[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Community Podcast initiative where we explore diverse and inclusive ways of audio storytelling.
Our goal is to connect community members through sound while providing an alternative for those underserved or misrepresented in traditional media.
The CPI is based out of Mount Royal University on Treaty 7 territory.
I'm your host, Emma Miller and. And in this episode we sit down with the CPI's co director and MRU journalism professor, Dr. Meg Wilcox to learn more about her doctorate thesis. Fresh off of her defense, Dr. Wilcox goes in her process and what practice based research looks like compared to traditional theory based approaches.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: I am here with the Queen, the myth, the legend, and the new Dr.
Meg Wilcox. Thank you so much for joining us here. Meg just got back from Scotland.
Yeah, she was defending her thesis. Welcome back to the land of the cold and not so windy.
[00:01:12] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: You saw the beach that was named after Calgary.
[00:01:15] Speaker C: Calgary was named after Calgary Bay.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: That was cool. All right, awesome. Well, we'll just hop right into it then.
So I always kind of have joked that you are the doctor of podcasting, but you are literally. Can you tell me what you've been pursuing your PhD in at the University of Glasgow?
[00:01:32] Speaker C: Yeah. So, I mean, I wouldn't say doctor of podcasting, but definitely doing it around podcasting. But technically my degree is in the Media and Cultural Policy in Cultural Industries program. And really, you know, by the time you get to a PhD level, everything is going to be so narrow based on your thesis. But you might be in a school that's kind of affiliated. So I think about my classmates, they're doing all sorts of other things tied to media and cultural industries. It might be tied to policy or it might be tied to practice. But the one thing we have in common is the idea of media production. On some level, whether you're studying, I guess we could say, more content analysis around media or whether you're doing that other part. But for me specifically, my practice based thesis is that there's an element of production as well as, you know, the academic inquiry and sort of writing a bit of a thesis. So yeah, I did decide to go into podcasting and for, for me that was partly a way to, I guess think more critically about something I was already working on in the industry and doing. But also I think it's a great medium that because anyone can do it, it actually ties in really well to, say, academic production or wanting to share that kind of information. So in the end I was interested in looking at how people make podcasts and sort of the practice that we do it and how can we maybe change that to make it more inclusive?
Cause we often talk about how anyone can podcast or it's so inclusive. And I guess from my personal experiences, that's not always the case. So I wanted to take an opportunity to investigate how we could maybe change that.
[00:03:03] Speaker B: You had kind of touched on this. You had said that you had done a practice based approach to your PhD. Can you kind of tell me what that entails and why you chose that method?
[00:03:13] Speaker C: Yeah. So A practice based PhD is kind of what you hear about in the name sometimes. It's also called like practice led. There's other things you can say, but the idea is that there's an element of practice and then there's an element of like, the research comes through the practice often. And so, you know, for my output, it was that in order to actually investigate how we make podcasts, for me, the best way to go about it was to actually make a podcast collaboratively, if we're thinking about podcasts and collaboration. So it was setting up research questions that by making a podcast we could help answer it. This is very different from, you know, if we think about traditional research and people then talk about knowledge mobilization. They do their research, they plan what it is, they might write it out however they want to share, and then after they do their research is when they plan to, how it's going to be disseminated publicly, how they're going to share it in other ways. In this case, the research questions are answered through the making of the podcast, but there is still more of, I guess we would say a traditional academic output. So I do have a written thesis, but the difference is in a more traditional thesis scenario, you're probably writing about 85,000 to 100,000 words. In my case, I get to submit the podcast that was produced as sort of, you know, the artifact of what we made. And then I have a shorter. Some people might call them a thesis or exegesis. And for me it was about, you know, 35,000 words. So kind of about half the length or a little bit less, knowing that there was all the time and effort that went into the production of it as well.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: So, like when you're talking about a traditional approach where it's those bigger or longer format, how does that kind of compare in terms of the process you talked about? You're answering your questions as you go along in this practice based method. But what are like the main differences in how they're approached in traditional versus practice?
