Faculty Statement (M. Gabriela Torres, Anthropology)

 My partnership with Ian Lazzara ’12 supported my continuing research project into the changes in municipal and social policy that were made by the City of Vancouver and the Province of British Columbia in preparation to showcase of Canada for the 2010 Winter Olympics. This year Ian worked to scan and code documents, compile press coverage, government promotional material, anti-Olympic publications, academic literature that discusses the social changes that precede the 2010 Olympics, and the response to the Olympic games and its aftermath in various social media venues including facebook and twitter. The project assistant was responsible for coding and organizing the collected literature and media network information using qualitative data management software (Nvivo). This year, he truly partnered with me in thinking through data collection design: Ian was instrumental at developing practices to collate social media data and devising ways to archive the ephemeral data these forms produce.

Student Statement (Ian Lazzara ’12)

This past Fall I continued my work with Professor Torres as part of the WRP program. This semester was especially important because we began to explore concepts that elaborated on themes we drew out from the data collected in our previous semesters research. Since the Vancouver Olympics were over, we were also able to investigate and capture the public’s response and the social aftermath. We looked again at the ways people reacted to the games and the concepts that persisted. Approaching the topic in this way we began to realize some of the underlying problems within the city of Vancouver that were being affected by the sort of “catastrophic event” that was the Olympics.

We continued our approach using social media as a way to interpret the response of people as well as more traditional methods of research such as looking through newspapers articles and academic literature. Exploring these new mediums is a learning experience in research that will become more helpful in the years to come as more information becomes available on the internet. These changing methods of communication require innovative research skills that I got a change to work with. The project is also really helpful for me as a student because I get to apply the research skills learned in class to a real world event. The project is exciting to work on because I get to bring my own ideas to the table and think about the social media in a new light.

Original proposal

I am seeking funding for my continuing research project into the changes in municipal and social policy that were made by the City of Vancouver and the Province of British Columbia in preparation to showcase of Canada for the 2010 Winter Olympics. This project continues to require an assistant to transcribe interviews, scan and code documents, compile press coverage, government promotional material, anti-Olympic publications and academic literature that discusses the social changes that precede the 2010 Olympics. The project assistant will also be responsible for coding and organizing the collected literature using qualitative data management software (Nvivo). This is a great opportunity for a student who wishes to contribute towards the research and preliminary writing of an academic publication and wants learn how to construct research queries, use qualitative software, conduct a popular and academic literature review, and perform analysis of qualitative texts and images.