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THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION of DOING RESEARCH
THE PROPOSAL
THINK STRATEGICALLY AND ACT TACTICALLY
Introduction
The social organization of applying for research grants consists of a wide spectrum of differentially constituted events, that is, a variety of activities and procedures.
Contingencies
Review of Knowledge
LOGIC, CLARITY and CONSISTENCY
3 key criteria:
i. LOGIC: does it make sense? To the discipline? To the assessors?
Highlight the search for knowledge rather than a banal rendering of opinion (Cartesian duality); defensible positions
ii. CLARITY is the argument accessible? Does it require a rereading, if so edit
III. CONSISTENCY is the argument tenable? Are the research questions related incrementally? formative?
Methods and theory must be highly congruent
W5 who/what/where/when/why and HOW questions
Simplicity
OVERVIEW
Refer to Anthony W. Heath http://www.nova.edu/~ron/heath.html
https://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol3/iss1/1/
TITLE
The title is very important.
Ensure that the title addresses the scholarly question you have posed.
- SUMMARY OF PROPOSED RESEARCH 1 page
This first page of the proposal is the most important section of the entire document.
Here you will provide the reader with a snapshot of what is to follow.
A clear indication of the theory, methods and hypothesized findings.
Problem — a brief statement of the problem or need you have recognized and areas to be addressed (one or two paragraphs);
Solution — a short description of the project, including what will take place and who or how e will benefit from your research, how and where it will operate, for how long (one paragraph).
2. OBJECTIVES: the research question(s)
Originality and significance of the expected contribution to knowledge
research problem, the questions that guide your research project
What exactly do you want to study and why it is worth studying?
How does it contribute to our general understanding of ----?
Be specific about the research question you plan to address, as you will be marked on how well your research decisions serve to actually answer that question.
State the rationale and focus of your study including the main conceptual or working hypothesis. What exactly do you want to study and why it is worth studying?
How does it contribute to our general understanding of ---------- or policy responses to –
Clearly identify your objectives and state your specific needs of ----?
Does it have practical significance?
The Statement of Need
Establish tangible and concrete objectives.
A rationale for the choice of topic.
3. RELEVANT SCHOLARLY LITERATURE
Begin with a brief section that introduces your topic and contextualizes it within the broader literature, before you outline your research question. It should provide a useful framework to your research study. The literature review should be based on a minimum of 5 academic texts or articles relating to your research topic.
Importance, Originality and Anticipated Contribution to Knowledge
4. THEORY/ CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Suitability of theoretical perspective
- clearly stated theoretical perspectives; coherence; use of theory to support arguments; appropriate use of theory consistent with arguments?
- Explain the assumptions of your research paradigm
5. RESEARCH METHODS
- rationale; foundation (epistemology); type; traditions; triangulation; blending; consistent with theoretical perspectives
- Describe the general methodology you chose for your proposal. Explain why this method is the best for your inquiry.
- Research Strategies, procedures for Data Collection and Analysis
- Methodology-Justification of Choice and Explanation of specific instruments or procedures
- Clearly define all concepts that will be examined
Data sources
Sampling
Measurement
Analysis
Ethics
6. POLICY IMPLICATIONS, CONCLUSIONS
Drawing on your findings discuss, in general, how your proposed research would lead to a significant improvement over the original studies/scholarship, and/or how it would benefit the field of research. If applicable any policy implications your findings may have? What does your research suggest about social justice? Does it require legal programs to be implemented? (What kind of policies or programs could be implemented as recourse from the gap/issue discovered in your research
7. Conclusions
8. REFERENCES
Be sure to include a list of all materials you consulted and cited in your proposal. Choose a consistent referencing style
REVIEW
DO’S & DON’TS
SAMPLES of PROPOSALS
“Courting Opinion: the differential impact of the media on the administration of justice –
a comparison of judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys”
Summary of Proposed Research (maximum 1 page)
The primary objectives of this proposed research are to examine the intersection between the administration of criminal justice and the popular media. Research demonstrates that the popular media (electronic and print) have succeeded in cultivating certain beliefs and values in engineering "moral panics" regarding criminal stereotypes. In addition to crime coverage, there is a rapidly growing scholarship on how the media treats the courts. Much attention has been paid to jury bias, televised trials, publication bans and judicial notice. This scholarship is fundamentally related to the problematic of balancing public accountability and professional independence. Despite pioneering research on how the actual workings of the court are influenced by interpretations based on nonjudicial factors, widespread interests have failed to examine the impact of the media on the administration of justice. A comprehensive analysis of the impact of the media on judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys is long overdue. This proposed empirical study seeks to remedy this gap. The current debate over crime control is dominated by two voices: elected officials and the media seizing on quick-fix solutions. Neglected are the voices of key authorities --judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys. This research will tell us how mediated crime information is perceived and interpreted. In that sense, it will fill an extant sociological void given that no study has been undertaken to investigate how these court officers negotiate the impact of the media in their everyday professional roles.
Specifically, this study asks: a) how do judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys interpret popular media representations of criminal justice? b) What social mechanisms mediate the impact of the media coverage? c) To what extent do the media influence organizational and institutional practices of criminal justice administration? d) How do popular media representations (electronic and newsprint) of the administration of criminal justice compare with the articulation of popular culture in law texts (case law and statutes) and law talk (courtroom, official government documents, policy papers, and position papers of professional associations)? The significance of this research is related to its fundamental implications for justice, fairness and ethical codes of conduct which should guide models of decision making especially in reference to extant “get tough” approaches to crime that dominate the political and media agenda. Given recent policy recommendations to allow cameras in Canadian Courts of Appeal and in Divisional Courts, a greater understanding of the media-court relationship is warranted. What then are the consequence of the limited understanding of law on the part of the media and the equally limited understanding of public sentiment on the part of the courts?
