Post by Elana Levine, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

This is the second in a series of posts detailing my use of digital tools in a television history project. Read Part I here.

When I set out to manage all of the research materials for my history of US daytime television soap opera digitally, I was mainly concerned with having a system for storing PDFs, notes, and website clippings in a way that made them easily searchable. But after I had decided to use DevonThink as my data management system, migrated existing materials into the program, and began taking new notes with the software, I had to face the second part of my process—converting research materials into chapter outlines.

As I described in my previous post, my earlier method for this stage involved a floor and piles of papers. It also involved blank notecards, on which I would write labels or topics for the different piles as I sorted them into categories, and then a legal pad and pen, upon which I would sketch an outline of my chapter, figuring out the connections across the piles/categories, and testing ideas for the big picture arguments to which the piles built. Having gone digital, however, there were no physical piles of paper to organize. I needed a digital means of conducting that analog process. I needed digital piles.

For a while, I was resistant to considering writing software as the answer to this dilemma. Writing was not the problem. I had been writing digitally for a long time. (No, you need not remind me of the typewriter I took to my freshman year of college). Because I did so much planning and thinking before writing, I had no problem using conventional word-processing software to write. In fact, I like to write in linear fashion; it helps me construct a tight argument and narrate a coherent story. It was the outlining—the pile making, the planning and thinking—that I had to find a way to digitize. Then I saw the corkboard view on Scrivener with those lined 3X5 index card-like graphics. A virtualization of my piles, beaming at me from the screen instead of surrounding me on the floor!

The “Binder” feature in Scrivener.

The “Corkboard” view in Scrivener.

So began my experimentation with Scrivener, which has now become an integral part of my process. Scrivener is writing software and, like DevonThink or any other digital tool, has many uses. As with my use of DevonThink, I have been learning it as I go, so I am far from expert in all of its features. Because I needed the software to help me to categorize my research materials and outline my chapters, I mainly use its “binder” feature to sort my materials into digital piles. The hierarchical structuring of folders and documents within the Scrivener binder provides me with a way of replicating my mental and, formerly, haptic labor of sorting and articulating ideas and information together in a digital space.

I began by reading through all of the materials in DevonThink associated with the 1950s. As I read I categorized, figuring out what larger point the source spoke to, or what circumstance it served as evidence of. I created what Scrivener calls “documents” for any piece of research, or connected pieces of research, that I thought might be useful in my chapters. Early on, I realized I had multiple chapters to write about the ‘50s and ended up outlining three chapters at once as I moved through my materials. I gradually began to group documents into folders labeled with particular themes or points. This is the equivalent to me putting an index card with a label or category on top of a pile of papers, a way of understanding a set of specific pieces of information as contributing to a larger point or idea. These folders became sub-folders of the larger chapter folders. But it is the way I integrate this process with DevonThink that allows me to connect specific pieces of my archive to my argument. In DevonThink I am able to generate links to particular items in the database. I paste those links in the Scrivener documents I create.

How does this look in Scrivener? Sometimes this means that a Scrivener document is just my link, the text of which is the name of my DevonThink item, such as, “SfT timeline late ‘50s/early ‘60s,” which is my notes on story events from Search for Tomorrow during that period. But Scrivener’s “Inspector” window, which can appear alongside the document on the screen, is a useful space for me to jot down notes about that document, reminding myself of the information it offers or indicating what I see as most relevant about it. The synopsis I create here is what I see if I look at my documents in the corkboard view.

The “Portia and Walter relationship” document in Scrivener.

Other times my Scrivener documents include a number of DevonThink links that feed into the same point. For example, a document called “Portia and Walter relationship” includes links to five different items in DevonThink, four of which are notes on Portia Faces Life scripts; the fifth is notes on memos from the show’s ad agency producer to writer Mona Kent. In my synopsis notes on this document, I reminded myself that these were examples of the ways that married couple Portia and Walter talked to each other as equals, and how this served as a contrast to another couple on the show, Kathy and Bill. This ability to link to my DevonThink archive has allowed Scrivener to serve as my categorizing and outlining system.

While I have written sentences here and there in Scrivener to help me remember the ideas I had about particular materials, I have not yet found need to actually write chapters within it—I use a conventional word processing program for that. I know this is unlike the typical use of the software, but working this way has helped me to manage an otherwise unwieldy task. Scrivener provides a way to include research materials within its structure, but does not have the functionality for managing those materials that I get with DevonThink.

The “free form text editor” Scapple.

This system is working well for me, but at times I do find the Scrivener binder structure to be too linear. The ability to move my paper piles around, to stack them or spread them apart, was a helpful feature of my analog methods. As a result, I have begun experimenting with Scapple, a “free form text editor,” similar to mind-mapping software and created by Scrivener’s publishers, as a way to digitally reimagine the fluidity of the paper piles. Like Scrivener, Scapple allows me to link to DevonThink items and has met my desire for a non-linear planning system. I can connect examples and items from my archive to larger points and, through arrows and other forms of connection, note the relationship of particular pieces of data to multiple concepts.  I’m not yet convinced it is essential to my workflow, but I am intrigued by its possibilities and eager to keep experimenting within the generous trial window (which Scrivener and DevonThink both have, as well).

My use of these digital tools is surely quite idiosyncratic, but in ways more specific to me than to my object of study or the field of television historiography. More particular to the history of soaps and to media history in general are the challenges of managing video sources. Tune in next time for that part of my story.

Post by Elana Levine, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

This is the first in a series of posts detailing my use of digital tools in a television history project.

When I was researching and writing my dissertation at the turn of the 21st century, analog tools were my friend. Because my project was a history of American entertainment television in the 1970s, I drew upon a wide range of source materials: manuscript archives of TV writers, producers, sponsors, and trade organizations; legislative and court proceedings; popular and trade press articles; many episodes of ‘70s TV; and secondary sources in the form of scholarly and popular books and articles. The archive I amassed took up a lot of space: photocopies and print-outs of articles, found in the library stacks or on microfilm; VHS tape after VHS tape of episodes recorded from syndicated reruns; and stacks and stacks of 3X5 notecards, on which I would take notes on my materials. I gathered this research chapter by chapter and so, as it would come time to write each one, I would sit on the floor and make piles in a circle around me, sorting note cards and photocopies into topics or themes, figuring out an organizing logic that built a structure and an argument out of my mountains of evidence. It. Was. Awesome.

As I turned that dissertation into a book over the coming years, and worked on other, less voluminous projects, I stuck pretty closely to my tried and true workflow, though the additions of TV series on DVD and, eventually, of YouTube, began to obviate my need for the stacks of VHS tapes. Around 2008, I began to research a new historical project, one that I intended to spend many years pursuing and that promised to yield a larger archive than I’d managed previously. This project, a production and reception history of US daytime television soap opera, would traverse more than 60 years of broadcast history and would deal with a genre in which multiple programs had aired daily episodes over decades. Still, as I began my research, I continued most of my earlier methods, amassing photocopies and notes, which I was by then writing as word-processor documents rather than handwritten index cards. By late 2012, I was thinking about how to turn these new mountains of research materials into chapters. And I freaked out.

Sitting amidst piles of paper on the floor seemed impractical—there was so, so much of it—and I was technologically savvy enough to realize that printing out my word-processed materials would be both inefficient and wasteful. So I began to investigate tools for managing historical research materials digitally. Eventually, I settled on a data management system called DevonThink. I chose DevonThink for a number of reasons, but mostly because it would allow me to perform optical character recognition (OCR) to make my many materials fully searchable. This was a crucial need, especially because I would be imposing a structure on my research after having built my archive over years and from multiple historical periods. It would be impossible for me to recall exactly what information I had about which topics; I needed to outsource that work to the software.

This required that I digitize my paper archive, which I did, over time, with help. My ongoing archival research became about scanning rather than photocopying (using on-site scanners or a smartphone app, JotNot, that has served me well). And I began to generate all of my new notes within DevonThink, rather than having to import documents created elsewhere. Several years into using DevonThink, I still have only a partial sense of its capabilities, but I see this not as a problem but as a way of making the software fit my needs. (Others have detailed their use of the software for historical projects.) I have learned it as I’ve used it and have only figured out its features as I’ve realized I needed them. There are many ways to tag or label or take notes on materials, some of which I use. But, ideally, the fact that most of my materials are searchable makes generating this sort of metadata less essential. I rely heavily on the highlighting feature to note key passages in materials that I might want to quote from or cite. And I’ve experimented with using the software’s colored labeling system to help me keep track of which materials I have read and processed and which I have not.

Because I have figured out its utility as I’ve gone along, I’ve made some choices that I might make differently for another project. I initially put materials into folders (what DevonThink calls “Groups”) before realizing that was more processing labor than I needed to expend. So I settled for separating my materials into decades, but have taken advantage of a useful feature that “duplicates” a file into multiple groups to make sure I put a piece of evidence that spans time periods into the various places I might want to consider it. I have settled into some file-naming practices, but would be more consistent about this on another go-round. I know I am not using the software to its full capacity, but I am making it work in ways that supplement and enable my work process, exactly what I need a digital tool to do.