[00:04:59] Speaker C: I mean, all research really starts with the research question, right? And in that case, that doesn't change. You know, you might be doing like broader reading and understanding to try to understand your topic and then be able to narrow down your question. For me specifically, I had two research questions that I wanted to answer. So one of them is what can journalists and media makers learn from people with accessibility requirements, accessibility practitioners or advocates to develop more inclusive practices and reporting outputs. So I'm very like specifically thinking about what can we learn from people in the field around accessibility to make things that are going to either be more inclusive by process or inclusive by output. And my other question was, and what changes to accepted podcast production practice or formats might better suit diverse storytellers and their listenership? So if we learn a bit about how to actually develop these more inclusive practices or outputs, like what are some things that we could change in our day to day to make things more inclusive? So my research questions are very practiced based and, you know, in theory, I could probably interview a bunch of podcast practitioners and people who identify as accessible podcasters, and I could write a thesis based on that. That would be a more traditional output. There's other ways you could apply or do that as well. But for me it was more instead of talking to other people who say they might do this or do it, how can I actually, as someone who has an understanding of podcast production, be thoughtful about my practice as I make these changes and think about what I can recommend to other people later?
So, you know, I can't do that without making a podcast. And so in the end, it means that as we design the project, it's to help find things through the making that I can then share about our process and what we discovered, you know, basically from a case study that we've done in making our podcast together.
[00:06:43] Speaker B: I was going to ask, just kind of on your one research question, if you could kind of expand on just what you mean by the accessibility part in terms of both making and listening. Like, what were you kind of looking at there?
[00:06:57] Speaker C: Yeah, and originally my research question didn't focus on accessibility. It was more thinking about diversity in a broader sense. But once I worked out my community partner, which was inside out theatre, and working with them on adapting a play called Party Girls memoir into podcast, they work in accessibility media and telling stories of people with accessibility. So I decided to go back and actually narrow in my research question. So I always knew that this was going to be tailored specifically to whatever unique project we were working on. So accessibility is considered in this story or this project from a few ways. The first one is that Inside Out Theatre works specifically with actors with disabilities and people in the community with disabilities. So they, it's part of their practice and their approach to what they do. And so specifically, Static, a Party Girls memoir, is written by Ashley King. And Ashley is a legally blind actor, playwright, journalist. She's a talented person with many things. She, as I mentioned, is legally blind. She has about 2% of her eyesight. And the play that she wrote and acted in, Static, is about how she lost her eyesight. So we knew by the content of what we were covering we were going to be talking about accessibility and mostly talking about vision impairment. But there's other ways that access can be considered. So we sort of kept the question a bit more broad, knowing that there might be other considerations of accessibility. Though what we're often going to probably be talking about is vision impairment or low sightedness, depending on.
So part of this was thinking about how we're producing the podcast. Ashley is one of the main actors on the series. She's the key producer with me and we're making creative decisions together. How do we actually go about making a podcast together when she's visually impaired? And for many people who are just maybe listening to this podcast right now might think, oh, but it sounds like that actually works really well. And conceptually that's why we wanted to do the podcast or an audio piece together, is we knew that Ashley had originally written the play with a low sighted audience in mind as well as the general public. And we're like, well, if it's a podcast, it doesn't matter if you're low sighted, you're gonna get the exact same experience or similar experience without needing any translation for someone who's low sighted. But the problem, and you already know this, Emma, is producing audio is actually a very visual experience, or rather I should say that the tools that have been developed for most people to develop and produce audio are quite visual. And whether that's just being able to keep an eye and monitor levels on your recorders or even when you're editing, right. That you're using like visual cues as you're going in to cut and edit and make those changes. So we had to really think about how we were going to adapt, like, even scripts, right?
[00:09:36] Speaker B: And you're like, it's a play, as you said, right. So a play is inherently visual and interactive in this sense. So.
[00:09:43] Speaker C: Exactly.
[00:09:44] Speaker B: Even though this is technically tailored for a visually impaired audience, there's still a major level of translation that needs to be understood, right?
