Introduction
A preliminary literature review was conducted to identify and summarize findings with regard to social media’s role in aiding cultural transfers. This study focuses on the Trap-Rap Culture of Atlanta and its cultural migration from one demo graph to another, using ‘Social Media’ as its medium. Reviewing past studies concluded that not many authors have addressed the role of social media in promoting cultural transfers. The review was carried out primarily through Internet searches of online databases, as well as publications from library resources.
The reviewed literature has been summarized into the following sub-headings-
• The Research Paradigm in a Nutshell
• Cultural Transfers: Social Media’s Role and the Trap-Rap Culture
• Correlation in Research Paradigm and Study Interest
This next section will explore the nature of Practice-Led Research and Research-Led Practice as relevant methodologies for creative practitioners and its supporting arguments by Brad Haseman and Roger Dean & Hazel Smith.
The Research Paradigm in a Nutshell
With Educational Institutions becoming more accepting towards creative works and its relationship to research, considerable debate has questioned the importance of how to best articulate a research methodology that is acceptable to creative practitioners.
Professor Brad Haseman’s “Rupture and Recognition: Identifying the Performative Research Paradigm” and Hazel Smith & Roger Dean’s “ Practice-Led Research, Research-Led Practice – Towards the Iterative Cyclic Web” have a common thematic scheme that revolves around the concept of Practice–Led Research as being a relevant methodology as opposed to qualitative or
quantitative research (even though many creative practitioners/researchers still use a combination of qualitative and practice-led research) for creative practitioners such as myself.
Carole Gray, a key author in coining the term, defined practice-led research as:
Firstly, research which is initiated in practice, where questions, problems, challenges are identified and formed by the needs of practice and practitioners; and secondly, that the research strategy is carried out through practice, using predominantly methodologies and specific methods familiar to us as practitioners (Gray 1996).
Brad Haseman
Haseman in his study, demonstrates the need for a third research model, stating that traditional research paradigms are unable to have a comfortable or completely honest relationship with practice in the creative arts, media and design.
“The orthodox paradigms of research are two different species that embody alternative understandings of how knowledge is created. The stark and abiding difference between quantitative and qualitative research lies in the way that research findings are expressed” (Haseman 2006).
Quantitative Research is “the activity or operation of expressing something as a quantity or amount – for example, in numbers, graphs, or formulas” (Schwandt, 2001), whereas, Qualitative Research, with its concern to capture the observed, interpreted and nuanced properties of behaviours, responses and things, refer to “all forms of social inquiry that rely primarily on … non-numeric data in the form of words” (Schwandt, 2001).
Even though Haseman agrees that a strong alignment does exist between practice-led research and qualitative research, for example, reflective practice, action research, grounded theory and participant-observation, he also states that practice-led research shouldn’t just be subsumed under the framework of qualitative research as ‘practice-led research’ employs its own distinctive strategies and approaches, that have been penned down by the acceptable working methods of artists and creative practitioners over time across the arts and creative disciplines.
These distinct qualities have been recognized as an entirely new research paradigm understood as ‘performative research’, which embodies the crux of Haseman’s research.
Hazel Smith & Roger Dean
On the other hand, Dean & Smith have reduced their research to the role and significance of creative work within a university environment and its relationship to research practices. Central to their research is the reciprocal and iterative relationship between research and creative practice, including comparisons between research and practice in the creative arts and sciences.
Dean & Smith suggest that although creative work within a university environment, often referred to as practice-led research, practice-based research, creative research or practice as research, help generate insights through documentation or theorization of such creative works, the reverse idea is also possible- that academic research can lead to creative practice. The two describe practice-led research and research-led practice as part of the same process and interwoven into an ‘iterative cyclic web’, an idiosyncratic methodology formulated by Dean & Smith.
The Iterative Cyclic Web illustrates Dean & Smith’s collaborative model of creative and research processes. The design or structure of the model consists of a cycle and several sub-cycles, with a web created by many points of entry and transitions within the cycle. The research model accommodates practice-led research and research-led practice, creative work and basic research nd what makes this model excessively useable in terms of it being a research tool or methodology is that it is also accessible to researchers from the humanities or science disciplines.
“Among other exciting areas that cut across interdisciplinary concerns, Dean and Smith also acknowledge the creative arts as credible disciplines and express the concomitant urge that creative practice be recognized as a valid field of research. The creative arts research indeed requires a certain degree of explaining just how practice operates with regard to the production of knowledge. This demands showing how the dialogue between theory and practice emerges in the research project” (Dominique Hecq 2009).
Dean & Smith also expose its readers to a number of different artist/practitioners from fields such as creative writing, dance, new media and performing arts. These individuals then explain their methods and findings. This is a critical point. What seems to be lacking in this realm is a common language whereby cross-discipline practitioners can be read and interpreted in a linear or dialogical fashion. “What is one writer’s ‘Practice-Led Research’ may be another’s ‘ecosophical praxis’” (Robert Banagan 2009).
The Relationship
While the works of Haseman and Dean & Smith are thematically similar, their research spectrums vary in terms of their research paradigms and scope of their study. On the one Haseman’s study is a broader and more generalized point of view of a research methodology that is most congenial to creative practitioners, while also conceptualizing a third research paradigm, performative research.
There exists noleeway for the integration of other methodologies with practice-led research.
