PhD thesis final - Royal Holloway, University of London

Chapter 3- Research contexts and methodologiesand politics I observed from the postings. Because I understand the forum to be a publicspace in which I can do research, I treated it like any other place or gathering where didmy observations, where participants are aware that their conversations via the forum inwhich they voluntarily participate also take place in a public space and may be used byothers; as such I did not inform the few people whose words I quoted. Nevertheless, inorder to ensure their confidentiality, I did not reveal their identity in this thesis.Acknowledging the validity of the information I obtained online, I also compared thecontent of their messages with the information I gained from in-depth interviews withTaiwanese expatriates‘ regarding their online practices. By doing so, the observationalstudy of this forum also allows me to take into account the ways in which virtual spacecan be a space of expanded human embodied subjectivity (Parr 2003) as well as a spaceto carry out migrants‘ practices of belonging.3.6. Post-fieldwork: managing qualitative dataUpon completing my fieldwork, I started data interpretation and analysis, organising thedata from in-depth interviews and field diary into a presentable and readable form(Crang 1997). To this end, I transcribed all of my interviews with Taiwanese expatriatesverbatim and typed up my field diary and notes. While doing the transcribing, I alsoused notations (i.e. italics, dots, brackets, etc.) to describe their non-verbalcommunication (i.e. pause, pitch, inflections, stress, etc.) and nuances of verbal cuesand body language so that they could be presented in words.In addition, since my fieldwork was conducted in Chinese (Mandarin), all of mytranscripts were in Chinese. I have only translated these quotations into English for thepurpose of presentation, as researchers have recognised that translation may influencethe validity and reliability of qualitative data as well as its analysis because of the99