[00:09:54] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. And so those were sort of the questions that came up that we were navigating as we worked on the piece, knowing ultimately what we wanted to get to. But even I think about one of the things that we really found in production was scripts. Ashley often even in her journalistic work, she'll just memorize a script or she knows where she wants the cue line to be. But we were recording, you know, 30 minute long interviews that we want to have a nice arc and follow. And so normally Ashley will like, she can obviously work with text scripts, but she'll use text to voice reader. And that means if you're interviewing right now, like you can actually look at your question line while we're talking and still listen. You can sort of multitask. But Ashley would need to stop, hear the end of the answer, and then hear text to voice for the question to know what to ask next. So it kind of changed up the flow of the interview and she didn't really love how that worked. So then we start thinking, well, what are some potential solutions? How could we maybe work around that so that we can sort of get the feel and the outcomes that we want. But knowing that like all the default tools have generally been around vision and an expectation that you can work visually even though we are working in sound.
[00:10:55] Speaker B: So yeah, you have been kind of talking about static, your award winning podcast might I add as well. Can you kind of tell me what it is like to have something a bit more creative included in this process that doesn't traditionally have room for creativity, like a PhD process? Obviously I haven't done one, but from my inside out view, I think of it as like a very structured, stressful kind of process that doesn't have room for fun.
[00:11:25] Speaker C: It can and it can't, depending I think on like your, your project and how you the research. Again, if we think a bit to like that comparing to traditional research. So you start with your research question and then it's more about how you want to go about answering it. Right. And so in this case the answer was through practice. And really that's about me developing. You're still going to have a fieldwork stage. The difference is my fieldwork got to be sitting in on play rehearsals and getting to work with a creative team and putting the podcast together and helping publish and get it out there. So that's something that depending on where you're at, you may not choose to publish before you're done with your thesis. But in my case, working with a community partner, I didn't see an advantage to waiting Till a year, a year and a half after, when I got my thesis, the group's just put this out. They've done a great job. We want to build on the interest in the play. We want to get that out sooner than later. But that was really just my field work and my field prep. And it looks different for others, but it was, you know, very creative and it was a mix of journalistic work as well as theatrical work. So it's a play, but it's based on a true story. And the way in the podcast that we add in more journalism, I guess we could say, is by adding in interviews with real people from the story. So the first part of each episode is the play adapted for audio drama. But then Ashley kind of turns from Ashley playing herself at 18 to being herself now. And, you know, you get to hear from one of the doctors that helped save her life in New Zealand. You get to hear from her mother because there's a character who plays her mother in the play. But then we get to hear from the real Carolina. So there's this opportunity for like, I guess, more rich content in terms of the story behind, like, the play and the story itself.
And that was definitely creative and fun to do. But because it was built into the nature of the product, it also meant that I could put it a bit into my final thesis. And like, actually each of the chapters in my thesis I've named from a quote from the play. But it's sort of a mix of fun and academic. So I just have in front of me here, like, chapter three is let's Eat, Pray, Love, Bitches.
Action research as a methodology for developing accessible practice based inquiry.
[00:13:26] Speaker B: That is awesome.
[00:13:27] Speaker C: You need to have a methodology section, but that doesn't mean that it can't, like, speak to the tone and the flavor of the original source.
[00:13:33] Speaker B: The storytelling aspect kind of comes into it. And the media part.
[00:13:37] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And again, you know, it's still like all these findings and whatnot still come back to my research question. But we can definitely have fun with it. But there's so much in my thesis that doesn't talk about the creative choices that were made. And I had ideas redesigned or reworked my research to maybe focus on that I could have. One of the interesting things about practice based research is where it's really been growing is because programs that had maybe originally not been in universities, let's say journalism, media production, things that would have been college, or even, we think about visual arts and arts practice, these are areas that have really been pushing the area of practice based research, because these are fields that involve practice. And so I think we are starting to see an interesting mix of where that creativity can come in.