This proposed research is theoretically informed by “critical interactionism”, a convergence of recent contributions in symbolic interactionism with the well-established insights from critical social theory. Accordingly, six data collections procedures will be incorporated: detailed interviews; focus group discussions/ conversations; site visits (courtroom observations); official published documents, and a two-year media analysis. With an improved understanding of the court –media relationship, we will be in a better position to assess the potential vulnerabilities created by various policy options and ongoing developments. The research findings, made public in scholarly articles and policy reports, will be disseminated to both academic researchers and non-academic stakeholders. This research will be of interest to the academic community, policy analysts and the general community seeking greater court transparency. This research will also provide the background necessary for a more progressive and comprehensive response to the administration of criminal justice especially in reference to crime control.
Detailed Description (maximum 6 pages)
1. Objectives
My principle objective is to determine the differential impact of the media on the administration of criminal justice. Specifically, this study asks: a) how judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys interpret popular media representations of criminal justice. That is, how do judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys experience or make sense of media images in everyday work practices? b) What social mechanisms mediate the impact of the media coverage? How do judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys negotiate, formally and informally, their respective resistance and/or accommodations to media messages? c) To what extent do the media influence organizational and institutional practices of criminal justice administration? To what extent do the media create particular social relations and organizations? What social conditions constitute media –court relations? d) How do media accounts form and inform the identities, institutions and ideologies of criminal courts? How do popular media representations (electronic and newsprint) of the administration of criminal justice compare with the articulation of popular culture in law texts (case law and statutes) and law talk (courtroom, official government documents, policy papers, and position papers of professional associations)? In turn, to what extent is the proliferation of popular media crime images shaped by the nature of criminal justice?
2 Context—Relevant Scholarly Literature
The complex and multi faceted relationship between crime control and the popular media enjoys a rich intellectual history. Research has demonstrated that a majority of people receives much of their impressions of the criminal justice system through the media, especially through entertainment television viewing, newscasts and newsprint (Laywood 1985; Surette, 1999).The media, as the principal means of socialization (Roberts & Doob, 1990), do a very poor job of informing the public (Sprott, 1995; Dubois 2002; Dowler, 2003). Media crime portrayals are often inaccurate, uniformly fragmentary, incomplete and uninformed, providing a set of distorted images of the criminal justice system's response to such behaviour (Surette, 1984:16). Research further demonstrates that the popular media succeed in cultivating certain beliefs and values (Altheide,1985; Gerbner and Gross, 1976; Ericson, Baranek, & Chan, 1991; McCormick, 1995; Baron & Hartnagel 1996; Sprott 1996; Schissel, 1997) in engineering "moral panics" regarding criminal stereotypes (Hall et al. 1978; Schissel 1997; Wortley 2002; Buckingham, 2004; Tator & Francis, 2006) in order to amplify the need for tough “law and order” campaigns. Indeed, the media, as risk communication systems (Ericson & Haggerty, 1997), regulate crime control narratives (Spencer, 2005: 48).
In addition to crime coverage, there is a rapidly growing scholarship on how the media treats the courts (Franklin & Kosaki, 1995; Taras, 2000; Spill & Oxley, 2003; Clawson & Waltenburg, 2003; Hengstler, 2006; Baird & Gangl 2006). Accordingly, much attention has been paid to i) jury bias (Vidmar, 2002), notably what has been dubbed recently as the “CSI effect” (Post, 2004), ii) televised trials (Linton, 1993; Kelly,1995; Johnson, 1998; Nasheri, 2002; Santos, 2005; Hengstler, 2006b); iii) publication bans or “gag orders” (Drechsel, 1987; Fox & Van Sickel, 2001; Morton 2006); and iv) the concept of “judicial notice”, the practice of incorporating popular culture in evidence (Thayer, 1982; L'Heureux-Dube1994; Williams, 1996; R v Brown [2002] OJ 295 (Sup. Ct.).This scholarship is fundamentally related to the quintessential problematic of balancing public accountability (Carrington, 1998; Opinion Leader Research, 2006; (Dobson v Dobson [1999] S.C.J. No. 41); and professional independence or autonomy (Liebes & James Curran, 1998).
Despite pioneering research (Blumberg, 1967; Black, 1976; Kritzer, 1991) on how the actual workings of the court are influenced by interpretations based on nonjudicial factors, widespread interests have failed to examine the impact of the media on the administration of justice (Dubois, 2002). According to Hale (1973), Friedman (1989), Doppelt (1991), Carrington (1998), Haltom (1998), Dorland and Charland (2002), Baird and Gangl (2003), a comprehensive analysis of the constitutive impact of the media from the perspectives of the affected institutional actors – judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys, is long overdue. Few if any studies have heeded Surette’s early admonition that the effects of media on the judicial system have not been established empirically (1999:601). My proposed study seeks to remedy this gap.