On the other hand Dean and Smith’s study is more narrowed down and specific to practice-led research and research-led practice within a university environment. They accept practice-led research as a suitable methodology for creative practitioners (already proposed by Haseman) and open a door way for its reversed application- research led practice. Their research paradigm, the iterative cyclic web also opens a doorway for academic research within their research model. The entry and exit from one step to another of their research model only insinuates the use of qualitative and quantitative research and its importance within the research cycle even to creative practitioners (that is absent with regard to Haseman’s study).
Other than the premise of ‘practice-led research’, and their indistinguishable notion that knowledge in the creative arts could be expressed through symbolic data or non-verbal means, the two studies take different pathways into concluding their research aims.
Cultural Transfers: Social Media’s Role and the Trap-Rap Culture
Study Outline
Central to my research is the concept of social media and its role in the digital age as an instigator of cultural transfers from one demo graph to another. This study is primarily practice-led and focuses on the Trap-Rap culture of Atlanta, USA and its transfer of the above-mentioned culture to India’s Northern state of Chandigarh via the medium of social media.
A comparative study will also be conducted between the Atlanta based artists ‘Migos’ and Chandigarh artist ‘Guru Randhawa’ (these are subject to change), showcasing a timeline of how both their music discographies are similar due to the process of cultural transfer, and how over a span of ten years social media has played a truly pivotal role in making cultural transfers simply a click away.
Past studies reviewed have primarily focused on understanding a generalized role of cultural transfers and close to none on social media as an instigator to such transfers. The works of Michel Espagne and Michael Warner fail to discuss how cultural transmissions take place in the digital age and the benefits of cultural transfers to creative practitioners, while Julie B. West’s book on “Studies in Media and Communication” does give insights into the reception of cultural messages by members of the same culture and how mass media plays an influential role in shaping culture, yet the process is complex. However, Wests study restricts its self from discussing different variants in culture and its transmission.
Limited progress has been made in solidifying social media’s role in the digital age as a catalyst in cultural transfer, hence, I shall attempt to prove my thesis that social media is in fact a key instrument in promoting cultural transfers, by accompanying my research with a creative project that will require conceptualizing a mix tape relevant to trap music and promoting the same through a number of social media sites like itunes music, spotify, instagram, youtube, audiomack etc in a neutral society where the genre of music isn’t pre dominant.
Our creative project will be theorized in order to generate research insights at later stages in our research that will aid in the data creation process, noting specific details with regard to factors that allow for integration of the trap-rap culture (since my creative project is a collaborative effort with a fellow colleague, we have decided to name the project ‘Kulture’ to insinuate our bipolar cultural backgrounds).
During the course of this study we will also explore the following –
• History of Atlanta’s Music Culture- this demonstrates the evolution of music to the Trap-Rap Culture of music in Atlanta, while also determining that the trap-rap culture originated from the city of Atlanta before integrating itself with other cultures.
• Cultural Transfers in History – Trends of the Past- this will look into cultural transfers of the past and mediums used in transferring such cultural phenomenon’s while also answering the pertinent question of what cultural transfers are? And what do they constitute?
• Birth of the Indian Rap Culture- at this stage of my research we will assess the time periods at which the trap- rap culture integrated itself into the traditional Indian music culture. We also ask what mediums were used in making this cultural transfer? And why was it a success? Were there other factors involved in making this integration possible and how social media aided in the same?
• Social Media’s Role in Promoting Cultural Transfers8 – this section will explore how social media has played a key role in promoting cultural transfers, and how has it been a benefit to creative practitioners?
Methodologies
Brad Haseman in his evaluation of practice-led research states that research strategy is carried out through methodologies predominantly familiar to practitioners.
While exemplifying such multi-methods, Haseman illustrates the four methods of data collection used by Artist David Fenton, out of which I will use two as the base of my research methodologies for collecting data –
1. Enquiry Cycle from Action Research
2. Action-Tracking and Fixing
The purpose of using Fenton’s, ‘Enquiry Cycle’ and ‘Action Tracking and Fixing’ methods of data collection is relevant to the type of creative project that we are undertaking and requires the attention of constant planning, acting on observations and reflecting on such processes. Action tracking and fixing plays a pivotal role in music production where certain processes must constantly be re-evaluated and corrected.
While my research is predominantly practice-led, I intend to aid it with the processes used in qualitative research in order to solidify my standing on social media and its role as a medium of cultural transfers.
Data will be further collected through Internet databases, relevant credible websites, publications, library resources, interviews and observations. At later stages in my research, collated data from the results of our mix tape will also be used to mold this research into a successful academic paper.
Correlation in Research paradigms and Study Interest
While it is evident that Haseman and Dean & Smith call for the use of a third research paradigm relevant to the needs of creative practitioners, it is important to understand that qualitative or quantitative research methods cannot be completely ruled out with regard to creative research.
Even though Haseman is of the opinion that practice-led research shouldn’t be subsumed under qualitative research, he believes that practice-led research and qualitative research methods go hand in hand and should be regarded for its insights into problems or help to develop ideas or hypotheses for potential quantitative research. Qualitative Research is also used to uncover trends in thought and opinions, which could in turn aid with practice-led research rather than being completely sidelined while approaching research.
In this context my research sets itself into the framework of Dean & Smith’s Iterative Cyclic Web that allows for entry or exit from one research pattern to another including academic research that essentially allow for quantitative or qualitative research.