Trans RINA, Vol 157, Part C1, Intl J Marine Design, Jan –Dec 2015 3.2 PARTICIPATORY OBSERVATION
Conducting eight unstructured interviews was considered sufficient for the aims of the study as interviews were complemented with extensive participatory observations; when conducting observational
research, researchers
must also pay attention to events, the surroundings, the interaction, conversations and the use of objects in everyday situations [5, 25]. ANT advises the researcher to follow and trace the activities, transformations and events where actors gather, because activities always leave marks, and the researcher's role is to follow those marks and compose a picture based on the activities, even if the researcher does not know in the first place what
to look for or where [34]. Consequently,
observations were made in the role of a regular passenger striving to adapt to the cruise ship community. In other words, the first two authors attended various events, followed a cruise programme and had informal discussions with other passengers. Observations were conducted practically all the time during the seven-day period. The observations of different events, the cruise ship environment,
the interaction between human and
non-humans in a typical cruise vacation were documented in 73 pages of field notes, photographs (n=2237), drawings (n=16), and additional material such as daily cruise programmes and brochures (n=47). All the observations were in accordance with standard research ethics principles and practices, and fellow passengers where not
disturbed without their permission. The
photography used strived to immortalise the general activity without making individuals identifiable.
Whilst the interview method, observation, and the sample size of the study do not lend themselves to making generalisations with respect to the results, the results still serve the purpose well of applying Actor-Network theory in novel way for mapping cruise experience actors and their relationships. However, the methodology did entail several limitations. Firstly, the use of only verbal and observing data contained a risk of misunderstandings of the speech or behaviour. Secondly, by only observing present situations the probability of dismissing anything that did not fit into the topics neatly enough was increased [47]. Furthermore, when conducting interviews focusing on a certain topic there is a danger that the participants may try to identify the 'correct' answers and instead
describe their cruise experience or the ship
environment in a way they feel is critical for the research. All in all, the results may have been richer if more participants were interviewed, but this study demonstrated the principle of using the
has ANT
methodology in the cruise ship context. 3.3
DATA ANALYSIS
When following the principles of ANT the aim is not to investigate the reasons for forming actor-networks, but to explain how networks emerge, stay together and break apart over time and space. Good ANT research is
therefore a story where actors are causing events and are not
Therefore, collected insights from interviews and observation
illustrated only as parts of the activity [31]. were interpreted after
systematically
organising, merging and compressing the data in order to find congruencies from the narratives and observations. Furthermore, in order to clarify how emerging actors were linked to each other and what kinds of aims the actors have, the linkages in between were visualised with network illustrations of the most congruent
actors.
Visualisations were used because in this way networks provide a clear way of explaining how things are related [53] and network illustrations often highlight the actors that are active binders in the network. Furthermore, visual illustrations complement verbal descriptions and provide further depth to the hierarchical significance of the network, as it is difficult to explain the composition of a network simply using words. According to Tufte and Weise Moeller [53] visualising networks in this way provides clear explanation of how things are related. The analysis of the data by using ANT revealed three congruent actor-networks, which are together ordering the cruise experience.
4. RESULTS
Networks are different and constantly changing [31] and to visualize this nature of the networks we chose one network aim, cruise experience, and
focussed on
visualising how this aim is achieved through different organizations and compositions of networks. Although, the following three networks do not share exactly the same actors, they share a fundamentally similar aim – cruise experience. Thus, this paper shows and helps the reader to understand how the same outcome can be a pursuit of different combinations of actors.
In the following, three ANT illustrations (everyday
distinction, predictability, and social experiencing) should be interpreted as a collection of emerged actors and their relationship that emerged from the data. Thus the location or distance between individual actors does not have any specific meaning and illustrations basis on clear visualisation.
4.1 EVERYDAY DISTINCTION
Network analysis revealed that the cruise program had a central role in the process of distinguishing the cruise experience from everyday living, and most of the activities that actors account for are related to the programme and schedule (see Figure 1). Consequently, many translations occur through the programme and the programme creates a framework for the cruise activity and works as an important means of communicating the ‘cruising codes’, which are the unwritten
rules of
behaviour and dress code in different events. In addition, passengers spend time on unstructured activities, such as reading, sunbathing, shopping and debating issues. The majority of activity was carried out in groups as part of
C-4
© 2015: The Royal Institution of Naval Architects
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