® Benjamín Juárez

Short Film as Performative Social Science: The Story Behind Princess Margaret

Rollin' and Dustin': The Use of Graphic Images for the Dissemination of Study Results to Participant Communities

Producing Multimedia Exhibits for Multiple Audiences at the Hokkaido University Museum

Radio: Engaging Communities Through Grassroots Media

Audio Documentary: Hearing Places and the Representation of Sonic Culture

The Relevance of Relevance: Why and How I Write Op-eds

Public Ethnography and Multimodality: Research from the Book to the Web

e-Dialogues: Real-Time Online Conversations

Learn Dis!: A Community Does Research on Itself Through Playback Theatre

Moving Poetic Inquiry Beyond the Academy: How Two Poets Popularize Their Research

Personal, Powerful, Political: Performing Research With a Passion

Tips for Generating a Media Release and Media Coverage: How the Media Ate Up My Research on Aussie Horror Movies

Publishing and Publicity: The Path to Popular Audiences

Reaching mainstream audiences: Media tips for academics and the challenge of storytelling

Interacting with News Media Journalists: Reflections of a Sociologist

Popularizing Research

Table of Contents & Contact

As national educational policies, economic imperatives, and institutional pressures to “outreach” and expand the relevance of research grow, more and more scholars and professional practitioners find themselves increasingly unprepared to reach out to wider audiences. Even though many researchers are willing to bridge the lexical mote surrounding the ivory tower, they find themselves unable to write for larger publics or are discouraged by the rapid technical development and widening choice in new media, new genres of representation, new ways of involving communities, and new processes for reaching different audiences.

This book is meant to offer both academic and professional researchers as well as advanced students a broad survey of ways to popularize research. As an edited interdisciplinary handbook accompanied by a website featuring samples of popularized research, it aims to tell its readers about new genres, new media, new strategies, and new imperatives for popularizing research, and to show how these new processes work in the end, what they sound like, and what they look like.

Contributors were asked to provide the editor with two products: a “show,” and a “tell.” The “show” is a sample of the contributor’s own popularized research. All of the “shows” are available on this website. The “tell” component is a reflection piece on how the “show” was produced and distributed. Each “tell” is a 5000 word chapter in the book.

Popularizing Research was created to work as a complement to research methods courses. It is priced at US$ 38.95 and it is 232 pages long. It can be purchased online at www.peterlang.com or through major online retailers, such as Amazon.com

The editor, Phillip Vannini, is Professor in the School of Communication & Culture at Royal Roads University in Victoria, BC, Canada and Canada Research Chair in Innovative Leaning and Public Ethnography. He is author/editor of 9 books and numerous journal articles.

Book Table of Contents

Introduction: Popularizing Research
Phillip Vannini

Part 1: Film

Chapter 1. Short Film as Performative Social Science: The Story Behind Princess Margaret

Kip Jones

Chapter 2. "People Get Tired": African Australian Cross-Cultural Dialogue and Ethnocinema

Anne Harris and Nyadol Nyuon

Chapter 3. Sturgis 2.0: Crafting a Filmic-Web Dialogue
Carly Gieseler

Part 2: Visual Media and Graphics

Chapter 4. Cartoons as Praxis: Negotiating Different Needs in Adult Literacy Research Reporting
Frank Sligo and Elspeth Tilley

Chapter 5. Rollin' and Dustin': The Use of Graphic Images for the Dissemination of Study Results to Participant Communities
Jean J. Schensul, Colleen Coleman, Sarah Diamond, Raul Pino, Alessander Rey Bermudez, Orlando Velazco, Regina Blake, and Noelle Bessette

Chapter 6. Focusing on Community: Photovoice, Local Action, and Global Public Engagement

Gregory P. Spira

Part 3: Exhibits and Installations

Chapter 7. Mixed-Media Storytelling Installation: Embody
Brigid McAuliffe and Bryce Merrill

Chapter 8. Producing Multimedia Exhibits for Multiple Audiences at the Hokkaido University Museum
Guven Peter Witteveen

Chapter 9. Using Multimedia Artworks to Disseminate Psychological Research on Attacks on Firefighters
Vivienne Brunsden, Joe Robinson, Jeffrey Goatcher, and Rowena Hill

Chapter 10. Geographies of the Imagination: Engaging Audiences and Participants in Collaborative Interdisciplinary Gallery Installations
Lydia Nakashima Degarrod

Part 4: Audio

Chapter 11. Radio: Engaging Communities Through Grassroots Media
Kevin Howley

Chapter 12. Music of the Streets: Bringing Local Rappers to the Ivory Tower
Hinda Mandell and Carol M. Liebler

Chapter 13. Audio Documentary: Hearing Places and the Representation of Sonic Culture
Mark Neumann

Part 5: Periodicals

Chapter 14. The Relevance of Relevance: Why and How I Write Op-eds
John Llewellyn

Chapter 15. A Short Story About Female Characters in Egyptian Soap Operas
Aliaa Dawoud

Chapter 16. Persuasive Prestigitation: Exploring the Rhetorical Power of Magical Performance in a Popular Magazine Article
Joseph P. Zompetti

Part 6: Books and Reports

Chapter 17. Narrating Executive Development: Using “Writing as Inquiry” to Enrich the Coaching Dialogue
Daniel Doherty

Chapter 18. It's What You Do With It That Counts: Emancipatory Research on Sex and Relationships for People With Learning Disabilities
Ruth Garbutt

Chapter 19. Public Ethnography and Multimodality: Research from the Book to the Web
Phillip Vannini

Chapter 20. Mobilizing Research Publications to (Re)Frame Neoliberal Welfare Reform
Shannon Daub

Part 7: Dialogue

Chapter 21. e-Dialogues: Real-Time Online Conversations
Ann Dale Jason Luckerhoff, and François Guillemette

Chapter 22. Using Social Media to Empower Parents in the Digital Age: Ask the Mediatrician
Brandy King and Michael Rich

Chapter 23. New Media, Participatory Methodologies, and the Popularization of Mètis History
Mike Evans and Jon Corbett

Part 8: Performance

Chapter 24. A Performance of Special Education Meetings: Theatre of the Absurd
Jessica Lester and Rachael Gabriel

Chapter 25. Learn Dis!: A Community Does Research on Itself Through Playback Theatre
David Jan Jurasek

Chapter 26. Moving Poetic Inquiry Beyond the Academy: How Two Poets Popularize Their Research

John Guiney Yallop and Sean Wiebe

Chapter 27. Personal, Powerful, Political: Performing Research With a Passion
Kimberly Dark

Part 9: Publicity

Chapter 28. Tips for Generating a Media Release and Media Coverage: How the Media Ate Up My Research on Aussie Horror Movies
Mark David Ryan

Chapter 29. Publishing and Publicity: The Path to Popular Audiences
Mara Einstein

Chapter 30. Reaching mainstream audiences: Media tips for academics and the challenge of storytelling
Philip A. Saunders

Chapter 31: Interacting with News Media Journalists: Reflections of a Sociologist
Christopher J. Schneider

Questions for the editor can be addressed to phillip.vannini@royalroads.ca