Update

It's been a busy week, unfortunately, not as busy in the world of my research as I would like, but I wanted to provide a few updates on what's going on with my ethnography, where I'm headed in the next few weeks, and clarify my direction more.

I have two interviews scheduled for next week, one with a debate coach from the same district that Fort Hays was a part of (District 3), has known Bill Shanahan for many years, and I think will be a great addition to the people I hope talk to over the next few weeks. The second interview is with a debater from the district less about the specific incident/story that I'm developing and more an interview that works on the larger picture of "what is debate?" I feel that both of these interviews serve to further the big/small picture to the research question/belief about the culture of debate/impact of the use of YouTube on an isolated community like debate.

My biggest concern at the moment is getting people to talk to me without the stigma/fear/concern that I'm just "dredging up" the past. I'll be the first to admit that the immediate aftermath/feeling in debate that first semester after the YouTube explosion that tournaments felt different, debaters behaved different, and schools were critical of their programs. I even heard that the Fort Hays President made a video about why debate was "terrible" now and sent it to other universities? I wish I knew if this were true and if I could get my hands on one. Right now, I'm trying to tread carefully and explain myself/my research goal as well as possible in hopes that the community recognizes two things: first, that I mean no disrespect at all to Bill Shanahan, I see what happened to him to be a really unfortunate and unfair series of events set off by changes in our digital culture that debate hadn't yet dealt with and second, that as a result of that, I feel like the negative coverage/view of debate that has been exacerbated in society since this is a misrepresentation of who we are, what we do, and what debate is like. I don't claim that in this digital ethnography that I will be able to say "this is debate" but instead supply a counter narrative to what exists about debate now that will hopefully allow those outside (and even inside) of the community to see a little of what we're like, and the role that digital communication can/should play from here as we move forward.

I hope to have more interviews set up with a few people who will be attending JV Nationals in Kansas City this upcoming weekend, but expect that the majority of my participant observation and interviews will occur over NDT and CEDA Nationals for the latter two weeks of March.

Here's hoping that the community is receptive!