Dr. Terje Toomistu & Dr. Jukka-Pekka Heikkilä published a field report of applying a novel data collection device Story Sharing Cubes in participatory culture events. The cube initiative is part of Burning Stories research collective. The field report is here and some section of are highlighted below:
This novel art-meets-science approach builds on the long-term commitment in several disciplines using personal narratives in qualitative research (Polkinghorne 1988). It follows the premise that people tend to attribute meaning to life and experiences through stories (Vaara, Sonenshein & Boje 2016). Narratives are normally collected in the form of an interview, or through textual analyses of diaries and autobiographies. We instead used a strange inanimate object—a cube. However, since the activity of sharing a story may have a self-affirming quality, we assume that our initiative also adds value to the participants’ overall experience of an event.
We also envision particular benefits of the method in the current era of “fundamental uncertainty” (Aven & Bouder 2020). Firstly, despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, transformational participatory culture events are organised in the future, but possibly with a change in terms of social distancing and also in the ways how people share their insights with each other. Therefore, in an environment that might highlight social distancing, applying a methodology that enables a socially distanced story sharing or feedback recording might be a way forward. Besides, the method might be a good addition or alternative to conducting in-person interviews and surveys during the event as it exhausts the field researcher considerably less.
Read the full report at https://dj.dancecult.net/index.php/dancecult/article/view/1171/999
