When its personal...

Sometimes research can get personal. It happens when you find yourself joining your subjects under the microscope. At the recent CAIS conference I presented a paper entitled "Beyond Belief: Prayer as Communication in Information Seeking." I'll write about that later this week. It was a positive experience and I received lots of excellent feedback.

When you study peoples' lives, it is difficult to remain detached. The researcher balances the objective ("etic") viewpoint, and the "insider's" ("emic") perspective. When I study another culture, it is easier to keep my distance; when I study my own, I bring deeper insight but also my personal beliefs. In this paper I examined prayer as an information scientist. But I am a scientist who prays, and believes in prayer. I am prepared to accept critique of my research; my methods and my conclusions. But when someone questions my research subjects' belief in the reality of prayer it unsettles me. I share many of their beliefs. My faith is part of my identity.

I thought more about the challenges that some researchers face; those who regularly engage topics related to identity such as ethnicity, gender and belief. Engaging with your research; engaging with yourself. In public, and under the microscope. CAIS is a safe venue; I've been to conferences that weren't as civil. Yet some researchers regularly place themselves out there.

There is a balance to find here. I cannot become self-indulgent, lest my research really become only about me. I know researchers who have fallen into that trap. But we cannot be afraid to be personally engaged in our research either. There are of course safer topics to study.

In honour of the end of the Harry Potter franchise, here is a good professor scrap.

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SciFi and Human Nature

Outcasts is a new miniseries on the Space Channel, a post-apocalyptic storyline developed by the BBC. The premise is that we have devastated the planet earth and in 2040 we must leave to start over on another planet. Our new home is called Carpathia, named after the ship that rescued survivors of the Titanic disaster. Most evacuees don't survive the trip but a colony is established, and the story begins ten years after the initial landing. Can we really start over?

We discover quickly that the colonists have personal baggage, some from earth, but also guilty decisions made since planetfall. The spacecast blog notes: "The characters are presented with the failings of the human race - will knowing what went wrong on Earth really force us to change our ways, or will "human nature" turn out to be the deciding factor?" At one point in the pilot episode the leader of the expeditionary teams concludes, "You start all over again, you mess things up again. That's just how it has to be."

Religion and media researchers have argued that channels "narrowcasting" to specific audiences have the opportunity to explore issues that the major broadcasters wouldn't consider. As yet, religious themes in Outcasts have not been raised, but the question of human nature looms large. From a religious perspective, I understand this as a fundamental question. Any social movement, secular philosophy or religious dogma that doesn't seriously address human nature misses the rescue boat.

The Judeo-Christian tradition does, though with varying interpretations. In the archtypical start-over story from the Bible, Noah and the flood, we read:

" ⁵ The LORD saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. ⁶ The LORD regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled."

Ouch. One significant counter theme in this tradition is there remains hope that God provides start-overs, heaven sent Carpathias.

I'm intrigued to see where this series is heading, and to answer the question: "who are the outcasts?"

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Healthy in Body and Spirit

So I'm sitting in a session on Health information seeking in everyday life at the Canadian Association for Information Science conference. Not my usual topic, but I was interested in how the presenters, Jennie Abrahamson & Victoria Rubin and Shelagh Genuis were approaching their research. Abrahamson & Rubin's paper was "'Your Doctor Won’t Tell You This ...': Expert and Lay Perspectives in Health Communication Discourse," and Genuis' was "Constructing sense from uncertain and evolving health information."

Suddenly my ears perked up; I was hearing familiar themes. People are wrestling with health challenges, and are seeking information. They talk to health professionals, but also friends, neighbours, and "experts" on television and increasingly the internet. Seekers attribute authority to these non-professional sources (the "Oprah factor"), and that concerns health professionals. Tami Oliphant addressed related issues in her paper on alternative medicine at last year's conference.

More than a few pastors have expressed their views on Oprah's "theology", and their concerns about where their parishioners are looking for spiritual information. Whether health professionals or pastoral professionals, they are concerned for the well-being of those in their care. They want them to get "good" information. People are more open to considering different kinds of expertise. Whether doctor or minister, you are no longer the only source in town. Time to get past that and focus on the next task, equipping discerning information users. The information world is a big place.

I guess I need to talk to more health information researchers; I have much to learn from them! And now for something completely different: Trust me, I'm the Doctor.

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"Do I mow the lawn today?" and other theological questions...

Judgement Day. May 21, 2011. 6:00pm.

So says the Harold Camping of Family Radio ministries, a Conservative Christian evangelistic ministry. Important to Christian theology is the idea of the end things ("eschatology"), whether it be "what happens when I die?", "what happens to the world?", "is there a heaven?", or "is there a hell?" The Bible says alot about end things. These are important faith questions. The danger arises when answering those questions becomes the consuming passion, and not living out our faith. Perhaps Harold Camping is sincere and convinced. Tomorrow he will be a very disappointed man.

Judgment Day prophets have been around for a very long time. In fact, the Gospel of John records that end time speculation started even before Jesus' death! There have been lots of end time predictions through history, and many times people have climbed mountains to wait...and wait...and wait. I'm amazed by how the media has picked this up. Why the fascination with this End Times prophet? Is it just a warmup for the Mayan/Nostradamus 2012 End-of-the-World prophecies? There is certainly a public taste for this coverage, and it is interesting to watch the twitter posts as people confidently (?) proclaim that the world isn't ending. MTV is suggesting top five movies for end of the world, the Washington Post is predicting good weather for the end of days, and CNN suggests a last meal at your favourite restaurant. A little bit of a circus, but it is a fascinating religious phenomenon (sorry, had to!)

I'm an evangelical Christian, and I believe in Judgment Day. I believe a time will come when God will say "Enough!" "Enough cruelty. Enough killing. Enough destroying this creation I once called 'very good'." I need to believe in a God who will one day bring justice to an injustice world, re-make the world as it was to be in the beginning. I think that is the point of Biblical prophecy; not to provide a road-map/checklist for the end times, but to give struggling people hope that even when if seems darkest, God is still there, and one day He will say enough.

So I will mow my lawn today, and get groceries. Maybe new sneakers. Or I guess I could wait til tomorrow. ;-)

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