Observations and reflection on the fieldwork

The researcher summarized the outcomes of each focus group and interview and considered the problems and difficulties that the researcher encountered. For example, sometimes the way I expressed a subject or my presentation skills could confuse participants about the questions. Thus, I used simple and easy expressions and explained to the group the research project more than once.

When the researcher first conducted a group that consisted of postgraduate students, I realized there was an age gap within the young generation. Thus, another focus group that consisted of younger undergraduate students was added. In relation to the participants’ activity, it was easy to observe that if participants do not know each other, they become introverted and reserved, making the whole process of interviewing relatively silent and a focus group to run ineffectively. When everyone knew each other, the participants were active and relaxed and showed greater confidence to comment, offer and challenge each other’s opinions.

3.3.4.1 Overall group dynamics

In this part, the researcher is going to describe a general observation of group dynamics as a self-reflection, including the issue of power sharing between the researcher and the participants, as well as among participants. It is interesting to observe that before all focus groups and interviews started, the researcher formally asked the participants for permission and whether they felt comfortable to be recorded by a video camera for the purposes of this research. Most of them showed hesitation and reluctance. They preferred a digital voice recorder to a video camera. They used the words such as feeling ‘stressed’, ‘uneasy’ and

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‘insecure’ in front of the camera to express their concerns. Some participants said that in front of the video camera they might hide or avoid expressing some of their honest thoughts. Finally, to respect participants’ wishes and to record participants’ real views and perspectives as closely as possible, the researcher decided to use a digital voice recorder to record the whole process and write down as much detail as she could instead of using a video camera.

Group 1: ‘Students, younger’

There was an imbalance in power between the researcher and the research participants at the beginning of the focus group. It might be because the researcher is older. As the focus group got underway, the participants started to be more active. One girl in particular, kept some distance from the others, but halfway through the interview questions, she began to be active in discussions and in engaging with others.

Group 2: ‘Students, older’

Through the snowball method, with the help of the personal connections, this group of participants was a pre-existing group of research students, the same age as the researcher and they knew each other. The venue for the focus group was a coffee shop near their research institute. It was a place they often visited and felt comfortable for them. Two participants were good friends of the researcher. They actively moderated the atmosphere of the conversations.

Group 3: ‘White-collar’

This group was a pre-existing group and very active. They had been exposed to foreigners and foreign culture for a long time. They were very confident in expressing their opinions. They spoke very good English and some of them knew a second foreign language, such as Spanish and Japanese. The group had a work project to do later after the focus group, then in order to save their time, the focus group was held at a small restaurant near where they worked. They knew each other well and sometimes they made jokes during the focus group. In some cases, the researcher had to pull the conversation back to the theme. Overall, the

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group were very enthusiastic and enjoyed the whole process of discussion and debate. Some participants demonstrated great self-reflexivity during the focus group.

Group 4: ‘Blue-collar/working class’

According to the literature, working-class participants might have different cultural/media consumption patterns. This group of people did have tendencies to watch fewer international programs and prefer using domestic products, which was borne out by previous research studies. It was a very interesting group to observe. There were clear imbalances of power between participants in this group. To some extent it was also a pre-existing group and the participants knew each other. Three of them were in the same construction site group. Two older members were more confident. They looked relaxed and comfortable. They knew each other well. Both of them kept calm in expressing their opinions, even when sometimes they held different stances. On the contrary, two younger participants showed less confidence and were uneasy, and expressed very little about their ideas. The researcher as a moderator tried as hard as possible to get them involved in the conversation. At the end of the interview, the researcher realized that she had actually failed to get the young participants to join in the discussion.

There was an imbalance of power between the participants and the researcher took place as well. The researcher felt strongly that she was treated as an outsider by this group. Before the focus group was formally held and at the stage of inviting, they reconfirmed the researcher more than once and said like ‘are you sure you want to interview us?’ or ‘As you know, we are just construction workers. We have nothing worth being interviewed.’ From what they said, the researcher felt that they saw themselves as an invisible group neglected by society. It is dangerous if they naturalized this kind of thought and took it for granted. The researcher was an outsider, but they were never unfriendly. They expressed curiosity and great surprise, and accentuated the huge difference of educational background between the researcher and them. The researcher attempted to explain her intentions, encourage them to participate in the research and share power with them as Nightingale (2008) advocates.

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