Context—Relevance to Ongoing Research
My published scholarship and related contributions are organized to reflect an integrated and sustained intellectual program of research into law, culture and crime. The current proposal is an incremental conceptualization of my previously funded SSHRC project on the Differential Impact of the Media on Delinquency (Visano, 2006). The main objective of this book addressed the social organization of the media –crime nexus, beginning with the assumption that a complex interplay of forces at particular historical moments in specific locations contributed to various career patterns, policy initiatives, and laws (social/ moral regulation/ governmentalities).This research on youth cultures and the media focuses on a number of related topics: historical patterns of age based stratification; criminalization; social exclusion; peer composition; literacy and education. This study examined the experience of “mediated” youths using comparative longitudinal and cross sectional designs. Likewise, in Law and Criminal Justice: A Critical Inquiry (2006) I examined the ontological bases of Western law reassessing relevant legal theory and bringing new evidence to bear regarding the relationship of law and culture in the formation of justice. In Crime and Culture (Visano, 1998a), diverse criminological theories were assessed in an effort to develop a more compelling critical cultural approach. I have argued therein that crime is intimately related to culture within which consciousness is embedded, defined, and implemented. Issues of crime and criminal justice are best understood when placed with the context of broader socio cultural developments. My early research (1990b), examined the everyday dynamics of criminal events and criminal subcultures by paying attention to career stages and contingencies, developing further my earlier critical interactionist framework (Visano, 1988).In This Idle Trade and my earlier studies on crime and culture (1987, 1990b, 1996) I discovered that youths react to criminalization by employing symbolic and stylistic strategies in negotiating their “criminal identities”. Moreover, the analysis of squeegee kids in Canada (Visano, et al, 1998b) demonstrated how legal campaigns were legitimated through the media's deployment of emotive symbols.
Context- Importance, Originality and Anticipated Contribution to Knowledge
The proposed study, training and writing offer a number of contributions, theoretically, methodologically and substantively. The issue is not that sociological theory has ignored media accounts of court officials, but that it has ignored the extent to which the media exerts a basic influence over the social thoughts of justice authorities. Theoretically, this study uniquely builds on the strengths of symbolic interactionist and structuralist discourses on the law in an effort to further advance “critical interactionism”. By exploring the common ground between cultural and control practices in contemporary Canadian social life - organized according to imagery, style, and symbolic meanings, this study makes a significant contribution to Canadian interpretive sociology. Conceptually, this research is guided Dorothy Smith’s (1990) critique of socially organized practices of knowing to demonstrate that difference and identity affect one’s understanding of the world. This unique blend of interpretive sociology and critical theory connects culture and crime control in terms of inscribed discourses. The dialectical interplay between culture and crime control, the tensions and contradictions and the possibilities of its transcendence are investigated. Unlike any other media-crime study, this inquiry compares: a) three court role occupants – judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys; b) case law with an analysis of representation of cases in the media; c) race, gender and class crime cases; d) different legal jurisdictions (Ontario Court of Justice and Superior Courts); and, e) different geographic sites (metropolitan, suburban and rural). The significance of this research is related to its fundamental implications for justice, fairness and ethical codes of conduct (Canadian Judicial Council 2004) which should guide models of decision making especially in reference to extant “get tough” approaches to crime that dominates the political and media agenda. This research is important for predicting the effectiveness of this policy to know whether courts even employ a calculus of the social costs and benefits in their decisions and on the information that informs their respective estimate of these costs. Given the recent (2006) endorsement and recommendations of Ontario’s Attorney General to allow cameras inside the Ontario Court of Appeal and in Divisional Court, a greater understanding of the media-court relationship is warranted. What then are the consequences of the limited understanding of law of the media and the courts limited understanding of public sentiment? To what extent can there be independence let alone accountability (Canadian Judicial Council 2004; Bybee Keith & Jeff Stonecash 2006)? As noted earlier, this study fills the gap in the literature regarding the forms and functions of cultural influences on the law. This study is an analysis of the differential impact of ideologies on institutionalizing criminal justice. Further, an analysis of the interaction between ideologies and institutions is promising in understanding how criminal justice is reproduced.
3. Context- Theoretical Framework
This proposed research is theoretically informed by “critical interactionism” (Denzin 1991; 2001). Critical interactionism is a convergence of recent contributions in symbolic interactionism (Maines, 1977; Musolf 1992; Gubrium & Holstein, 1994; Ezzy, 1998; Altheide 2000; Schwalbe et al, 2000; Anderson and Snow, 2001; Sandstrom, Martin, and Fine, 2001; Esposito& Murphy, 2001; Hall, 2003; Nash & Calonico, 2003; Spencer, 2005; Sauder, 2005; Dennis & Martin, 2005) with the well established insights from critical social theory (Gramsci, 1971; Adorno & Horkheimer, 1972; Habermas, 1984; Stuart Hall (1980; Hall et al. 1978), which together provide an appropriate set of perspectives on the social construction of meaning. This interpretive sociology locates the socially interacting self within intersecting orders thereby facilitating a broader and more theoretically integrated perspective. This framework provides fruitful conceptual tools for analyzing how law (law text and talk) responds to the media (popular culture).
