Research into home winemaking - TIME TO TAKE THE SURVEY

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1d10t , There should be no fundamental problem for anyone engaged in research to use online forums to gather data about how members of those forums (note my wording) interact with other members and how they may talk about how they interact with others who may be members of other forums or who are not members of any forum.That said, there MAY be ethical issues if some people on a public forum object. But that would be something for a university IRB (institutional review board) to consider (IRB's determine the ethical issues surrounding research on live human subjects and either give a green light for the project or call a halt if they believe that the ethical issues have not been resolved).

If the researcher states that this and this was the sample I studied and this and this is what I have learned from this sample then there is no need for that researcher to look for different or other samples. One of the great social scientists of the 20th Century, Harvey Sacks, a man who single-handedly created a whole new branch of research now called conversational analysis, spent years examining what people said when they called a suicide hotline.
If the researcher is making a claim about What ANYONE or EVERYONE does then this kind of research may not be sufficient but "grounded theory", for example, simply demands that the researcher "codes" the raw data as themes that emerge FROM the data and continues to organize the data into those emergent themes in ways that saturate the themes with data, until there are no data left outside of any theme and and all the data that is assigned to a theme covers that theme completely. (Surveys begin (and largely end) with ideas that are not emergent from the data themselves but come from external sources (what someone thinks they know or what someone wants to find out and so asks, whether or not those questions are anything that the respondents have ever thought about as they go about their daily lives) but as an anthropologist, REDRUM would be very aware of all this.
isn't that the very thing that this forum is all about, understanding our interactions, styles so on so forth, as BernardSmith said i neither for see any problems, although i do wonder why Mr. Skinner, has limited his breath and girth of his research by using grapes only, after all in history the diversity of areas, experiences levels, styles and ancient knowledge by using grapes only limits your research to Europe, there was meads, country wines, rice wines all depending on he reagans of our planet,,,,
Dawg
 
isn't that the very thing that this forum is all about, understanding our interactions, styles so on so forth, as BernardSmith said i neither for see any problems, although i do wonder why Mr. Skinner, has limited his breath and girth of his research by using grapes only, after all in history the diversity of areas, experiences levels, styles and ancient knowledge by using grapes only limits your research to Europe, there was meads, country wines, rice wines all depending on he reagans of our planet,,,,
Dawg

But research questions are research questions. You can certainly ask why someone might ask only about X and not about Y but asking about X (all other things equal) provides answers about X that might not otherwise be known. If someone (including Mr Skinner) is interested in asking about other kinds of wine making and drinking those questions can be asked in another survey or using another means of obtaining data (for example, as I had remarked, and putting aside any questions of ethics and research) the posts on this forum are open for anyone who has access to the forum to view, download, code, and analyze in any way one might want - from looking at arguments that erupt to looking at lengths of sentences , to the sorts of issues self -identifying novices bring, to looking at how expertise is performed (a sociological term); to how and whether a sense of community is demonstrated (or not) within the forum... all kinds of questions there for the "asking" and if one is simply searching through thousands of threads and posts no one would be any the wiser (again, putting aside all questions of ethics - and there could be questions of ethics within different disciplines if someone combed through posts without informing members of the forum...
 
But research questions are research questions. You can certainly ask why someone might ask only about X and not about Y but asking about X (all other things equal) provides answers about X that might not otherwise be known. If someone (including Mr Skinner) is interested in asking about other kinds of wine making and drinking those questions can be asked in another survey or using another means of obtaining data (for example, as I had remarked, and putting aside any questions of ethics and research) the posts on this forum are open for anyone who has access to the forum to view, download, code, and analyze in any way one might want - from looking at arguments that erupt to looking at lengths of sentences , to the sorts of issues self -identifying novices bring, to looking at how expertise is performed (a sociological term); to how and whether a sense of community is demonstrated (or not) within the forum... all kinds of questions there for the "asking" and if one is simply searching through thousands of threads and posts no one would be any the wiser (again, putting aside all questions of ethics - and there could be questions of ethics within different disciplines if someone combed through posts without informing members of the forum...
oh whow, maybe i worded it wrong, i read where he wanted info on differences, why's, different cultures/styles,how recipes got handed down , interactions and so forth, i was in no way complaining,
Dawg
 
Hi gang,
Some of my research into home winemaking has been published in Ethnologie francaise - "Making homemade wine, online". The link is below but you probably won't be able to access it unless you have university login credentials- if you are interested, you can message me here or email me at bill.skinner[at]adelaide.edu.au and I can send you a pdf version.

Thanks to everyone who participated in my survey! The article draws from data from here and other winemaking forums and deals with the notion that amateur winemaking is an example of a 'serious leisure' pursuit, and that online forums like WMT exist as 'communities of practice' that develop their own cultures. I will say that this site represents a welcoming online space, where beginners and experts interact - a true community in that sense!

Cheers everyone :ib


https://doi.org/10.3917/ethn.213.0577

Article abstract
"This article examines the ways in which amateur home winemakers interact online, on specialist internet forums and social media platforms. It explores peoples’ motivations for making wine as a serious leisure pursuit, using concepts of techne, technoscience and tradition to analyse the different ways in which knowledge is generated and transferred in this field. Online winemaking communities develop their own internalised cultures, providing a realm within which certain types of knowledge are generated and shared."
 
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