(@rebelethno) There are asterisks by codes such as collaboration, activity, bother(ing), giving up, complaining. I think if we create a spectrum of in/activism (levels on non-involvement) we could easily recode, merge, or child some of these codes into this spectrum. … I know, this is more an analytical way of coding, but, as agreed on one of our previous meetings , this is essential to the topic of the project. (I think it was assigned to @Jan)
(@rebelethno) No to lose topically important codes in the SSNA-view when we cut the view to 5 or more co-occurrences, I think there need to be some parenting made wit the ideological codes such as: authoritarianism, neocolonialism, neoliberalism, ‘patriotism’, anti-*(anything), etc.
Similarly, we could child xenophobia, homophobia, and islamophobia (maybe oikophobia) to some code, such as discrimination (where already racism is made its child). Or we could child those phobias to hate. (And also make discrimination child of hate?) What do you say?
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I’ll definitely give it a thought. For the moment, though, I think that the “despondency” code we already have fits neatly into the lower end of the spectrum, while “activism”, “direct action” and, more generally, “sense of agency” are, to say the least, indicative of the other extreme. What I’m trying to say is that we already have a sort of spectrum emerging. The question is, however, how granular we want it to be…is a three-grade scale not enough? (activism-indifference-despondency, with the last suggestive of a negative affect toward engagement?)
I think this can be recolved by introducing the “show parent codes” option that, I think, @amelia mentioned during our last meeting. Correct me if I’m wrong.
While I agree that we should parent-child them, to my mind it seems that “anxiety” would be a better candidate than hate. And I would not make “discrimination” a child of “hate”. The way I see it, hate indeed results in discrimination but is not an onthological child of it. I mean, it seems there can be a lot of discrimination without hate and there can be no cat that is not a mammal, to use the example given at some point by @alberto. If anything, I’d say that hate should be the child of discrimination/polarisation or anxiety. (See Fig. 1)
Figure 1
Dear, @rebelethno
I have two general suggestions regarding our coding practice.
- I personally prefer sticking to noun forms, so instead of using, say, “bother(ing)” I’d just use “bothering”. I’m also wondering about the use of adjectives and/or adverbs, as in “bilingualism” instead of “bilingual” or “fascism” instead of “fascist”. It may be purely aesthetic, so just let me know what you think.
- What do you think about using names of people instead of names of countries? For example, coding “Russians” instead of “Russia”? Our project does not really focus on the beauty of landscapes or geographical aspects of given places (unless those geographical aspects somehow affect the social, political and other dimensions). I just believe that whatever “Russia does” is done by its people, and whatever happens to Russia happens to its people. What I’m suggesting is a distinction between a country, seen as an entity, piece of land on the map, and a country as a collective of individuals who self-identify as members thereof. It may turn out that, in the context of Poland, “Ukraine” and “Ukrainians” may not be salient enough to appear in the graph with the strength of co-occurences set to some higher values and yet BE salient enough to deserve a place on the graph.
For example, when people talk about migrating somewhere what they really mean is changing their geographical location, and thus we should use the name of a country. But when they talk about the atmosphere in that country, some political, economic or social processes that take place there, we should code for its people (since they pertain to its people and not the land). - What do you say we change the definition of “education” to something like “acquiring knowledge and learning new skills”? I’ve just visited it and it has quite a few annotations mentioning education outside of schools? Maybe we should fork it and add “formal education” or “schooling system” or sth?
BTW I co-code it with “private sector” when somebody mentions paid courses, etc.
@SZdenek is right — see our agreement below:
@Jan and @Wojt , did you end up making this categorisation for us? If not, please prioritise. Thank you!
(@rebelethno)
The categorisation for political/ideological remains to be introduced in the form of hierarchies on the backend (I haven’t got down to it yet, forming hierarchies, most of them are purely conceptual for now).
@Jan and I came up with a seven-point scale:
Far left<->social democracy<->centrist<->conservatism<->far right
With “far right” and “far left” subdivided into their radical and extreme variants.
The difference between radical left/right and extreme left/right boils down to whether their adherents resort to and respect democratic institutions in their actions. If they are anti-democratic, they should be qualified as extreme.
There is also the code ‘neoliberalism’ for proponents of free market economy, privatisation, reducing the role of the state (and/or), who usually exhibit classist biases and are socially liberal, includes laissez-faire.
I also changed the code right wing and left wing
to ‘right wing’ and ‘left wing’ (with single quotes).
I will go through their annotations and check if they need any distributing.
As for single quotes, we also have the code ‘liberalism’ used when people speak of liberalism without specifying what they mean by that. Sometimes the term liberalism is used offensively by the right as well as the left (e.g. “libki” for the Polish left, “libtards” for the American right).
I imagine most of these won’t be in the form of hierarchies, so just let us know in text form what they are — same with the action / activism coding scheme
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@SZdenek @Jirka_Kocian @Jan
Hi guys, are we meeting tomorrow? I believe tomorrow should be our biweekly coding meeting.
I and Jan can meet at 15 CET. What say you?
Hi. I have it in my schedule, and will be there (Lea will by at her grandmother’s place).
Hello to all, I will hopefully make it on time.
