Alternative Dissertation Design
To honour the topic of media and digital literacies, while authentically sharing and revealing the MDL under investigation, the results of my research is presented in an openly accessible, alternatively created, digitally enabled format. . This document is presented as an interactive text to explore thematic recurrences and inconsistent forms or meanings, as suggested by Calvino (1979). While using and applying a variety of media and digital strategies and techniques, this “open-ended, problematic, critical, polyphonic” text (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005, p. 1124) will bend and circumvent the boundaries imposed by traditional alpha/numeric dissertation representations. In this dissertation format I reflect and create a non-linear, hyper-textually linked, dialogic, conceptually and topically interconnected and networked rendering of my research, thus mirroring the nature of this qualitative research. By reading this text, as Calvino suggests in the quote above, you will undoubtedly become aware of and possibly record occasions of thematic recurrences, inconsistencies, and shifting meanings.What is the reading of a text, in fact, except the recording of certain thematic recurrences, certain inconsistencies of forms and meanings? (Calvino, 1979)
Idhe and Malafouris (2019) referenced the notion of homo faber, which connected to the writing by Thomas and Seely Brown (2009) who positioned humans as maker while emphasizing our ability to create. This is grounded in the words of Arendt (1998/ 1958) who suggested that the "implements and tools of homo faber, from which the most fundamental experience of instrumentality arises, determine all work and fabrication" (p. 153). This suggests that humanity is evolutionarily constituted and shaped by the technologies we use. New materialities and digital ecospheres encompass all aspects of living and learning (Pahl et al., 2020; Sameshima et al., 2019). We are thus constructed by the tools that we've constructed and by which we engage in relationships and construct our learning (Ihde & Malafouris, 2019). I am constructed as an academic and researcher in this PhD process while creating the dissertation as product. This dissertation echoes McLuhan's position that the medium is the message (McLuhan, 1964).
My dissertation process and product look beyond what may be obvious and common, seeking the hidden “changes or effects that are enabled, enhanced, accelerated or extended by the new thing” (Federman, 2004). This alternative dissertation will ”suit the style as much as possible to the matter” (McLuhan & McLuhan, 1992, p. xi). In this way, my research and this resulting dissertation can be seen to critically analyze the privilege of representation, voice, and academy.
Deciding to shift my research process and product into a fully interactive and digital environment fits with the ontological and epistemological frameworks within which I study. Pockley, the creator of the first electronic dissertation in 1995, described texts as “mutable streams of thought, open to annotation, revision, re-presentation and part of the very fabric of their community of interest” (Jacobs, 2008, p. 245). By preparing and presenting my research and dissertation in an alternative dissertation (ALT-DISS) format, I contribute to the breaking open of “calcified conventions” sustaining the linear privilege of print text (Covey, 2013) as traditionally found in electronic dissertation and theses formats relying on static portable document format (PDF) manuscripts. With my experiences in producing and sharing media texts, I recognize the “cultural agoraphobia, the cognitive bias that leads us to underestimate the potential of openness” (Covey, 2013, p. 550) and will push open the structure, media, notions of authorship, and methods of assessment in the process and products in research and dissertations.
As evidenced in this dissertation, I have designed paths through the research information, but it is YOU, the reader of this interactive web created document, who will control the serendipitous navigation through the content. YOU control the reading experience. YOU determine the strategic use of hyperlinks, embedded media, graphic organizers, taxonomic features, and visualization options and affordances in the Scalar software. These elements reflect a media filled, rich, thick description, and exemplifies the open nature of this dissertation.
Scalar software was strategically and intentionally selected to present the research results within a fluid, editable, elastic format that is “open to annotation and responsive to change” (Jacobs, 2008, p. 237). Previously published Scalar dissertations model the use of this digital tool and Dixon (2014) provide the opportunity to explore, experience and understand the digital mechanisms available in this form of digital publication (Dixon, 2014).
Since my research and dissertation is not without its political dimensions, and to meet institutional requirements for a ‘frozen in time’ document as a representation of my research capabilities (Barrett, 2014; Jacobs, 2008), a secondary linear PDF version was also be produced. Dissemination of research results will be pursued through traditional, peer reviewed Canadian and international journals, conference presentations, and through open social media and web publications.
In rendering this dissertation differently, I heed Denzin's (2017) call to "unsettle traditional concepts of what counts as research, as evidence, as legitimate inquiry" (p. 8). There may be elements here that reflect postmodernist compositions, such as those found within Italo Calvino's novel If on a Winter's Night A Traveler (Calvino, 1979) and Luigi Serafini's (1981) Codex Seraphinianus which is described as an illustrated encyclopedia of an imaginary world using an imaginary language and code. This dissertation is alternatively both creator and created. It is both dispositio, described as a remix or mashup, a composition and arrangement of an academic argument, and inventio, described as being traditional, original, and sole authorship production (Hoechsmann in Mackenzie et al., 2022).