This edited volume explores how to effectively and ethically conduct social science research and work with marginalized and vulnerable populations.
Many researchers find themselves unprepared for the challenges of studying or working with populations that may be outside their personal expectations and experiences, affecting their ability to accurately represent the lived experiences of marginalized and vulnerable communities. Written by a diverse group of international scholars within the fields of strategic communication and communication studies, this volume provides real-world insights from researchers who not only have direct experience working with marginalized populations, but many of whom are members of these communities. Imperatives include critical lessons for access and accessibility in research. Contributors draw on their own studies to guide readers through the main phases of research, including study design, data collection, and data analysis.
The volume is especially suited as a supplementary text for researchers and students studying qualitative research methods in strategic communication and communication studies.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: Why Methods for the Marginalized? Part 1: Vulnerabilities of Race 1. Using community-based participatory research for interventions with hard-to-reach populations 2. Trauma-informed outreach with black stakeholders: Lessons on listening during community activism against police brutality 3. Navigating co-creative storytelling with culturally and linguistically diverse participants: Ethics, authenticity, and sensemaking 4. Reaching invisible ethnocultural communities: Establishing partnerships with difficult-to-reach populations 5. Deservingness and the challenge of studying the unrecognized: Cultivating trust with Russians in exile Part 2: Vulnerabilities of Gender and Sexual Orientation 6. Developing interviewer skill for crisis-affected populations: Insights from the refugee crisis 7. Conducting health campaign research with transgender and gender diverse individuals: Co-creation as a community-based participatory strategy 8. Biographical-narrative research: Experiences with indigenous women in higher education 9. Navigating the complexities of research with marginalized groups in Turkiye: Methodological challenges and strategies Part 3: Vulnerabilities of Status 10. Studying those who suffer for truth-telling: Navigating recruitment, emotional dissonance, and representation in whistleblowing research 11. Digital inclusion for justice-impacted communities: Empirical research, community partnerships and evidence-based interventions with women in the carceral system 12. Action-inspired research for income inequality: Championing voice for low-income women 13. Appalachian social cohesion: Interviewing, engagement and participant observation in rural Appalachian media markets 14. ‘About us not without us’: Including the expertise of lived experience in a participatory action research project about homelessness Part 4: Vulnerabilities of Place 15. Vulnerabilities of war, violence, and virus: Co-constructing the relationally attentive approach to engaged scholarship in post-civil war and Ebola-torn Liberia 16. Research on the road: Empowering narrators at the margins through oral history 17. Hybrid participatory processes in liminal communities: Methods of analysis and intervention 18. Navigating power dynamics in community-centered research design in the global south 19. Collecting context and seeking sensitivity: Insights from in-depth interviews with migration NGOs in Austria 20. Navigating university bureaucracy in participatory methods: The case of a colonia Part 5: Vulnerabilities of the Individual 21. Beyond stereotypes: Empowering methods in disability research in media and communication 22. Mental illness advocacy: A feminist epistemological approach to learning from the mental health community 23. Adolescents as vulnerable population in the online environment: A collaborative citizen science project 24. Tapping autistic expertise: Inclusive peer review by autistic scholars in autism inclusion-related inquiry 25. The invisible struggle: Navigating stigma and distrust in mental illness research
About the Author :
Staci B. Smith is visiting scholar at the University of Mississippi, USA.
Brian G. Smith is Professor and department Chair of Integrated Marketing Communications at the University of Mississippi, USA.
Review :
“There is a need for careful, extensive, and grounded discussion of the complexities of researching in/with vulnerable and marginalized communities, and in this book, an excellent, international group of authors who speak with care and experience to this topic offer their valuable insights.”
Erica Scharrer, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA
