VII. Procedures

A. Digital Autoethnography | B. Invention Narratives | C. Qualitative Data Analysis

C. Analysis

The data was analyzed using a qualitative analytical method called “icon-coding” developed for the purposes of analyzing and representing webtext composing data in a way that visualized material influences on webtext design resulting in change over time. The process of developing and enacting this analytical method is described in Chapter 3.

There are a number of material forces acting on shifts in webtext design throughout the process, more than can be adequately discussed within the scope of a single project. For my purposes, I focus on “people”, “tools”, and “metaphors” as analytical lenses for looking at shifts in webtext inscape. This is not to say that these were the only influences, or that these are the only useful dimensions for examining material influences on webtext invention. However, these are dimensions that emerged as salient during the overall icon-coding process, that were often associated with significant shifts, and that serve as key dimensions of human experience (social, material, and cognitive [Buehl]) through which the autoethnographic data and reflection narratives can be filtered, narrowed, and productively examined. It is my hope that using these broad dimensions of human experience as a way of organizing the analysis will increase the project’s significance not only for a narrow field of webtext composing, but for broader experiences of scholarly invention across a range of platforms, media, technologies, and professional disciplinary communication forms.