If needed, we can use my Zoom:
Zdeněk Sloboda is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Or in Zoom - Meeting ID: 457 123 1537, Passcode: 3xtFdY
Hi, is anybody there? (Except for me, ofc)
we are here:)
Yes. Sorry. I was a bit late! We are there
@rebelethno brief but efficient call today December 4, we drafted the following plan for the upcoming weeks of December and January:
- By Wednesday Dec. 9, the Czech and the Polish team will finish the current round of code “cleanup”, i.e. checking the comments received to their own codes and making any possible adjustments, when unclear about the solution, asterisk si left in place
- afterwards, @wojt will export the global list of codes into two shared sheets, maintaining the hyperlinks live, until the end of the next week
- these working sheet reflecting on the current state of coding will be used for
a) testing the application feasibility of our hypothesised ontologically correct hierarchies
b) testing the applicability of analytical categories proposed by @Jan and aptly named as the project grammar by him - deliver another round of coding until mid-January 2021
The method proposed by point 3) will keep data present in the backend intact while providing feedback instigating further code adjustment, if necessary and simultaneously address a recurrent issue, emanating from our discussions. Distinct hierarchies and categories will be represented by individual lists in the sheet, allowing for easy distribution.
Will it be possible for us to hold another meeting until Christmas, Dec 18? We should discuss:
- the hierarchies and categories we will operationalize (how to employ tulip the best in doing so?), divide tasks
- remaining *codes
- define a protocol of working around the sheets
Looking forward to seeing you again!
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Hey guys, I finished my code review, at least what I thought was an easy and clear operation. As codes are shared, some new micro-hierarchies appeared in “my” codebook cerated by others, did not dismantle them yet. However I maintained my “healthcare” hierarchy for two reasons (hope I am not wrong in this): 1. again, it is tied to and might contain codes added by others; 2 it seems ontologically well constructed to me:).
How about the meeting next week on 18th?
Great news!
Let’s meet on the 18th, I’m perfectly fine with it.
There is one more thing, though.
We may do it at some later point in time, but there are still some unresolved asterisked Czech codes. Shall I just put them into the draft for hierarchies as they are and we will inspect them in our meeting?
Here are my ideas on coding activism.
It is a very important topic for us, as we want to learn about many ways people become active. We want to approach activism broadly to include its various forms al the way to participation in protest actions. So, I propose the following coding scheme for "activism.”
Let’s code three dimensions of activism.
- Area or domain (in which activism occurs). For example, housing, political parties, health care delivery, etc.
- Form of activism: institutional versus non-institutional. This a traditional distinction in the study of politics. A person can either engage in an institutional action via an existing institutional channel or via contentious action or protest activity.
-
Scale or scope. I really want us to try to catch this. I propose four levels (2 and 3 can be merged to create a three-level scale):
3.1. Local
3.2. Regional
3.3. National
3.4. Transnational
I also want to emphasize the importance of the political “scale” Wojtek has already introduced in this threat. So, we propose a seven-point scale:
- Extreme right
- Radical right
- Center right (conservative)
- Center-liberal
- Center left (social-democratic)
- Radical left
- Extreme left
Why? The idea of dividing the right side of the scale into three “sectors” is taken from Cas Mudde’s recent book The Far Right Today. He divides far right into radical and extreme. I simply replicate this three-fold typology of the right in my analysis of the left. Extreme left are somehow similar to Soviet-style communists (or socialist). The radical left are socialist parties with programs are more radical than those of social democrats.
Now, these distinctions, however useful analytically I believe them to be, may be way too fine for our work. In most cases people will simply talk about “left” or “right.” So, I propose to code such self-identifications in vivo “left” or “right.” So, what’s the use of this seven-point scale? I propose we use only if we are certain that we can assign to a given such more precise assessment of the degree of “leftness” or “rightness.”
Hi, @rebelethno.
So this is the file so far.
You can and shouyld edit it, but please keep it clean and tidy. Namely, I suggest a few rules for our Code Club:
- When you want to create a new suggested hierarchy, open a new tab (add a new sheet using the + symbol in the lower left corner of the page), name the category and place all the codes you think belong there by removing them (cutting them out, ctrl+x->ctrl+v) into the new sheet)
- Close the blank spaces left in the Every Single Code sheet by deleting blank rows
- Write comments when necessary and review other coders’ suggested hierarchies at regular intervals
- The sheets for hierarchies will without doubt proliferate, but I’ve been told that each google sheet document can hold up to 200 sheets, so, considering that we will be focusing only on hierarchies that are relevant to the project (at least in the beginning) it should be no problem.
- Removing the codes from the Every Single Code sheet will help us keep track of how well we’re doing, but may be a problem if somebody “steals” a code you wanted for your category in order to use it in theirs. If this happens, all disputes should be resolved peacefully, via comments in the documents or oral communication during our coding meetings, without resorting to any form of violence (review other prople’s hierarchy sheets).
- Any newly added codes should be introduced into the Every Single Code sheet by means of placing them at the top of the list (I left a few blank rows, you can always add a few by right-clicking on the row number), which should facilitate placing them into appropriate hierarchies afterwards.
- The sheet introduces Jan’s idea for our project’s grammar using colour markers (flashy, I know, but I wanted them to be distinct, visible, and in most cases easy to find in the colour menu, apart from dark cyan 1 maybe for Institutions). It’s a preliminary version of how it may be applied, so I’d welcome your input on how it works for you.
- When you place your cursors over a given code, five links should appear. They will take you to show/edit/annotations/merge/copy respectively. The most useful is show (the first link), but you can also try and visit other websites using this method.
I will keep working on it (creating suggestions for hierarchies, commenting and colour-coding Jan’s grammar). If you have any questions, suggestions, let me know.
See you on the 18th!