Sampling community discourses as a method for assessing "public opinion"

In working with the topics of racial discrimination and household energy reductions it is clear that just measuring attitudes is no longer sufficient. We need a fuller social context to understand what is said about these topics, as the same words can be used for many reasons. I am working with four new methods for "sampling community discourses" on topics such as racial prejudice, to replace or supplement the measurement of attitudes. The initial analysis is whether the talk functions to get someone to do something directly, to get someone to believe the 'facts', or whether the talk functions for the establishment or maintenance of social relationships. Many problems remain, especially the representativeness of the sampling and keeping as much of the context of the talk as possible

Access to recorded interviews: A research agenda

Recorded interviews form a rich basis for scholarly inquiry. Examples include oral histories, community memory projects, and interviews conducted for broadcast media. Emerging technologies offer the potential to radically transform the way in which recorded interviews are made accessible, but this vision will demand substantial investments from a broad range of research communities. This article reviews the present state of practice for making recorded interviews available and the state-of-the-art for key component technologies. A large number of important research issues are identified, and from that set of issues, a coherent research agenda is proposed