Research
Overview
Following on from over five years continuous involvement, volunteering, working and interacting with amateur paranormal research groups, Rachael intends to bring a sociological perspective to the study of this popular cultural phenomenon. Interested primarily in collective rather than individual experiences, her research focuses on the interactions that occur between members of a group, as an anomalous experience is facilitated and occurs. This involves looking at a variety of communication methods used by groups that are intended to aid conversing with a spirit world.
Rachael will be using a corpus of video data collected from over 4 years involvement running an amateur paranormal research group. This data, collected prior to any acknowledgement that it would be used for this purpose, acts as a rich naturalistic data set that occurs in situ. Adopting a CA perspective to transcription and analysis, the research intends to identify important social interactions that are used to facilitate, accommodate and verify anomalous experiences.
Amateur paranormal research groups are a modern cultural phenomenon routed in a strong innate motivation that exists within society to communicate with extra-mundane agencies. Exploration of the interactions with these groups will contribute not only to the growing body of research surrounding anomalous experiences, but also to issues of group dynamics, conversation and interactional studies. Rachael, therefore, intends to remove the question of the validity of paranormal experiences from her research, and focus on the sociological dimensions of group interaction within this setting, contributing to a new perspective of enquiry within this field.