Symbolic interactionism (SI) investigates social life in situated social interactions and details the capacities social actors to interpret and construct lines of action, experiences and routines. Recent work in symbolic interaction indicates that more of our experiences and identities are informed by mass-mediated images that are rapidly becoming key frames of reference for self and others (Altheide, 2000). SI contributes to a more complex understanding of a number of related contingencies: self-concept, skills and the reactions of others. SI facilitates the exploration of skills, knowledge and the role of function in organizations that become interpreted as ‘common sense’ (Fearfull, 2005:137). For Goffman (1959, 1971), social interaction reveal multifarious forms of social encounters, including dramaturgical enactments, patterns of deference and exclusion, and the control and manipulation of working definitions that structure interactions. Likewise, for Strauss (1969, 1978), this interpretive process is crucial for understanding how i) individuals respond to others’ evaluations of oneself and ii) the process of interpretation leads to behaviour. Strauss’s concept of negotiation extends Goffman’s dramaturgical approach in appreciating how humans create meaningful social realities in everyday life. Courts, as situated texts (Gusfield, 2003) within institutions contain roles, rules and practices replete with contradictions, loose couplings, and multiple perspectives (Derber,1979; Hall & McGinty, 1997).The media, as control narratives, condition the communication structure that constitutes regulation (Hollander & Gordon, 2006:205) especially in courts. How then are media claims about the administration of justice appropriated and articulated by agents of criminal justice? SI’s analysis of the negotiated construction of roles and rules holds that social order is constructed through meaningful, self-other interaction (Fine and Kleinman, 1983:97; Bonelli, 2005:110). SI equally notes that negotiations are products of constraint and human agency (O’Toole & O’Toole 1981; Hall & Spencer-Hall, 1982). Herein, language controls perceptions and the creation of meaning, functioning as representation and communication. In law, the language of “accounts” is typically used to excuse or justify behaviour (Lyman, 2001:7–13; Scott & Lyman 1963). The analyst’s task, therefore, is to identify the “integrating, controlling and specifying function that a certain type of speech fulfills in socially situated actions” (Mills 1940:905). This motive talk (Matza 1957; Murphy 2004: 130) is a fertile source of data on the moral and normative contexts in which actors live, make decisions, and link talk to action.
Critical Social Theory (CST) locates the above concerns within broader cultural discourses (Altheide, 2000). Stuart Hall (1980; Hall et al. 1978) and other cultural theorists argue that this dialectic between 'social being' and 'social consciousness attests to the significance of how people make sense of media texts, that is, the inscription of dominant ideologies (narratives), in terms of 'preferred”, “oppositional” and “negotiated” readings. Informed by the writings of Antonio Gramsci (1971), contemporary cultural theories also highlight the notion of resistance as 'common sense’. Critical theory equally seeks to reconcile structural and subjective approaches to the study of impact, the multiplicity of interpretations of meanings and the socially constituted individual who is defined by both intrapsychic and intersubjective relations. Habermas (1984) insists on the social construction of individual identity and pursued a theory of communicative action grounded in the universal presuppositions of language. Discourse is the process by which language is used socially to convey broad meanings, ways of referring to or constructing knowledge in the formation of ideas. The decoding of discourses, articulated in 'talk and text', challenges the concept of 'language' as an abstract system and relocates the entire process of making meanings from abstracted structural systems into particular social conditions. Critical approaches also underscore the importance of discursive analyses of dominant and counter narratives, a dialectic of mutually interactive relationship between the subject (human agents) and the object (the conditions of their existence). To what extent, therefore, is ‘the culture industry” (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1972) an “irresistible force” (Marcuse, 1972) in the control of crime?
SI’s interactional and CST’s structural levels of analysis are not necessarily separable (Hollander & Gordon, 2006). Socially and historically situated discourses support particular structures embodied in institutions, which in turn influence and are constituted by, what happens at the interactional level. Like Hall (1978, 1997) and Foucault (1977, 1980), we analyse how the ideological foundations of media impacts are revealed in the everyday dominant discourses. And, indeed, this is exactly where Habermas situates the problem of law, arguing that “law then functions as a hinge between system and lifeworld, a function that is incompatible with the idea that the legal system, withdrawing into its own shell, autopoietically encapsulates itself” (1996:56). Law is not limited to legal statutes or court cases but extends throughout the whole court culture.
4. Methodology - Research Strategies, procedures for Data Collection and Analysis
Epistemologically, the interpretive sociological approaches will direct this research project by providing a general proposal of guiding notions. Concepts such as resistance and accommodation assist in sensitizing researchers to move beyond concrete forms of empirical instances. The logic of triangulated, data collection procedures (Denzin, 1989b:vii) will be incorporated. That is, as Denzin describes, “rigorous rules of sampling theory have to be combined with the more theoretically flexible techniques of concept-guided sampling” (1970:269). Six data collections procedures will be incorporated in this study. 1. Detailed Interviews: After conducting preliminary interviews of judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys, we will conduct semi-structured interviews (25 participants from each group). Instruments include: i) demographic factors: age, education/ training, race, class, ethnicity, gender, urban/ suburban distinctions; ii) personal factors: professional group references; knowledge and reasoning; questions on how these actors articulate their respective experiences; political ambitions; iii) interpersonal/ interactional context factors: nature of their networks (dense, close knit, loose); types of personal experiences; and, iv) organizational/ institutional factors: commitments to the community, occupational culture, professional code of ethics, rules and roles. Content analyses of responses will be utilized for ascertaining the language rules and vocabularies for encoding and decoding events and activities within a phenomenological approach. The instruments will capture how media interpretations are conditioned by time, place, and subjectivity. This interpretive study aspires to collect stories produced in order to produce a narrative mosaic which identifies through intensive interrogation a number of responses that present a picture of a collective consciousness regarding the impact of the media on crime control. In dealing with each phase, we will follow a standard, informative format - the theoretical specifications, observational and interview findings and testing of explanatory models. To date, five different law firms and three judges have agreed to recommend participants. 