{"title":"Agreeing about smartphones: Making opinions in online focus groups","authors":"Russell Hitchings","doi":"10.1111/area.12850","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper is concerned with the situated production of opinions in human geography research. Drawing on an online focus group project in which university students were asked to discuss smartphone use in urban greenspace, I'm interested in how our methods can make opinions as much as collect those that are already assumed to exist. Why were these students inclined to speak of having and sharing opinions? How important should opinions be to us if they are not actively influencing the everyday lives of those who we hope to understand in our studies? And what does this all say about staging effective group discussion in the discipline?</p>","PeriodicalId":8422,"journal":{"name":"Area","volume":"55 2","pages":"210-214"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6000,"publicationDate":"2022-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Area","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/area.12850","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"GEOGRAPHY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
This paper is concerned with the situated production of opinions in human geography research. Drawing on an online focus group project in which university students were asked to discuss smartphone use in urban greenspace, I'm interested in how our methods can make opinions as much as collect those that are already assumed to exist. Why were these students inclined to speak of having and sharing opinions? How important should opinions be to us if they are not actively influencing the everyday lives of those who we hope to understand in our studies? And what does this all say about staging effective group discussion in the discipline?
期刊介绍:
Area publishes ground breaking geographical research and scholarship across the field of geography. Whatever your interests, reading Area is essential to keep up with the latest thinking in geography. At the cutting edge of the discipline, the journal: • is the debating forum for the latest geographical research and ideas • is an outlet for fresh ideas, from both established and new scholars • is accessible to new researchers, including postgraduate students and academics at an early stage in their careers • contains commentaries and debates that focus on topical issues, new research results, methodological theory and practice and academic discussion and debate • provides rapid publication