Do Whatever You Can: Temporality and Critical, Interpretive Methods in an Age of Despair

Abstract

This essay argues that critical qualitative methods might well be harnessed to the potential of the Internet and the Web to undertake and enhance intervention as events unfold. Flexible and multifaceted, such methods differ with regard to temporal dynamics, hence the capacity to intervene. At least two uses are possible, research into interactions and emerging structures, and dissemination of findings and critiques in experimental forms on the Internet, Web, cell phones, iPods. Such strategies offer rapidity, flexibility, and presentations of listener/viewer dialogue and response.