What Next? Directions for Future Research
The intersection of online/offline communities is therefore more than a case of using digital technologies to disseminate products and ideas: it is a site of reconfiguration of community practices, mediated by the practice of making. Therefore, we recommend the following directions for future research:
1. Long-term observation
As a result of the literature review and the primary research (survey, interviews and media content analysis) this study has come to the conclusion that to understand emergent craft communities and practices of connecting requires longitudinal study. Currently, people are using Web 2.0 as a new tool to enact existing social norms and cultural values. Thus, in order to establish whether or not there is any meaningful change to the underlying social-cultural norms of community and connecting it is necessary to undertake a longitudinal study, perhaps in conjunction with the already existing Mass Observation Project.
2. Critical analysis of ‘creative economy’
Whilst the idea of the ‘creative economy’ has been explored and is a common concept within policy literature, the concepts of 'creativity' and 'economics' in relation to craft practice have rarely been addressed and it is suggested that they been broken down and explored further so that assumptions about that ‘marriage’ can be critically assessed.
3. 'Hobbiests' and other non-professional makers
It is recommended that any future research be focused not only on professional makers, but also on people derogatorily called ‘hobbiests’ – these are non-professional makers who are often dismissed by craft organisations as either not professional enough or, when given legitimate attention, as being people from deprived or disadvantaged communities; or who are children. It is also important to consider how non-professional makers figure into the creative economy both as producers and sellers as well as consumers of materials, workshops, exhibitions and other ‘cultural’ events.
4. Ethnographic methodology, participant-observation
One reason that previous research, such as Cultural Studies approaches, leaves much to be desired has to do, primarily, with their methodologies and lack of grounded theory. A deeply material and domestic process needs and equally deeply engaged and domestically embedded research methodology if one is to truly understand the nuances of social relationship and geographic importance that making has and the transformations that it will undergo/spur on through the use of disembodying Web 2.0 technologies. It is, therefore, essential that future research into craft as a contemporary social-cultural phenomenon take into account the necessary methodologies for producing critical, evidence-based theory – namely ethnographic approaches that include participant-observation, in-depth interviews, and community participation. It is important to conduct long-term ethnographic participation with makers to both assess how they form communities (better understood as socio-scapes and socio-spheres) and what making means for their families and their relationships that aren’t related to or defined by making.
1. Long-term observation
As a result of the literature review and the primary research (survey, interviews and media content analysis) this study has come to the conclusion that to understand emergent craft communities and practices of connecting requires longitudinal study. Currently, people are using Web 2.0 as a new tool to enact existing social norms and cultural values. Thus, in order to establish whether or not there is any meaningful change to the underlying social-cultural norms of community and connecting it is necessary to undertake a longitudinal study, perhaps in conjunction with the already existing Mass Observation Project.
2. Critical analysis of ‘creative economy’
Whilst the idea of the ‘creative economy’ has been explored and is a common concept within policy literature, the concepts of 'creativity' and 'economics' in relation to craft practice have rarely been addressed and it is suggested that they been broken down and explored further so that assumptions about that ‘marriage’ can be critically assessed.
3. 'Hobbiests' and other non-professional makers
It is recommended that any future research be focused not only on professional makers, but also on people derogatorily called ‘hobbiests’ – these are non-professional makers who are often dismissed by craft organisations as either not professional enough or, when given legitimate attention, as being people from deprived or disadvantaged communities; or who are children. It is also important to consider how non-professional makers figure into the creative economy both as producers and sellers as well as consumers of materials, workshops, exhibitions and other ‘cultural’ events.
4. Ethnographic methodology, participant-observation
One reason that previous research, such as Cultural Studies approaches, leaves much to be desired has to do, primarily, with their methodologies and lack of grounded theory. A deeply material and domestic process needs and equally deeply engaged and domestically embedded research methodology if one is to truly understand the nuances of social relationship and geographic importance that making has and the transformations that it will undergo/spur on through the use of disembodying Web 2.0 technologies. It is, therefore, essential that future research into craft as a contemporary social-cultural phenomenon take into account the necessary methodologies for producing critical, evidence-based theory – namely ethnographic approaches that include participant-observation, in-depth interviews, and community participation. It is important to conduct long-term ethnographic participation with makers to both assess how they form communities (better understood as socio-scapes and socio-spheres) and what making means for their families and their relationships that aren’t related to or defined by making.
