dirty Blog is Rarely Dusty - a methodological overview - this one I have written and I like it, but it currently reads more like a methods chapter of a dissertation and not an article. So I will probably keep it for that purpose but plan a more narrow, more focussed methods article that has a nugget of newness to it. If I can. I guess it's not life or death.
7. Working title: “Bringing Sexy Back – why sexually explicit blogs? Why self pictures?” - this was planned as a combination of the visual analysis of images, interview analysis and cyberethnography and I think I should still do it, although I need to find a clear focus otherwise it will be unmanageable.
8. Working title: “Welcome to the Amazon – online community of meaning on tumblr.” - this was planned based on cyberethnographic field notes and probably still needs to happen.
9. Working title: “I am what I reblog – the collectively constructed reality of an online community and how it informs one’s identity” - this was meant to combine all the data analysis and be all kinds of deep and conclusive. And probably still needs to happen.
Now right now I am writing an article on 'self-images as an embodied performance' with Edgar Gomez-Cruz and it is based on the analysis of interviews with only the female self-shooters in my sample. And it is huge. I mean there is material left over in just that to write another one. And then if I add male self shooters there would be another one there (actually two more - one on just men and one on men-women combined perhaps).
Then there is the analysis of the actual images (not just analyzing what people SAY about their self-shooting in the interviews) and analyzing the captions and the fieldnotes re: reblogging patterns etc. But I feel I need to not separate that out, so if I do write more on embodied identity and self shooting (and I should) I need to combine data there.
I also thought of writing a case study based article on exploring polyamory online (because someone sent me CfP).
So basically this is becoming one of those seven headed fire breathing dragons that grows two heads instead of each one you chop off.
And I kind of feel I need to just sit down and make a concept-driven map that kind of maps what I think are important aspects in explaining how an online experience is constructed into one's identity and then try and make sure I have articles that cover that. Kind of :
1. identity <-> body (and gender?) // embodied identity // self-images (but interactions, community, norms, peer pressure, body-normativity, body narratives of T also)
2. identity <-> sexuality // social norms // new social reality // embodied practices // community (but interactions, community, norms, peer pressure, sexual practices, OSA, T-specific sexuality narratives and sexual practices, sexual community of practice (dissemination of BDSM? also)
3. identity <-> interactions // community
And already from this (the stuff in the brackets) it is clear that they all massively overlap. *headdesk*