2 Focus group discussions/ conversations: The second phase of the research will involve in-depth group interviews with a small sample of judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys to follow up on their solo interviews. The purpose of these discussions is to further explore issues raised and to supplement interview responses with more in-depth collective information. A guide schedule for the focus group sessions will be developed based on the issues raised in the previous interviews. This method of inquiry involves a set of specific questions pertaining to perceptions of the media and an understanding of its operation in law. To date, the Ontario Conference of Judges and the Canadian Bar Association have been contacted.3. Site visits: This phase will consist of a six month ethnography study of nine different criminal courts in Toronto, York, Peel, and Durham Regions, specifically Newmarket, Toronto, Oakville and Brampton. Comparisons of jurisdictions (Superior Courts and Ontario Courts of Justice) will be made. The focus on the court retains dimensions of the “naturalistic” participation. The present study will examine three types of crime cases (class crimes, racial profiling cases and spousal violence cases). Qualitative analyses, based on ethnographic content analyses (ECA), refer to integrated methods, procedures, and techniques for locating, identifying, retrieving, and analyzing observations for their relevance, significance, and meaning of contexts, underlying themes, patterns, and processes (Altheide,1996). Along with the above interviews, the ethnographies will determine whether the interpretation of media is conditioned by time, place, and subjectivity of the actor. Main themes will be considered in order to obtain a general perspective on portrayals of the media by officials of the criminal justice system. 4. Case law studies: Content and discourse analyses of the main themes in Canadian case law on class, gender and race related crimes will be conducted to determine the differential reading of the media texts. From the “control narratives” of case law, we will extract meaning-making activities for a two-year period. 5. Official published documents: Documents, annual reports, policy papers and public speeches by leading government and legal authorities as well as publications of professional associations will be studied. A content analysis of the texts written by judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys will be classified in four broad themes, focusing on: professional ideas, judges' relations to media institutions, inter professional and intra professional relations / interests expressed. 6. Media analysis for the two years 2006- 2008: We will compare news coverage (electronic and print). Based on Ericson, Baranek, and Chan (1991), certain criteria of newsworthiness (e.g., simplification, dramatization, personalization, continuity) that are at work will be analyzed in terms of the basic requirements order, coherence, sequence. The following stages: revelationary stage where crime control is presented; (2) the interpretive stage where views of a privileged selection of “authorities” is given; and, (3) closure, where the coverage moves to recommendation, anticipated action/ reaction measures. The media content analyses will be useful in highlighting the diversity in responses of court officials to media coverage of single events. The communication of words and images will be studied. Contextual (histories within configurations of temporal, geographic and social conditions) and codal (language events discourse) occur in contexts of linguistic meanings making processes which are observable and describable in instances of discourse.
All participants will be informed that the research was voluntary and confidential. Although the findings will be published, individuals will not be able to be identified. Informed consent will be obtained from all participants in advance of the interviews and focus group discussions. Permission will be sought to tape interviews.
Methodology-Justification of Choice and Explanation of specific instruments or procedures
The above research methods are consistent with Weber’s (1969) “verstehen” - an empathic and interpretive understanding of the subjective meanings that actors attach to social action, is essential in contextualizing how actors take into account the actions of others and are guided by these subjective meanings. Following the admonitions of Hagan and McCarthy (1998) and Di Cristina (1995), this methodology is consistent with the theoretical insights of both symbolic interactionism and critical social theory by providing transformative and a relational view of legal- media relations. As a general methodology, qualitative sociology incorporates an array of well-reasoned exercises (Rock, 1979); they include direct participation, conversational or informal dialogues and formal focused presentations. Various research designs within a single study to investigate the same phenomenon will serve to increase the depth and breadth of knowledge. Drawing upon my own fieldwork (Visano, 1987; 1990; 1996; 1998; 2006), the above methodology is justifiable theoretically in enhancing the validity of the study. Researchers in the symbolic interaction tradition are concerned not only with knowing the individual's point of view, but also wish to understand the processes by which points of view develop. The making of meanings (the interpretation of situations) constitutes the units of analysis (Bruner, 1995); that is, how meanings move between rule adaptation, situated negotiation and production of new regulative forms of relations. An orientation that, while receiving meanings and contextual reasons of the actions, is capable of connecting to dimensions situated in the person’s institutional existence. For DeVault (1999) Sandstrom, Martin, and Fine (2001) this approach emphasizes the experiences or activities of actors and a moving outward to examine “how it’s all put together” in coordinated social activities and social elations across multiple sites. Accordingly, both content analyses (interviews, accounts and observations) and discursive approaches (case law, media coverage, official documents) are procedures for studying a range of interpretations, identities, administrative/ bureaucratic standards, court judgments, cultural norms and rituals., etc. As Tator and Henry (2006:114) explain, content and discourse analyses provide a better understanding of meanings and frames of reference that underpin communicative strategies. By deconstructing discourses we will gain insight into the strategies actors use to rationalize their beliefs, perceptions, and ideologies (organizational and professional).
5. Communication of Results
Theoretically and substantively, this study will be written in a manner that is accessible to a wide audience of scholars, policy makers, community advocates and media researchers seeking a broader understanding of the nature crime control. This study will be submitted to an academic press as a manuscript and render the work accessible to the following readers: academic non-specialist, the educated, non-academic audience, and academic specialist. I intend to submit to refereed journals aspects of the theory (Theoretical Criminology, Symbolic Interaction, Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture; Critical Theory), methods (Qualitative Sociology; Criminology; Canadian Journal of Sociology) and substantive themes (Journal of Criminal Justice). In addition, four journal articles are anticipated. This study will further assist in developing a well-informed appreciation of criminal justice administration that in turn will be communicated in my regular public comments in the media and graduate/ undergraduate lectures. The research results will also be communicated to the project participants in public fora. The doctoral students will be encouraged to publish as well. This research will provide the background necessary for a more progressive and comprehensive response to crime control. Clearly, current official responses to crime have failed to move beyond limited normative short-term benefits of reactive policing. A more proactive and strategic problem-solving approach concomitant with community development and participation is warranted. The current rhetoric of “getting tough” on crime vitiates the spirit of community involvement and contradicts statistical evidence regarding crime rates. My involvements with a number of large community based agencies and membership in professional associations will facilitate dissemination outside the academic community (Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, Friends in Trouble, Youth for Humanity, Vita Nova Foundation, etc). Accordingly, this study will draw up a series of specific recommendations that are accessible, relevant and actionable.
