Socializing Preliminary Literary Research

I'm a big advocate of integrating a social component into the writing and research process -- in the context of literary studies and beyond. To this end, I require my students to do social discovery until they get social proof on their topics and claims. This occurs in the formative stages of their research and writing, allowing them to get useful feedback (and often, specific references and sources) to help them feel more committed to their topics and more prepared to back up their claims.

But my students do need some structure and prodding to make this work. I've posted about this elsewhere in laying out a socially optimized research strategy. This post is a refinement of that process, helping think through whom to contact, why, and when.

So, here is some structure for doing social discovery and obtaining social proof.

Step 1: Make a "Who Might Care?" Graph

1. Put your semi-specific topic in a circle in the middle of a piece of paper
2. Divide the paper into four quadrants, labeling each quadrant as follows: HOMIES, PEERS, ENTHUSIASTS, and EXPERTS. For more of an explanation of these types of people, see the top of this post or the image in this post.
3. Brainstorm who could fit into these quadrants and why they might care

In seeking out peers and friends for feedback, I can obviously include people who will listen to me no matter what (thanks, homies!). But it's a good idea to target individuals among one's friends on the basis of their interests. So, think of the component topics or issues within your working main idea. In this case, I may want to seek out people who are interested in Shakespeare, interested in performance, or interested in virtual worlds, but not necessarily in all of these at once. (See my "homies" section in the image below to see how I've done that).

Skipping ahead to the fourth category of experts, I may also wish to segment various types of people to contact based on aspects of the topic I'm working on. So, I might consult a Shakespeare scholar, or a computer scientist -- even if the former doesn't care about computers and the latter only cares about virtual worlds.

Within the peers and enthusiasts areas, it is often helpful here to think in terms of various media within which these ideas are discussed. These are more likely to be social media than professional or scholarly sources, and the are more likely to be beyond your own personal interests or acquaintances and associated with various organizations, specific social networks, events, publications, and platforms.

For a list of possible points of entry to discover differing types of people by way of different media and categories, see the section on "Where can one do social discovery?" in this post.

Step 2: Make an Annotated Contact List

After doing the brainstorming above, you might want to type this up into an annotated contact list. To see examples of such lists, see the list near the top of this post on "Social Proof Successes by Students." 

Step 3: Make Contact

In general, the less developed one's idea, the more one will consult homies and possibly peers; the more developed one's ideas (and the more specific one's questions), the more one will seek out enthusiasts and experts. For different stages and for different audiences, a different approach is needed. For example, one can do a general query to one's homies as a simple question: "Is having students perform Shakespeare in a virtual world crazy?" To an expert, a more formal and detail approach would be more appropriate. See the examples case studies in contacting experts and of query letters in this post.