In many respects, my workflow remains rather similar to my old, analog ways, in that I still spend long hours reading through all of the materials, but now I sort them into digital rather than physical piles (a process that involves another piece of software, which I will explain in my next post). In writing media history from a cultural studies perspective, one necessarily juggles a reconstruction of the events of the past with analyses of discourses and images and ideas. I don’t think there is a way to do that interpretive work without the time-consuming and pleasurable labor of reading and thinking, of sorting and categorizing, of articulating to each other that which a casual glance—or a metadata search—cannot on its own accomplish.

But having at my fingertips a quickly searchable database has been invaluable as I write. Because I have read through my hundreds of materials from “the ‘50s,” for instance, I remember that there was a short-lived soap with a divorced woman lead. Its title? Any other information about it? No clue. But within a few keystrokes I can find it—Today Is Ours—and not just access the information about its existence (which perhaps an internet search could also elicit) but find the memo I have of the producers discussing its social relevance, and the Variety review that shares a few key lines of dialogue. OCR does not always work perfectly—it is useless on handwritten letters to the editor of TV Guide—but my dual processes of reading through everything and of using searches to find key materials has made me confident that I am not missing sources as I construct my argument and tell my story. It’s a big story to tell, and one that may be feasible largely due to my digital tools.

Kearney and Kackman are editing a collection for Routledge with the same title, and with the aim of updating and expanding considerably upon Robert Allen’s famed Channels of Discourse books. Each chapter will take a different approach to the study of media, explaining its intellectual roots, and showing how to use it. My chapter, for instance, focuses on “Inter- and Para-textuality,” while others examine celebrities and stars, ideology, genre, sound, historiography, ethnography, and so forth. And so Kearney and Kackman hosted a conference, inviting each chapter’s author (or, rather, those who were able to attend) to discuss their topic, challenges they face in writing the chapter, concerns about parameters, key issues, and ideas for case studies and examples. Each participant got about 20 minutes to present, followed by an additional 20 minutes for questions and discussion from the room. In addition to the 25 or so presenters, some faculty, grad students, and undergrads from Notre Dame attended, and they contributed significantly to discussion.

I call it “back to front” and by that I mean that instead of making research, the presentation of new material, and the reporting of findings and conclusions the opening premise, it required that everyone’s opening premise be pedagogic and generative – “how do we teach our topic?” and “where do we start?” were key questions. As most readers know, conference attendance is regularly funded on the grounds that it contributes to faculty’s research profiles: indeed, many of us can only get reimbursement from our home institutions if we are presenting a research paper. Sometimes, poster sessions, workshops, and other activities don’t even count. Thus, if pedagogic gains are made at a conference, or if we stop to discuss how research begins, this must simply happen on the side, and the structure is per force all about the presentation of finished research or research being conducted. By contrast, the Craft of Criticism was structured around how to teach and how to start the exploratory process (and generously paid for all presenters’ attendance, thereby skirting the issue of institutional reimbursement).

This proved a transformational move. All of a sudden, the discussion could turn to the intricacies of how one communicates complex issues in the classroom … and once there, discussion could stay there. All chapters are meant to use one of the author’s published pieces as a case study, but instead of inviting us to rehash what we were doing with those pieces, the conference now asked us to discuss how to teach them and how to discuss their blindspots. As the conference progressed, therefore, I amassed great tips and best practices from the pros. As an audience member, I loved this and benefited from it immensely, and as a presenter, it was so very refreshing to be presenting on issues I’ve presented many times before, yet now looking though the lens of what to do with them in the classroom.

In many ways, this was an utter rarity, therefore: a teacher’s conference. And yet in many ways it energized my research agenda too. There’s this thing that can happen after tenure when one wonders why one is getting up in the morning. It should be easy to motivate oneself as a grad student and junior faculty member, as fear of not getting a job or fear of not getting tenure once one (hopefully) gets a job often provide all the energy (and angst) that one needs. After tenure, I finally had the luxury of sitting back and asking what I was doing and why it matters. And while I’m sure that some people find answers and energy at large, research-led conferences, I often find the sessions rather dull: I’d rather read a paper than hear it read, and still too many papers dive too deep into the specifics without allowing enough time to answer why any of it matters. When we talk about teaching, though, we should always be talking about why it matters. Indeed, if some of us anguish over failed classroom assignments or badly written student papers, and rejoice in the ones that get it right, that’s perhaps because we know that a lot of what we do as academics boils down to the concentrate of what we can communicate in the classroom, what we can motivate others to think about. A conference that was focused on those issues, ironically, led more naturally (for me) to thoughts about what I want to research next, what projects matter, how to engage in them, and so forth, than conferences focused around research. Which has me wondering whether we’re writing with the wrong hand at conferences, and whether there might be a better (or at least another) way to do it all, a way that Craft of Criticism alluringly offered.