[00:14:20] Speaker B: You kind of mentioned before, just like the difference in the journalistic values and just podcasting values that were put into static. How does your research and what you've done kind of differ from journalism and traditional podcasting and what you're doing? Because traditional podcasting is a bit more. Is what you would kind of think that this is in a grand sense, but there is a lot of journalistic values and work put into it.
Absolutely.
[00:14:50] Speaker C: Thinking about the research.
So we could sort of compare. How is practice based research different as research? It has all the same elements, but it shifts in some different ways. And the one thing that does change a bit is that often in more traditional research, you do your reading, you establish your question, and then you answer it. Whereas in practice based research, you actually often through practice is where you might find the theory, it might come afterwards. And that's actually where in my work, where it was working with these artists to actually learn about how they approach things that I was then able to pull out theories that they used and then apply it to what I made. It's the same parts, but in a slightly different order, I guess we could say. And when it comes to journalism, I'd say, like comparing producing this podcast to how I would have done it if I just came in as a producer, Thinking about my experience as a journalist and having done this for years, again, I would say it's actually very similar.
But then there were specific points where through this reflection, which is a big part of practice based work is stepping in, and basically you go through a little cycle of you plan and you do the thing and then you observe how it went and then you go back and check, like, is this actually what we wanted? How can we go back and change this? And it's iterative, so you can do that as many times as you want. And that's really how we produce anything in life. Right. But the idea then is that through that reflection, you can improve things the next time around for the next iteration. And that is, I think, where it differs from journalistic practice. First off, you get way more time usually in a project like this than you would ever in a media project. If you're worried about being paid by a certain time or you have clients on a certain budget, you have to do things in a certain amount of time and certain amount of revisions.
[00:16:21] Speaker B: Just timeliness to be in right relevance.
[00:16:24] Speaker C: And there's a Lot of things that we, I think, default and assume in practice that we don't really have time to stop and question when we're making things on media deadlines. And so that's one of the things that I found that the practice based research part allowed me to step out and work on something over a much longer time period than many projects would be. But that actually gave us time to think about what we did, like stop and actually consider better options and to try them out and see if they actually did work better or not. So to actually be a bit more critical of our process. And that I think is important. And part of the reason I wanted to do this work is that I think of my experience in newsrooms and other media production where when we don't necessarily have the time, sometimes it's some of the worst practices, I guess we could say are justified by timelines or deadlines. There's not time to think about those things. But that doesn't mean that if we have the option, we shouldn't be. Because many of the things that I found in my thesis is that like the biggest changes are not hard. It's just that you need to be aware of them. And it's taking like a beat and maybe being able to read over a bit over best practices and then you can incorporate them. It's all resources that journalists or media makers already have. And it doesn't always necessarily need to take more time or more money. Often it doesn't, but it's a different mindset. But you need the time to be able to question your mindset or work with people. In my case, I was lucky enough to be able to work with Ashley in Inside Out Theatre, where they were already doing things a little bit differently. I was able to see them in practice and what they were doing was mostly applying to theater. But it was easier for me to take those concepts and then think about how they could apply to other forms of creative production. So I think the biggest thing there, again difference from journalism, is length of process and how you can be reflective or reflexive. The other side of it too is that in research we always start with a research question. And in journalism we always start with a focus or attention. There's always going to be something there, but generally if your story goes in another direction based on sources, based on topic, based on a variety of things, we don't normally send you back to your tension to see if you've actually answered everything the same way. I felt that the accountability on many levels of going back to and Proving and distilling and arguing the research question after what I made is what helped me think more critically about my practice. Whereas in media, you go on, you follow the story, sometimes the story really does go elsewhere, but you don't necessarily have a time to debrief and talk about why it did and where it didn't. If maybe something you had done had pushed it a certain way, or maybe prioritized certain sources or biases or whatnot. Right. So you then move on to the next project and you keep going. So I'd say that's one of the other big differences, at least on the comparing it to just straight journalistic or media production.
