Im too biased

META: [BA thesis] [Library and information sience /(L(IS))] [policy] [semiotics?]

Warning:

• im a certified yapper, this might take a hot minute to read, and i am not holding you hostage so feel free to click off at any time.

I'm trying to make sense of my own thesis idea so this might get slightly confusing and I have 3 weeks left to figure this out before I need to start working on it properly.

What I'm looking for is advice on how to justify my own decoding and coding.

Are there any tools or methods for this that I have not considered below?

-what i want to do-

I want to analyse the transtextuality of field-critical documents: the way which texts rely on previous texts to assimilate into and build on top of a shared understanding of the library as an institution.

I want to do this by mapping the connections of local, regional and national policy publications and “enriching” these with context: legislation, ethical guidelines, conventions; news and political publications. I'm essentially doing a bibliometric citation analysis of non-scientific field-critical documents with little to no explicit reference statements.

-where i'm at-

Im at the seemingly endless loop of fuck around and findout stages.

My reasoning behind the somewhat wide selection is that I don't want to decontextualize the local policies – as they have some of the highest impact on local institutions – and I'm quite literally trying to make sense of them.

I was juggling a few types of documents I've seen paraphrased, cited, casually referenced in my 3 levels of policy documents but im currently focusing on:

legislation, ethical guidelines, conventions (responsibility)

local, regional and national policy (guidelines)

news and political publications (“old” media influence)

It grew to be so much more and I had to trim it down, but I'm somewhat happy with the current selection and I think it still provides a more 3 dimensional view then what I started with.

My initial thought was to just brute force code (TA) a pinpoint selection of policy, legislation and guidelines that I already know have intertextuality and just look at the connections, but that was way too limiting and I already found some gaping holes. I expanded my data selection, but got overwhelmed very quickly and realized I wasn't structured enough. I would like to have at least some thought behind my coding instead of brute forcing 5 rounds of coding for 2k pages of material bc I didn't have my morning coffee that one time (slight exaggeration).

The second thought was to use a plagiarism checker. This kind of works for things that are somewhat explicit/quotes but as is the nature of these tools they are not made for this and don't pick up the connections beyond explicit references and blatant plagiarism. This might be a case of a rather sketchy free to use plagiarism checker; it's not completely ruled out as a tool but I might need to find a different one.

As a result I ended up looking into the field where the term Intertextuality originated – it was completely decontextualized for me i just knew the meaning – and found that there is strong connection (obvious, in hindsight) between semiotics and IS especially when it comes to sensemaking and information retrieval.

I am in no way an expert, but i've been reading bits of Julia Kristevas Desire in language, Daniel Chandlers semiotics for beginners, Paul Cobley and Litza Jansz Introducing semiotics, as well as skimming several research papers method section to try and get a better understanding of how semiotics “work”. Mostly to search for a way for me to showcase how I've identified implicit connections beyond just stating my observation with no structure or elaboration. From what I've understood, not doing this would be fine and my thesis would be accepted regardless, BUT there is already overlap, just not in the exact way I'm trying to mash them together.

have i missed something really major here?

Thoughts? Feelings? Concerns?