Data Analysis

3.4.1 Interpretative, Iterative, Inductive Analysis

Thorne writes that interpretative research ‘always starts with what is already known, believed, or accepted within a discipline about the phenomenon in question, and it seeks some expansion on that prior knowledge for some defensible purpose’ (2014, p.109). In this way, my research seeks to expand on the STS understanding of public engagement by paying attention to the affective dimensions of a controversy. Prior, inductive theorising is what provides the foundation for further analysis. What is characteristic of qualitative research in the interpretative mode is that it does not seek replication to enhance credibility, nor even the recreation of the ‘precise conceptual structure proposed by another researcher’ (Thorne 2014, p.109). The validity of interpretivist research is not verified by its correspondence to a universal and objective reality, but by what Denzin terms ‘interpretive sufficiency’ (2009, p.123). This involves accounts which ‘possess depth, detail, emotionality, nuance, and coherence. These qualities assist the reader in forming a critical interpretive consciousness’ (Denzin 2009,

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p.123). Here, the trustworthiness of the account is formed at the interface between writer and reader – you and me. Trust is established through the integrity of the empirical data – credible, transferable, dependable, and confirmable (Denzin 2009, p.104) – and a shared commitment to critical analysis. This aligns with Law’s insights on method: ‘to craft specific but multiple ways of going on well together in difference’ (2017, p.49). Interpretation is thus a political intervention. It is not guided by the whim of the researcher, but by rigorous and robust attention to empirical data and carefully crafted theory.

My analysis follows these principles by first paying careful attention to the empirical data. I draw from Thorne’s approach here, which ‘seeks ways of thinking about and organizing insights that become emergent as one works iteratively with data, such that new insights and possibilities for understanding can be illuminated, considered, and further developed’ (2014, p.109). My frame of reference entering the first iteration of analysis was simply affective practice – talk or action which seemed to me to relate in some way to emotion. In particular, I looked for patterns which corresponded with Wetherell’s interpretative repertoires, narratives, and subjectivities as key forms of stabilised affective practice (1998, 2014; Wetherell et al 2015; McConville et al 2017). This was an inductive ‘descriptive coding’ approach, whereby loose, iterative codes are applied to categorise and index the data corpus (Saldaña 2014, p.593).

I went through each interview recording, transcript, all notes, and each image and video. I created documents for the visual material where I noted down any salient features that related to affective practice. Again, I understood affective practice to relate to the conventional sense of emotion that we understand intuitively (Wetherell 2014, p.78). I devised a table in which I placed every example of an affective practice that I encountered across the data (Appendix B). From this, I began to develop ‘sensitising concepts’ with which to structure further iterations (Blumer, cited in Pallett 2018, p.220).

For the next iteration I went through all data, colour-coding in order of salience. I understood salience to mean that an affective practice was notable in talk by participants or was doing something such as creating an identity or a way of figuring fracking. As I went through the data each time, new issues of relevance appeared and were integrated into a list of overarching sensitising concepts. Sensitising concepts are more flexible than codes in the traditional sense, they can change depending on further

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iterations of the data as new issues are deemed relevant. For example, I realised that emotive doings and sayings relating to children were starting to emerge, so I set up a new affective repertoire relating to innocence. Upon further iterations this changed to love of children.

I followed this with a third round of analysis whereby each of the sensitising concepts – largely relating to affects like love, hate, anger, sadness – was colour-coded. There were many unique affects that did not fit easily with common emotions like love, so these were all listed separately. At the end of this round of analysis I had 13 “master code” affective practices that were occurring frequently and which broke down into a further 89 discrete emotional experiences which might only have occurred once such as ‘overwhelmed’, ‘affirmation’, ‘courage’, or ‘horror’. Frequency wasn’t the only determinant of salience – if an affective practice appeared to be particularly intense and have some influence it merited being a sensitising concept. I also included in the table the form that the affective practice took, usually a somewhat stable form like a narrative (‘fracking arrived suddenly’), an identity (‘positive campaigner’), or an interpretative repertoire (‘hope’).