[00:19:03] Speaker B: Is there anything that you have learned in this process that you are taking away and maybe applying to your journalistic processes in the future, or that you didn't consider before, either in journalism or in just podcasting?
[00:19:18] Speaker C: Absolutely. I think the first thing that was made pretty clear to me at the get go, and these are things that we hear when it comes to accessibility all the time, is that everything is always better if you plan for it at the beginning.
If we can plan for accessibility at the outset, we don't have to think about how to slap it onto something that's been designed for something totally different. It made me realize that podcasts, because you can design your format, you can design your timeline, you can design when you want to post things, and this is things that like, you know, other academics have spoken about in the past, you actually can really quite easily create a project that is built on the advantages and the we could say the talents of a team rather than the limitations. You know, if we were trying to make this podcast as a one hour live radio show, suddenly we're limited to bringing people in for certain times, having them deliver on first go, making things a certain length, fitting it these certain ways, it would have been really hard to try to adapt to some of those needs. But as a podcast, we could stop and think, well, how much time do we need to do this? Are we wanting to produce it all ahead of time so we don't have to worry about like deadlines? We can pre record, we can do multiple takes, we can edit, we can revise. It gave us flexibility where we didn't have to be perfect the first time or rehearse to get to like a perf performance for when we did it live. And when you remove all those, when you think about it, just really unnecessary barriers. I mean it's necessary for live radio, but not for telling a story.
Suddenly we actually didn't really have to worry that much about accessibility. Ashley already has the technology she needs to be able to work with scripts if she wants to. We found some other ways to work around stuff, but we were able to design a show that it didn't feel like there was a lot that we had to change in our process or accommodate. It was more fun to do, and it was. Was more relaxed. So part of it is just the flexibility of podcasting or anything that's being put out digitally where you don't have to go through a gatekeeper and you can sort of decide the terms of how you want to put it out, is going to immediately be more accessible just because you can design it around the needs that you need or the needs that you have. But the other thing I noticed then is we didn't need specialized tools to do any of this, really, as I mentioned earlier.
[00:21:25] Speaker B: Is there, like, ones that you would have thought you would have needed?
[00:21:27] Speaker C: I guess I wondered. In the end, Ashley didn't want to learn. Well, she already knows how to do some audio editing, but, like, didn't want to do the audio editing, which is fine. She wasn't the main producer. Yeah. And so we didn't get into that. That was one that I would have been worried about. How do we figure out some adaptive elements of, like, editing software for her to actually do audio editing? But I thought that maybe we might need some specific tools around.
I guess part of it was like, editing and. Yeah. How we would come through with revisions and talking back and forth on that as well, which we ended up just meeting in person and doing it in person because it was. Was easier to talk. And it wasn't just because of her vision impairment. It was actually because she was new to audio editing. And if you don't really know the terminology around audio editing, it's very hard for you to listen to something and then speak back to your editor and tell them what to change. So it was actually easier for us to sit person to person. And she could say, okay, this sounds too fast. And then I could say, okay, well, is it the talking that's too fast? Is it the music that's too fast? Is something coming in a little too hard? Then we could actually speak around it, and then I could provide some options and have a better idea of how she wanted something changed in the edit. So it was partly because, like, for her, trying to listen to an edit and find out where the timecode is and type it down and make the note would be a pain. But also it was that Even if she could have done all those things, she wouldn't have had the vocabulary to explain it well. And we probably would have had to have a big talk about what those edits were anyway, so we might as well just do it in person.
[00:22:48] Speaker B: Difficult. I still struggle.
[00:22:51] Speaker C: Yeah. And it's also to describe. Yeah. Like a shared language. Sometimes with that too, because it can be interpreted in different ways.
But in the end, like, I'd say the most, like, the biggest accessibility changes we did were providing a longer timeline for the project, which is partly because it was research as well, where we decided to have our meetings day to day. You know, can we go do that somewhere that Ashley already knows? Or at her house where she's comfortable and doesn't have to worry about other access needs? Or is it going to be that we have to go meet at a specific location, like a newsroom, which might actually be a pain for her to get to and take more time and effort. Right. A lot of the things that we worked around were just with existing tools. It didn't cost more money to do it. But often it was just a consideration because if we're gonna meet anyways, I have to get to a meeting location. So does it matter if it's her place versus a newsroom? For me, it's about the same.
