The Challenges of (Mis)Communication

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Abstract

This film experiments with presentational norms by packaging scholarship as a comedy. The film draws on examples of scholarly “bloopers” to demonstrate the ubiquity of miscommunication and its associated costs to researchers with implications for findings. By “bloopers” we mean viewpoints expressed based on flawed assumptions about disciplinary norms outside of one’s own area of expertise. Methodologically, the film demonstrates how narrative frameworks from film studies guided the systematic collection of data to support “thick description” (Geertz, 1988). Different than sociological frameworks that are used to analyze data, film’s narrative frameworks improved the productivity—even from the perspective of ethnographic traditions—of data collection.

Authors

• Fawn Elise Canady, Sonoma State University

• Shane Gallos, University of Nevada - Las Vegas

• George Mentchoukov, University of Nevada - Las Vegas