Starting the literature review

I'm starting to write the draft for my literature review and I have found usefull to write few paragraphs to explain where I'm going with this project and how the literature review fits into the my research project. In the final version this will be part of the introduction, which will be the last section I will write. This is part of what I have written so far:

During the two terms of President Bush administration government secrecy has became a continuum topic that has raised questions even on the foundations of the country. Just as the moment I’m writing this paper, there’s a clash between the White House and Congress asking White House top officials to testify about the firings of U.S. attorneys, an investigation that relies also in the release of documents. While critics have been warning about the damage that secrecy does to democratic governments, supporters defend secrecy on the ground of the so-called “war on terror,” and the argument that the attacks on September 11 2001 “changed everything.”

This period of time calls for a better understanding on the concept of government secrecy, which should be studied from three different perspectives: historical background, theoretical framework, and a qualitative analysis of how this issue is viewed from the general public perspective. In this paper, the first two perspectives will be discussed in the literature review. Because the third perspective is broad and researcher can utilize a variety of approaches, I will concentrate on applying discourse analysis and content analysis to study the concept of government secrecy from the perspective of the press. As part of this analysis, I will apply the theoretical framework discussed in the literature review.

In terms of the data, I have been able to gather a good amount of articles from the Washington Times. A also found articles from other conservative periodicals like The Weekly Standard and Human Events. However, there are not many articles about secrecy from these publications, compared to the "liberal" newspapers like NY Times and Washington Post.

Reading response: Week 10

The Interpretive Process (The Qualitative Research Companion, Chapter 14)

While I was reading Norman K. Denzin’s essay about interpretive process I used my research project to go through the process. This helped me have a clearer idea of where I’m right now in the project and how I will develop it.

Although Denzin explains that “the subject matter of interpretive studies always biographical,” (p. 364) I believe it can also be applied to non-biographical studies, like analyzing text and any other kind of research. Like for every research progress, this process implies doing literature review, gathering data, analyzing data and writing a final report. I will mention the different steps of the process and I will relate it to my project.

1. Framing the research question

Denzin states that for the interpretive process the research question should be a how question instead of a why question. This is because “interpretive studies examine how problematic, turning-point experiences are organized, perceived, constructed, and given meaning by interacting individuals.” (p. 351) In the case of my project, I came up with two main how questions.

How different is the discourse in the press about government secrecy before and after 9/11?

How the importance of records is discussed in the discourse about government secrecy in the press for the past 14 years?

For the first question, the events of 9/11 can be established as the “problematic” and “turning-point” experience, this time not just in some individuals, but to a whole society. This question drives me into a lot of interest because of what I have found in the literature and by what is generally discuss in the media about 9/11, which is the comment that “9/11 changed the world,” using this as a justification for more secrecy. That’s why I’m splitting the research before and after 9/11. In terms of the second question, my main purpose is to interpret how archives, records, and recordkeeping systems outside the archival profession, in this case by the media. It has the purpose to call archivists about the importance of understanding how these aspects are viewed outside our profession.

2. Deconstructing prior conceptions of the phenomenon

This step is basically the preparation of the literature review for the research project. It should involve looking about prior conceptions of the topic, interpreting these conceptions and looking for gaps in the literature that need further research.

3. Capturing the phenomenon

Denzin indicates that “capture deals with what the researcher is doing with the phenomenon in the present, in his or her study.” (p. 354) I relate this step with data gathering, which in my case is retrieving editorial pieces from 6 major newspapers about the topic of government secrecy.

4. Bracketing the phenomenon

Once the researcher has captured the phenomenon, or gathering the data, it moves into defining and analyzing its structured. I related this step with the process of coding. When the researching is coding, he/she is restructuring the data in common concepts that would help him/her find trends and to better analyze the data. Which is the next step in the interpretive process: constructing the phenomenon.

5. Constructing the phenomenon

6. Contextualizing the phenomenon

Here is where the researcher interprets what he/she has constructed trough coding, in my case. This contextualization is finally redacted in a final report, which should includes (as explained by Silverman in chapter 10): introduction, literature review, methodology, data chapter and conclusion. (Silverman, p. 338)

Open government

David L. Hudson, Jr., ed., Open Government: An American Tradition Faces National Security, Privacy, and Other Challenges (Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2005)

Richard A. Chapman and Michael Hunt, Open Government in a Theoretical and Practical Context (England: Ashgate, 2006)

Reading the foreword and the introduction of David L. Hudson’s Open Government offers high expectations about the content of the book. The book is structure in a way that present a point and a counterpoint about specific issues related to open government. Alan Marzilli states in the foreword that “[p]erhaps more important is that listening to the other side sometimes helps one to see an opponent’s arguments in a more human way.” (p. 6) In the introduction is stated that the book examines four specific issues on open government: 1) should cameras in be permitted in courtrooms?, 2) whether FOIA’s privacy exemptions balance open government and privacy, 3) whether the press should have the right of access to the battlefield, and 4) whether the government is properly balancing open access and security during the “Age of Terror.” (p. 15) I’m interested in the last three issues.
These high expectations came to an end when I started reading the rest of the book. Basically the points and counterpoints are developed by using specific examples, sometimes just one example, that gave me the impression were used to just accommodate the authors’ personal opinions. These discussions are not accompanied by reference to past literature about the corresponding issue. In sum, by reading the book I just concluded that there are cases that demonstrate both opposing aspects about open government. Nothing new.
What I liked about the book is that is easy to read, and that within each essay it includes questions for the reader that can help to develop a more in-depth discussion.

Chapman and Hunt’s Open Government in a Theoretical and Practical Context, in the other hand, offers a broad and useful discussion of the concept of open government and its implications. In chapter 1, Michael Hunt and Richard A. Chapman discuss the concepts of open government and freedom of information. They point out that the discussion about secrecy and access to information is centered. They indicate: “The debate has therefore focused on the appropriate balance between these two sets of demands with the government slowly conceding ground in the face of increasing public awareness of both the limitations of closed government and the benefits to be derived from greater knowledge about the way that decisions are taken in government. What has not been discussed in this debate is the meaning of secrecy, its purpose in government or the related issue of privacy.” (p. 1) Hunt and Chapman argue that open government and freedom of information are not necessarily the same. In one hand, openness is limited in terms that offers what the government wants to make available, while freedom of information reflects a right of members of the public to access whatever information they wish.
Geoffrey Hunt makes an analysis of freedom of information, public accountability and whistleblowing using the Principle of Complementary (Chapter 5). This theory means the following: in a relationship between authority A and client C, A should provide account when C asks for it. If A do not comply, then C has the right to hold A accountable. Applying this theory to government, Hunt indicates that “freedom of information embodies the idea that since democratic government is accountable to citizens it has a moral duty to provide information about its activities to citizens on demand unless there is a good reason for not doing so.” (p. 44)Robert Behrens’ essay “Openness: A Perspective from the Committee on Standards in Public Life” called my attention for the use of quantitative and qualitative methods for the committees’ reports. The committee prepared a survey and conducted focus groups to study the public attitudes to openness. The focus groups, 15 in total, were used to attend the lack of research from the Commission regarding public standards of conduct in public life. These focus groups were then complemented with a survey conducted to a sample of 1,097 adults aged 18 or over. This study shows the advantages of triangulation on research.