Yogyakarta, October 26th 2021─The Department of Governmental Politics (DPP) Fisipol UGM held a public lecture of research methods with two topics which are political ethnography and discourse analysis. The event was held with two speakers; Dr. Laksmi Savitri from the Research Fellow at Centre of Transdisciplinary and Sustainability Science (CTSS) IPB who talked about political ethnography as well as Dr. Budi Irawanto as a UGM Communication Studies Lecturer as the speaker for discourse analysis method. On this occasion, the political ethnography lecture was moderated by Dr. Amalinda Savirani, and the discourse analysis lecture by Dr. Joash Tapiheru, who are both lecturers in DPP Fisipol UGM. The event was held online and was attended by 40 people. The material covered in this public lecture was about the different aspects of education, especially data mining in the doctorate political science program.
The first material sharing session about political ethnography was divided into two parts which are the material sharing and question and answer or research consultation session. In this session, Dr. Lakshmi said that research with the political ethnography method is interesting and complex at the same time. As a field research method, ethnography’s characteristics are being a holistic-integrative method, with thick description, and with a native’s point of view. This research method which is used to understand cultural phenomena also brings with it its own unique challenges.
The material sharing session about discourse analysis was also divided into two parts which are the material sharing and question and answer or research consultation session. In the first session, Dr. Budi said started off by analyzing a piece of writing titled ‘taken all the time in the world to heal’: Agni’s message for victims of sexual assault’. Understanding the operationalization of discourse analysis is done by researching and analysing languages that are used scientifically, both in the form of writing or oral. In the piece of writing given as an example, it can be seen that discourse analysis is done by understanding the term secual assault that can be defined widely through the term of sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and others. The data mining method in political science is actually pretty diverse and complex. However, those two methods are the one that are often used. Therefore, hopefully the public lecture can help in understanding the method easily.