6. List of References
Second Example
1 Objectives
My principle objective is to determine the differential impact of the media on delinquency by comparing the perceptions of delinquency among school and street youth. Accordingly, this research will examine: a) images youth have of juvenile delinquency; b) youth interpretations of the media coverage of delinquency; c) variations in perceptions of the media coverage among different segments of the youth population; and, d) levels of youth resistance and/or accommodations to mediated messages of youth crime.
2. Context—Relevant Scholarly Literature
The relationship between delinquency and media enjoys a rich intellectual history. Research suggests that a majority of people receive much of their impressions of the criminal justice system through the media, especially through entertainment television viewing (Surette, 1992). According to Canadian research on public knowledge of youth crime, the majority of respondents (60%) derive most of their information about youth crime from television news programs or newspapers (Standing Committee, 1997).This point underscores the fact that television programming is the principal means of socialization (Laywood 1985) for both children and adults (Swidler, 1986; Roberts and Doob 1990). The findings from an analysis of newspaper reports on youth crime in Toronto reveal that the mass media, the source of most public information about crime, do a very poor job of informing the public (Sprott, 1995). Despite criticisms of this research (Hughes 1980), there has been consistent and convincing evidence that television viewing cultivates certain views of society, particularly those supporting the "dominant beliefs and values" of society (Altheide,1985; Gerbner and Gross, 1976). Cultivation theory maintains that the typical viewer is isolated and atomized, thus highly susceptible to the media’s messages of violence (Gerbner, 1972). Media crime portrayals are often inaccurate and are uniformly fragmentary, providing a distorted mirror reflection of crime within society and an equally distorted image of the criminal justice system's response to such behaviour (Surette, 1984:16). Sobol, (1995:1) further discovered that the motion picture industry succeeds in presenting an incomplete and uninformed image. For instance, Schissel (1997) joins other authors (McCormick, 1995, Baron and Hartnagel 1996; Sprott 1996) who have highlighted the role of the media in fostering pressure to get tougher with Canada's young offenders. Accordingly, the media have engineered "moral panics" and distorted the public's understanding of contemporary delinquency activities, thereby reinforcing stereotypes regarding levels of violence. Research demonstrates compellingly that this process of amplification of delinquency supports only the self-serving interests of the police and media. Not only are crime rates driven by profit ratings, the bureaucratic and economic logic of news production, deadline and financial pressure, cause an over-reliance on readily available and easily legitimated information from official sources (Moore, 1993:32; Ericson, Baranek, and Chan, 1991). Specifically, the media tend to cluster brief accounts of scattered crimes to create the illusion of youth crime waves. Sociologically, panics solidify the disreputable identities of “certain” youths. All this despite, according to official statistics and academic research, the fact that the overall youth crime rate is declining (Carrington, 1999) and non violent (Doob and. Sprott 1998). Research in the UK has also shown that this heightened attention to delinquency has in turn shaped criminal subcultures (Hall et al. 1978). For decades, labeling approaches have documented the effects of criminalization (Visano, 1998a) in creating criminal identities. Paradoxically, criminalization not only exacerbates social inequalities but also serves to empower those who have been routinely punished. Criminal and deviant activities perpetrated by young people have become popularized, dramatically expanding the sites and targets accessible for young offenders. Research by Acland (1995:10) suggests that when studying the relationship between youth and the “news”, we should be considering the “conjunction point for various discourses" such that race, gender, sexuality, class and age are at the very core of common understandings of the "crisis of youth." Despite this recommendation, however, there exist no data yet on young people's knowledge and perception of criminal justice, to my knowledge and confirmed by Peterson-Badali and Koegl (1998).
Context--Relation to Ongoing Research
The current proposal is an incremental conceptualization of my earlier studies on youth and culture. In Visano (1987, 1990b) I discovered that youths react to criminalization by employing symbolic and stylistic strategies in negotiating their “criminal identities”. Moreover, the analysis of squeegie kids in Canada (Visano, et al, 1998b) demonstrated how legal campaigns were legitimated through the media's deployment of "emotive symbols. In (Visano, 1998a), diverse criminological theories were assessed in an effort to develop a more compelling critical cultural approach. I have argued therein that crime is intimately related to culture within which consciousness is embedded, defined, and implemented. Issues of crime and criminal justice are best understood when placed with the context of broader cultural developments. My research (1990b), examined the everyday dynamics of criminal events and criminal subcultures by paying attention to career stages and contingencies, developing further my earlier critical interactionist framework (Visano, 1988). The phenomenology of youth crime is developed (Visano, 1996) in reference to customary meanings of morality. Here, I report on the discovery that rituals of resistance have accompanied the mythologizing of youth crime.
