Hey, I knew it was you...

I recently submitted an article for review with a scholarly journal and part of the process is a double blind peer review. In a nut shell: my article is sent to several reviewers anonymously; I don't know who reviewed it and they don't know who wrote it. No personal biases. That is the theory anyway. In a small field like mine it isn't hard to guess who is reviewing the article. Hints like "the author did not include the essential paper by John Smith." Hi John, is that you? I once reviewed a paper for a journal and could tell you within the first two pages the university and then it is not too hard to guess the author; not many there who could write on that topic. The double blind review worked better for pure science research; the emphasis is objectivity and the researcher is usually invisible. Who needs to know anything about the researcher; anyone who did the same study with the same methods would get the same data and come to the same conclusions right? Much of contemporary social science research doesn't assume this; who I am as researcher matters. I am part of the society I study and my presence influences that which I study. My attitudes, filters, and biases are part of how I see the world. Some research methods make this even more transparent. The research paper I just submitted used autoethnographic methodology: I used my own experiences, feelings, and thoughts as data. So how do I become invisible in my research if I am also one of my research subjects? One of my reviewers actually self-identified; if I was not anonymous to the reviewers then it was only fair that I know who reviewed me.

Social science research is changing as we think more about the influence we have as researchers on the researched, or even more importantly how we ourselves are the researched.

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Community Church meets World Wide Web

This morning Fall River Baptist Church streamed its first service via the internet. This is not a large congregation and it doesn't have a big tech budget. It does have a few skilled people, access to basic web technology and the vision to do something different. I was in the sound booth watching as this internet experiment unfolded. Gradually, people started picking up the feed until by service end there were 9 remote observers. Pretty good for first time out! This included former members moved away and friends of the church. There was a chat feature to allow some limited two way communication. This raises interesting questions about the power of technology to help religious communities keep in touch with those who can't always be there. Research has shown that a number of religious groups have explored this technology on larger scales allowing visitors to login to participate in worship by webcam (e.g. The Temple Wall in Jerusalem for Jewish worshipers.) It is no longer mega churches or major religious groups who have this capacity; now little churches with big vision can potentially reach the world!

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