‘Couldn't You Have Got a Computer Program to Do That for You?’ Reflections on the Impact that Machines Have on the Ways We Think About and Undertake Qualitative Research in the Socio‐Legal Community
| Date | 01 March 2020 |
| Author | Linda Mulcahy,Sally Wheeler |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12217 |
| Published date | 01 March 2020 |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 47, NUMBER 1, MARCH 2020
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 149–63
‘Couldn’t You Have Got a Computer Program to Do That
for You?’ Reflections on the Impact that Machines Have on
the Ways We Think About and Undertake Qualitative
Research in the Socio-Legal Community
Linda Mulcahy∗,∗∗ and Sally Wheeler∗∗
This article addresses the role that computer software programs play
in the sort of textual analysis that has typically been the preserve of
the qualitative researcher. Drawing on two distinct research projects
conducted separately by the authors, it considers the transformation of
social science software from a competent assistant that can help to sort
and retrieve data, to an intelligent assistant capable of independently
finding trends and counter-arguments, to a co-investigator capable of
doing things that human researchers cannot. In addition to challenging
some of the claims of ‘siliconistas’, this article considers the impact
of new technology on the aesthetics of research and the professional
identity of qualitative researchers. In doing so, it raises some important
questions about how well we aretraining early-career academics for the
challenges that they are likely to face in the future world of socio-legal
empirical research.
INTRODUCTION
The authors share an interest in what official documents reveal about the
privileging of certain types of discourse in the public sphere. Their workdraws
on the notion that publications produced by the state and other elites constitute
discursive formations that are governed by more than grammar and logic.
∗Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford, Manor Road, Oxford,
OX1 3UQ, England
linda.mulcahy@csls.ox.ac.uk
∗∗ College of Law, Australian National University, Building 7, Fellows Road,
Acton, ACT 2600, Australia
sally.wheeler@anu.edu.au
Our thanks go to Wend Teeder at the Oxford Centre for Socio-Legal Studies for her help
with this article and to Emma Rowden for her comments.
149
© 2020 The Author. Journal of Law and Society © 2020 Cardiff UniversityLaw School
To continue reading
Request your trial