Context- Importance, Originality and Anticipated Contribution to Knowledge
The proposed study, training and writing offer several contributions. By focussing on the tensive interplay between delinquency and the media, this study seeks to highlight conceptually the inextricable relationship between discourse and subjectivity. By challenging the dominant ideologies of crime news and by exploring the common ground between cultural and criminal practices in contemporary Canadian social life - organized according to imagery, style, and symbolic meanings, this study makes a significant contribution to Canadian critical criminology. Conceptually, this research is guided by the contributions of Judith Butler (1991) in examining how values are constructed historically and relationally and also by what Dorothy Smith (1990) describes as the critique of socially organized practices of knowing to demonstrate that difference and identity affect one’s understanding of the world. This unique blend of interpretive sociology and critical theory connects culture and crime in terms of inscribed social inequalities. Also, within a Gramscian framework, displays of resistance define the interplay between culture and youth crime. The exploration of subversive and counter-hegemonic elements (Gramsci, 1971:279-318) complements contemporary criminology with its emphasis on everyday culture. Moreover, this study examines the extent to which negotiated contexts influence the interpretive logic of youth. How narratives are lived (Arrigo, 1995: 449-451) requires a deeper appreciation for the inseparable relationship between discourse and subjectivity. Substantively, this study examines how youth and others experience the media differently. Identity, social relations and discourses are juxtaposed against the role the media plays in the lives of young people. Theoretically, the politics of recognition, that is, the relationship between identity and difference is the central issue confronting contemporary debates in criminological theory. Contemporary criminology is advanced by examining the relationship youths have with the media and how the media, in turn, alters youths’ techniques of social presentation. To what extent does the media impact on youth cultures by influencing the communicative processes and the net of social interaction thereby empowering them to expand or restrict their sites and targets of sociality (delinquency/ conformity)? The dialectical interplay between culture and crime, the tensions and contradictions and the possibilities of its transcendence are investigated. For example, from where do the impressions and knowledge of youth regarding the criminal justice system derive? These are crucial questions, delineating important dimensions of the relationship between the criminal justice system and the wider society. Beyond this is the importance this research holds for the politics of deterrence. It is believed by many in the public and policy spheres that raising the penalties deters crime. The “get tough” approach to juvenile delinquency that dominates the current political agenda is based clearly on this assumption. It is important for predicting the effectiveness of this policy to know whether youth even employ a calculus of costs and benefits in their decisions to engage in criminal activity, and on the information that informs their estimate of these costs. The issue is not that sociological theory has ignored media accounts of youth crime, but that it has ignored the extent to which the media exerts a basic influence over the social thoughts of youth.
3. Context- Theoretical Framework
Guided by Griswold (1994)’s normative conceptualization of culture as an historically transmitted pattern of symbolic meanings, this study examines how youth communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes towards mediated delinquency. Knowledge is largely preserved within and transmitted by cultures Culture, as a collective creation, is anchored in the social world, i.e., the economic, political, and social patterns and exigencies. Culture also incorporates the means and processes of production of symbolism and style (Griswald, 1994:71; McNeely, 1996) that intertwine with broader social and legal relations .Culture, as a signifying system, is a vehicle through which the “consciousness is produced” (Bennett 1982: 51) within a dialectic of mutually interactive relationship between the subject (human agents) and the object (the conditions of their existence). Stuart Hall (1980; Hall et al. 1978) and other cultural theorists argue that this dialectic between 'social being' and 'social consciousness attests to the significance of how people make sense of media texts, that is, the inscription of dominant ideologies (narratives), in terms of 'preferred”, “oppositional” and “negotiated” readings. In other words, does the media text (electronic/ print) mediate the larger delinquency narrative? Informed by the writings of Antonio Gramsci (1971), contemporary cultural theories of youth also highlight the notion of resistance as 'common sense' and the 'natural '. This project of critical theory equally engages the contributions of The Frankfurt School notably the emphases on reconciling structural and subjective approaches to the study of crime, the multiplicity of interpretations of meanings and the socially constituted individual who is defined by both intrapsychic and intersubjective relations. Habermas (1984) insisted on the social construction of individual identity and pursued a theory of communicative action grounded in the universal presuppositions of language. To what extent is 'the culture industry” (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1972), an “irresistible force” (Marcuse, 1972) in the social life of delinquency? Within the interpretive tradition in sociology, Weber’s (1969) “verstehen” - an empathic and interpretive understanding of the subjective meanings which actors attach to social action is essential in contextualizing how actors take into account the actions of others and are guided by these subjective meanings. Theoretically, therefore, critical cultural criminology with its insights from both cultural studies and critical theory provides transformative possibilities by urging a relational view in which the component elements of social life are not individuals or institutions but combinations of economic, political, class, gender, age and legal relations. Interestingly, Hagan and McCarthy (1998) discuss the concept of “embeddeness”, a concept that blends well with social constructionist, critical and constitutive criminology.