Many thanks, therefore, to Mary and Michael, to Notre Dame, to all my fellow presenters (Cynthia Baron, Ron Becker, Mary Beltrán, Patrick Burkart, Cynthia Chris, Norma Coates, Eric Freedman, Mary Gray, Timothy Havens, Heather Hendershot, Matt Hills, Nina Huntemann, Victoria Johnson, Bill Kirkpatrick, Suzanne Leonard, Todd McGowan, Dan Marcus, Jason Mittell, Diane Negra, Matt Payne, Gregory Smith, and Jacob Smith), and to the attendees who asked such thoughtful questions.

Yet our raison d’être extends beyond the materials we create to include the manner in which we create them. This is a two-fold process. First, we put industry leaders in dialogue with scholars, both to expand the scope of information about media industries and to encourage more inventive thinking about the future of modern media. Accordingly, we’ve hosted or co-hosted events about digital distribution and the television series Law & Order. We also are collaborating with colleagues at the Carsey-Wolf Center and the Department of Film and Media Studies on an upcoming event about the social and cultural implications of half hour comedy. Each event offers a unique forum for industry leaders, policymakers, scholars, and journalists to bring their respective expertise to bear on a set of shared questions and concerns. Videos of these discussions are archived on our website as a public resource for researchers and teachers.

Second, and similarly, we try to transgress distinct boundaries in our writing—addressing our publications to readers in the industry, the classroom, and the research library. We strive to enhance public awareness of the issues, challenges, and operations of the media industries as much as we aim to become the institutional home for media industries research. With everything we do, our objective is to remain authoritative yet accessible, critical yet concise.

Our most popular feature is the interview section, where we publish transcripts of our conversations with industry leaders. So far, most of these interviews have focused on the impact of the digital distribution revolution on the television and film industries. We’ve interviewed Gary Newman, Betsy Scolnik, and Jordan Levin, among others, each offering a distinct perspective on how emergent technologies affect his or her decision-making processes.

More than “insider opinions,” these conversations generate an intellectual space in which our industry collaborators step outside day-to-day pressures to speculate about the media industries of tomorrow. Just as importantly, the interview archive facilitates access to perspectives often unavailable to media industries researchers, teachers, and students.

Creating a knowledge base with the best material possible is a commitment to the field we take seriously, and the interview archive anchors a number of related offerings that we have subsequently rolled out.

In October, for instance, we launched a new series called The Buzz in which we distill media coverage of recent issues and events to its essence. It serves two purposes: to help busy executives cut through the clutter of repetitive news cycles and to provide scholars and students with a jumping off point for further research.  In our companion series, Things to Know, we move past the headlines to place developments in a larger critical, historical, or theoretical framework. Our goal here is simple: to provide readers with comprehensive analyses in a lively, straightforward style.

In February, we debuted another new series called The Bookshelf in which we periodically feature notable book-length contributions to the field of media industry studies.  It joins our quarterly guide to recently published scholarly essays and journal articles, From the Field. As a growing collection of media industries research, both series are invaluable resources for the discipline.

Dialogue and accessibility, then, are the cornerstone to our overall operating logic, as we try to transcend some of the constraints of conventional scholarly publishing. We’re aiming for a nimble format that allows us to respond to developments as they arise and one that’s open to alternative modes of address.

In that same pioneering spirit, we recently launched a large-scale “connected viewing” research initiative in collaboration with Warner Bros. Digital Distribution.  The project brings together eleven research teams from different parts of the world to explore the ways social networking, multi-screen exhibition practices, and digital distribution are upending traditional business strategies and viewing behaviors.  As the industry grapples with unprecedented shifts in the home entertainment marketplace, the Connected Viewing Initiative puts us at the forefront of those changes. While each research team will conduct an independent project of its own, our collective efforts will establish a starting point for the field to debate the value of connected content in an era of digital delivery.