But the difference there would actually help her out quite a bit.
[00:23:39] Speaker B: Is there kind of any main. Just general takeaways from your findings and your thesis that really stuck out to you?
[00:23:47] Speaker C: Yeah. When it comes to findings, as I mentioned, one of them is that just in terms of our practice, it was little things that kind of made the difference and things that anyone could do, like the organizational changes. But there were some specific technological things that we did sort to play with and try out for making things a bit more accessible for Ashley. So as I mentioned, one of the challenges we had was for interviews, and Ashley wanted it to seem very back and forth, kind of perfect conversational.
Exactly. And my thought was, how do we get there? How do we do that? And so what we tried. One of the things we tried was shorter question lines. Like we'd write a question line together and then what I'd do is a shorter document where each question would only have two or three words, so she could listen to it a little bit faster and it would cue her to know what to ask next. We tried that out and it worked okay.
I think it would have just needed a bit more practice. But in the end, I think what would have worked even better is if you have a true Radio setup where you can have a producer in your ear, they could just tell you the question while you're in the interview. Right. But that wasn't an option for, like, the recording setup that we had for podcasting. So again, we learned that, like, using a full written script was not going to work for Ashley if we wanted to do a guided interview, like, with someone supporting it. The shortened question lines could work with practice if we couldn't work it around other technology stuff. But funnily enough, in the end, a traditional radio set up with the support of someone else would have probably helped her have sort of that more natural, like, live interview style. Again. The other problem that we had on the other side is during parts of the podcast where Ashley and I are talking back and forth and it's supposed to be really conversational and good. I didn't want her having to memorize a script. It was going to sound weird and forced. And also it's extra work on her part to have to deliver that. So I actually took an old radio technique of tape talk, which is normally like, you know, between a host and a reporter, and it's supposed to be scripted to sound like a casual conversation. Normally you'd be throwing to some clips as well. In our case, we weren't throwing to clips, but what I ended up doing was we worked out sort of an overview of a tape talk script where I'm sort of in the host position or the neutral position, but because I could look to notes, I could cue her to the next thing we wanted to say. And Ash already knew what she wanted to talk about, so she didn't need to memorize it, but she just needed someone to cue her a bit to it. So in that case, we could often take those conversations on first take, maybe second if we, like, you know, went a little into the weeds or something. At one point, we were taking these older radio techniques and applying them to use in this new medium. It wouldn't have worked if it was live and we only had one go at it. Like, we could have made it work maybe. But again, it's interesting sometimes when you try to meet and sound like something that's traditional. We were getting pushback and accessibility became an issue, like with the scripts and the questions. Other times we could actually take some of these tools, these old radio tools, and. And breathe them into accessible practice for
[00:26:32] Speaker B: making the podcast kind of trial and error.
[00:26:34] Speaker C: Exactly. There's a lot of that. And again, that doing something and asking like, hey, did this work? Didn't it work? How might we want to change it in the future. And yeah, how we'd like to approach that the next time.
[00:26:50] Speaker A: That was CPI co director and MRU journalism professor Dr. Meg Wilcox.
Static A Party Girls Memoir is available on our website or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Emma Miller, and thanks for listening to the Community Podcast Initiative.
CPI focuses on audio storytelling as a way to better include underrepresented voices.
Our podcast is produced on the homeland of the Niitsitapi, or Blackfoot Confederacy, the Ithka Stoney Nakota Nation, and the Sutina Nation. This land is also home to the Metis Nation of Alberta districts 5 and 6.
As media creators, we strive to uplift the voices of Indigenous peoples while strengthening our commitment to diverse and inclusive audio storytelling.
You can learn more about the CPI at the podcast studio.ca or on social
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see you next time.