4. Methodology - Research Strategies, procedures for Data Collection and Analysis
Epistemologically, the interpretive approaches directed this research project by providing a general proposal of guiding notions. Concepts such as resistance and risk assist in sensitizing researchers to move beyond concrete forms of empirical instances. This study incorporates quantitative and qualitative methods in data collection procedures which include: 1.Detailed Interviews of school and street youth (50 participants). Instruments include: i). Demographic factors: age, education, race, class, ethnicity, gender, urban/ suburban and, ii) Personal factors: self esteem; peer group references; knowledge and reasoning; questions on how youth articulate their respective experiences iii) interpersonal/ interactional contexts: networks of supportive relations; types of personal experiences; family/ peer dynamics, and, iv) organizational/ institutional factors: commitments to school, family, work, community, and peer groups.Content analyses of responses will be utilized for ascertaining the language rules and vocabularies for encoding and decoding events and activities within a phenomenological approach. The instruments will capture how news reading and interpretation are conditioned by time, place, and subjectivity of the reader. 2. Site visits (12) to conduct focus group sessions with youth in secondary schools and youth hostels in Metropolitan Toronto and the Greater Toronto Area (GTA): York, Peel, and Durham Regions. Institutional support has been secured from three Metro Toronto secondary schools high schools, two GTA secondary schools, three elementary schools and five youth serving social service agencies. 4. An ethnography of different media sites of interest to twenty youths which involves an examination of school youth and street youth in their natural settings (including out of school surroundings or institutional settings to gather data in informal settings eg video games and internet media). These sources have become highly significant in creating, coding , reinforcing and shaping youth images and culture. We will fold these sites into data collection and analysis at an early stage. The focus on the street (a comfortable venue for street youth) retains dimensions of the “naturalistic”talk and participation. The present study will examine age related changes in youth’s knowledge and reasoning about legal issues presumed to be important to them. Utilizing Goffman's dramaturgical perspective, it can be argued that the area bounded by the expectations of youths would constitute the "front region" (Goffman, 1959: 22), whereas the area outside of the view of youths constitutes the preparatory or "back region". Naturalistic observations in situationally relevant contexts will enable the discovery of meaning, action, identity, and status as organized around style -- that is, the shared aesthetic of the subculture's members. This ethnography will demonstrate that the interpretation of media is conditioned by time, place, and subjectivity of the actor. This programmatic research approach based on primary strategies of qualitative and quantitative analyses in selected substantive areas is developed for in depth inquiry and a study of what youths actually know, or think they know about the criminal justice system. Main themes are considered in order to obtain a general perspective on portrayals of the criminal justice system over time. The second line of inquiry involves a set of specific questions pertaining to perceptions of the legal system and an understanding of its operation. These strategies are then combined into a third for an interactive examination of the problem, proposing a somewhat different and compelling investigation of the relationship between law and society, with important theoretical and empirical implications for cultural, political, and criminal justice studies in general. Qualitative data (content and discourse analyses of the main themes and central meaning patterns will also indicate that the differential reading of the media text is governed by mood, that is, a psychic vibration between the poles of boredom and anxiety. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches will be employed to collect data on youths impressions of reported youth crimes. Based on Ericson, Baranek, and Chan (1991), certain criteria of newsworthiness (e.g., simplification, dramatization, personalization, continuity) that are at work will be analyzed in terms of the basic requirements order, coherence, sequence. The following stages: revelationary stage where delinquency is presented; (2) the interpretive stage where views of a privileged selection of “authorities” is given; and, (3) closure, where the coverage moves to recommendation, anticipated action/ reaction measures. The content analyses are useful in highlighting the diversity in responses of youth to media coverage of single events. The communication of words and images will be studied. Contextual (histories within configurations of temporal, geographic and social conditions) and codal (language events discourse) occur in contexts of linguistic meanings making processes which are observable and describable in instances of discourse. This interpretive study aspires to collect stories produced by youths in order to produce a narrative mosaic which identifies through intensive interrogation a number of responses that present a picture of their collective consciousness regarding the impact of the media on delinquency. In dealing with each phase we will follow a standard, informative format - the theoretical specifications, observational and interview findings and testing of explanatory models. Diverse sampling strategies will be used: snow ball, purposive, cross sectional and reputational. Participants over the age of 12 and under 18 will be selected.(corresponding with the age specific contexts of the Young Offenders Act). Participation is voluntary.
Methodology-Justification of Choice
Drawing upon my fieldwork on youth from prostitutes (Visano, 1998), street transients (ibid, 1987), police informers (ibid, 1990), and drug dealing (ibid,1996) that spans a twelve year period, the above methodology is justifiable theoretically in enhancing the validity of the study. Rather than a preconceived and programmatic methodology, a flexible accommodation exists which is consistent with the demands of interpretive sociology. As a general methodology, qualitative sociology displays an "omnibus quality" by incorporating an array of well-reasoned exercises. These include variations of informal communicative strategies, direct participation, conversational or informal dialogue, and formal focused presentations. Interpretive sociology recognizes the importance of inner and outer perspectives in constituting their “central meaning patterns” (Rock, 1979:198). This methodology follows the admonition of Hagan and McCarthy (1998), and Di Cristina (1995) who note that criminology has focused too heavily on school surveys and self-reported criminal behaviour, neglecting the more taxing 'street criminology' which initially inspired North American criminological research.
5. Communication of Results
Theoretically and substantively, this study will be written in a manner that is accessible to a wide audience of scholars, policy makers, youth providers and media researchers seeking a broader understanding of delinquency. This study will be submitted to an academic press and render the work accessible to the following readers: academic non specialist, the educated, non academic audience, and academic specialist. I intend to submit to refereed journals aspects of the theory (Theoretical Criminology, Journal of Crime and Popular Culture; Critical Theory), methods (Qualitative Sociology; Criminology; Canadian Journal of Criminology) and substantive themes (Journal of Youth and Adolescence, Journal of Criminal Justice). Three journal articles are anticipated.This study will further assist in developing a well informed appreciation of delinquency which in turn will be communicated in my regular public comments in the media and graduate/ undergraduate lectures. The research results will be communicated to the projects participants in a public forum. The doctoral student will be encouraged to publish as well. This research will provide the background necessary for a more progressive and comprehensive response to youth crime. Clearly, current official responses to youth crime have failed to move beyond limited normative policing satisfied with short-term benefits of reactive models of policing. A more proactive and strategic problem-solving approach concomitant with community development and restorative justice is warranted. The rhetoric of “getting tough” on youth ( eg. boot camps) vitiates the spirit of community involvement and contradicts statistical evidence of the declining youth crime rates.
6. Bibliography
