Blog Post #3 Research Gap
The topic I had chosen for my literature review: how social media on public safety affects the public's trust? Having already presented particular circumstances, that trust between the public and public safety had been broken, I was able to find critical evidence on how public safety attempts to repair its relationship with broken communities and additional information on how social media influences police agencies and their relationships with the public.
If there was a research gap from the review, I would say it is the question of how different lived experiences, emotions, and behaviors may provide insightful meaning to public organizations. I believe these experiences, emotions, and behaviors can be examined by conducting qualitative research. I'd be open to hear what different qualitative research methods I could possibly use for the research proposal. As of now these were the methods I was thinking about: interviews, focus groups, usability tests, field observations, and document analysis.
Hello Sam,
ReplyDeleteI reiterate my earlier sentiments from a few weeks ago, I really like your literature review topic. With regard to social media affecting trust between the public and public safety, I think your research gap is relevant. From a micro to a macro level, one-on-one interactions, group interactions, and larger group interaction (institutions), they will in fact live through different experiences as they try to reconcile public safety and loss of trust. I think your approach to qualitative research is ideal. Your list of methods is also very appropriate. My question to you is: When doing interviews or collecting data, who will be your target audience? Or rather, will you have a set criteria either for individuals or groups to participate in your study? And on the flip side, in an effort to provide meaningful insight to public organizations, who will those organizations be/consist of?
Really great job, Sam!
Best,
Rachel
I agree with Rachel. This is a great topic, Sam. There is so much that could go into this examination and I'm certain that there will be a wide range of research in years to come on this topic. Previous to the riots and accusations of the last two years, I hadn't thought much about our law enforcement, beyond being civic servants who help to keep the peace. I have maintained this view, but it is not without great effort, since so much of social media has painted law enforcement in a negative light. My brother lives in downtown Seattle, and I was following him in my vehicle when we were visiting. He violated two traffic laws, and when I questioned him, blown away by his flagrant disregard for laws he never had broken previously, he just shrugged and said, "We don't have much of a police force here. No one I know of has gotten a ticket in a long time. What small force we have here doesn't have the capacity to deal with traffic stuff when they are so busy dealing with big issues like homelessness, violence, and drugs." (I then lectured him for a while.) The point of me telling you this is that there does need to be some research to find out how people's opinions of the police has changed in recent years, and if there were a way to fix this problem.
ReplyDeleteHi Sam,
ReplyDeleteI think this is a good research gap to explore. I agree with what you said in class that the qualitative method will work well for this research gap. Having personal stories attached to the research will help these topics not just be statistics. I think telling personal stories in the research will help change people's attitudes and behaviors about this issue because there will be a narrative of lived experience making these issues real and relatable for readers. I also think all of those methods will help you provide a clear picture for this research gap. I would maybe think about what will the questions be for members of the community, and what will your questions be for law enforcement, or those enforcing public safety? There should probably some questions that are the same for each group, to act as a control for your data.