Similarly, we are preparing to launch another major research initiative in Afghanistan, where, since 2004, a lively young television industry has coalesced to provide programming in a range of genres. It’s quickly becoming the country’s medium of choice. We’ve begun fundraising for a project that will study the industry leader, Tolo TV, and its output, some 40,000 hours of programming, which we’ll digitally archive and analyze. We hope both to understand the industrial logic of Afghan television and the cultural trends that are manifested in its programming, especially with respect to gender, politics, and human rights. The archive will serve as the foundation for a series of events, conferences, curriculum, and outreach activities, both in Santa Barbara and Kabul, that will provide a more thorough understanding of the vital role television plays in the cultivation of social change in developing societies.

A final point: we’re growing, rapidly. We have many more exciting efforts planned for the future, including a global collaboration to publish an online peer-reviewed journal dedicated exclusively to media industries research. So, in the spirit of collaboration and conversation that runs through everything we do at MIP, please, stay tuned, and if you’re interested, get involved. We’d love to hear from you. 

The levels of passion and scrutiny that scholarship on this area of the world attract is probably unequaled, a fact that can either foster or stifle the production of knowledge, depending on the context of the discussion and the dispositions of the interlocutors.  There are platoons of people inside and outside of the academy ready to label every article, book review and blog post as either “pro” or “anti” their side. A single word can set off a firestorm and seemingly insignificant statements can become snowballs imposing enough to crush, or at least nicely dent, reputations.  Often these responses are the result of authentic reactions to injustice, but that fact provides no reassurance that they are fair. It’s a challenging, important area to study but it’s not something I’m tempted to go on record about without some serious foresight.

But I will share a bit of my experience.  It’s impossible to say what it’s like to study media in the Palestinian territories because it is a place where who you are defines where you can be.  For example, I’m an American so I’m allowed to travel between Israel and “Area A” spaces that are controlled by the Palestinian Authority yet still under the military occupation of the Israeli government.  I’ve been working in the West Bank for awhile now so I’m comfortable using the buses and taxis there, none of which are dangerous but many of which can fluctuate in price heavily based on your perceived nationality.  My Arabic is fair, which helps, but most everyone speaks enough English, particularly my friends, many of whom work for the very media organizations that I research.  The roads are awful, the people aren’t punctual and if you can’t at least hold a cigarette and stomach a half dozen strong coffees a day, you won’t fit in.  But it’s manageable.  I spent approximately six hours a week waiting at checkpoints to go from Bethlehem or Ramallah in Israeli-controlled Jerusalem, which is enormously annoying but more than anything serves to underscore the freedom of movement that most of the people I write about don’t have.  Without special permission, the majority of them cannot enter Jerusalem, a city that serves as the center of Palestinian national aspirations.

But even though that experience is not one that can be simulated, there are moments where you get just a little, tiny taste. One morning I had a meeting scheduled for eight a.m. at Post Office Square in the town of Arram.  This is a very specific place, not terribly big, located a little bit south of Ramallah, the administrative capitol of the Palestinian territories.  I was supposed to meet with someone from the Norwegian Representative Office to the Palestinian People, the equivalent of an embassy but for a place not yet a country.  The NRO had funded a film version of an anti-domestic violence play that I’d been researching for months and after a few dozen emails I was invited for a visit. I thought I’d go in, work the early conversation around to most of my small Norwegian vocabulary, then let the inevitably tall, blonde women in charge of the NRO’s side of the project give me some facts and figures.  I’d be back in Jerusalem by dinner.

Buses from the Israeli side of the concrete barrier that fences in most of the Palestinian West Bank are virtually never checked.  All security is on the way out.  So I took the bus in, called up a friend and asked him to give me a ride to the address of the NRO.  We drove to Arram, looking for the “World Bank Building” in Post Office Square.  Soon enough, signs for the building appeared, pointing us this way and that, around corners and over hills.  We stopped to ask some people where the World Bank Building was.  There was nothing but blank stares.  But yet, the signs persisted.  Three or four arrows later, we discovered the problem.  The last sign said “World Bank” and pointed directly at a 25-foot concrete wall with barbed wire across the top and three languages worth of notice that getting too close would be very bad for my health.  After a moment we realized what had happened.  In building the separation wall Israel had placed the barrier right down the center of Post Office Square, leaving half the town on the side contiguous with Israel and the other half, well, not.  Longish story short, I was in the wrong Arram.  My tall blonde Norwegian film funder was only yards away, but it would take me hours of traffic and security checks to get there.  She waited and found my broken Norwegian vaguely charming.  I got my information but didn’t quite make it back for dinner.  It may take time, but at least I can go wherever I want.

If this sounds like a challenge for the study of media, you can perhaps begin to imagine how it impacts productions.  Keeping shooting schedules is hard enough under perfect conditions.  For producers in the West Bank things are never perfect.  For a scholar, for better and for worse, that’s part of the story.