The fourth iteration involved ‘bridging the gaps’ (Murchison 2010, p.176) between the various affective practices in relation to the research questions (Appendix C). This iteration linked the themes in ways that connected to the overall aims of the work – examining what affective practices were doing and how they contribute to an imaginary in terms of temporal, spatial and social order (Jasanoff 2004b, 2015b). Rather than have one very long chapter outlining all affective practices, I grouped them under the meta-themes of love and hate. This was not an attempt to reduce the diversity of the data to two emotions, but to organise the findings across two chapters for ease of reading.

Love and hate were not arbitrary categories; two reasons underpinned their selection. The first reflected the campaign’s central discursive binary of ‘Love Leitrim/Hate Fracking’. I encountered it frequently throughout the research process. The aim of using these categories is to help order, for analytic purposes, the variously intersecting flows of affect which correspond more or less to the desires and fears of the anti-fracking campaigners in Leitrim. This leads to the second reason. Sociotechnical imaginaries are defined by Jasanoff as being shaped by a binary structure of positive and negative, as an ‘interplay between positive and negative imaginings—between utopia and dystopia’ (2015b, p.5). The case of the anti-fracking imaginary with its love

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of Leitrim and its hatred (or fear) of fracking fitted this structure well. Attention was paid throughout to maintain the heterogeneity of affective practices. I did this procedurally by holding off on analysis as much as possible in the findings chapters (four and five). I chose to describe affective practices as straight forwardly as possible with brief references to cultural or theoretical context, where necessary, to illustrate how I was inferring meaning from the data.

I chose to write in an informal and readable style which was clear but still capable of communicating complex concepts. I felt that a thesis working in the tradition of science communication ought to put effort into communicating well. STS can be a difficult discipline and there are many ideas which I don’t fully grasp. I exercised caution when working with concepts that were challenging for me, ensuring not to “fill in the gaps” of my knowledge with confusing writing. My approach to style is also a matter of taste and preference. I prefer reading material that is informal and sets up an informal relationship between reader and writer. I was inspired by a quote from Denzin that I came across during my undergraduate:

Things are known only through their representations. Each representational form is regulated by a set of conventions. Factual tales should be objective and conform to certain rules of verification. Fictional tales are regulated by understandings connected to emotional verisimilitude, emotional realism, and so on (Denzin 2009, p.331n).

I tried to reflect something of the emotion and feeling of the anti-fracking imaginary in my account while retaining the rigour and clarity of academic writing.

This chapter has outlined how the empirical phase of the research was designed, undertaken, and reported. I have discussed how the multimethod case study is situated in an interpretative qualitative tradition committed to revealing the political terrain of the anti-fracking imaginary. The focus on affect practice is defended as a broadening out of the discursive analyses conventionally used in STS. I have argued that integrates with an STS analysis in its commitment to a relational, practice-based epistemology. Affective practice is also equally concerned with issues of power and the ordering of time, space and society. I have defended the decision to use unstructured interviews, participant observation, and visual media analysis to capture diverse domains of affect. I am convinced that interpretative research methods are best-placed to reveal the

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feelings, meanings, and embodied realities of campaigners’ encounters with fracking. The inductive, descriptive analysis kept the integrity of the data while iteratively developing broader themes and insights connecting to the theory of sociotechnical imaginaries and STS public engagement.

The aim has been to design a study which can capture the everyday, affective, reality of campaigners’ experience of the fracking controversy. I wanted to explore how these affective meanings contributed to the anti-fracking imaginary that had developed in opposition to the official fracking imaginary of industry and government. The research was not designed to compare these imaginaries but to provide an empirical account of an imaginary’s emotional-discursive dimension. The goal was to use this insight to theorise about how affect might be relevant to public engagement understood through the STS lens of participation. The next chapter, ‘Hate’, will present the findings broadly relating to “negative” affective practices.

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