Book-chapter on the Media Map-Method published

Media Pedagogy Research Workshop: Projects – Theories – Methods

In my field research on The mobile phone in urban Kenyan everyday-life, I have developed a qualitative media research method that was used to collect empirical data from the field. A fully developed article on how the MediaMap exactly works as well as its theoretical and methodological framing has now been published as a book chapter:

Waltinger, Michael (2017): Die MediaMap – Eine explorative Forschungsmethode zur Entwicklung einer kontextualisierten Mediennutzungsperspektive. [The Media Map – An explorative method for researching media usage in context.] In: Knaus, Thomas (ed.): Forschungswerkstatt Medienpädagogik. Projekt – Theorie – Methode [Media Pedagogy Research Workshop: Projects – Theories – Methods.] . München: kopaed, pp. 253 – 286.

There is also an accompaniying micro-website on the MediaMap, containing a short description of the method as well as images of the development of the method, the research-setup and some examples of MediaMaps as produced by participants in my field research in Nairobi (Kenya): www.thinkbeyondborders.org/mediamap.

Field Research_basics seminar at Linnæus University (Växjö)

Linnéuniversitetet

Today, I had the great pleasure of holding a research seminar (högre seminarium) on the “Basics of Field Research” at the wonderful Linnæus University (Linnéuniversitetet), one of Sweden’s newest and very well equipped and beautiful higher education institutions (founded from a merger of the Kalmar and Växjö universities in 2010).

It was a great and inspiring seminar with fruitful discussion that I have enjoyed very much. I would like to also take this opportunity to once again thank the University for the invitation. I will gladly come back anytime.

The University is located in Växjö, which in itself is a very picturesque university town in Småland, Southern Sweden. Although todays seminar was not on the Sociology of Technology or Media Education, an engraving on one of the cities pavements reminds us:

“Vi sällskapa
för mycket
med maskinerna
och för lite med oss själva”
(Elisabeth Bergstrand-Poulsen)

Free translation:

We hang out
too much
with machines
and too little with ourselves.

sällskapa med maskinerna