listening and being heard

"But speaking depends on listening and being heard; it is an intensely relational act." - Carol Gilligan

This post got started by a reading a tweet that got repeated. An interesting aspect of voice that it found resonance here :)
and will resonate elsewhere- in the thesis- but here's the roughish notes - there's a problem in writing a thesis when your mind is two chapters ahead of where you are currently writing...

But it took me on a search of google and back to Carol Gilligan's In a different voice, and I do love being able to read the pages provided by publishers.

In her writing she talked of not being heard when working in the 70's 1970s (on moral development with Kohlberg). A bit like an idea born before its time but also having different voice that just wasnt out there yet.
Now this 'resonated' with me because i had just been talking of moral development and of different voice relating a very poorly executed rendition of Gilligans critique with students last week. I had been looking at adolescence and had ditched the textbook (Berk) for its lack of respect for difference: "Delinquency peaks in adolescence" and opted instead for a New Zealand text, (see ref below)
given that many/most/almost all teenagers live lives with integrity, intelligence and good common sense. To quote Claiborne and drewery:

"Perhaps we might celebrate the competence of young people instead, as a ‘work in progress’ more in need of extension than colaapsing down to their being no cure but aging."Claiborne & Drewery (2010)

In Gilligan's writing was a fuller picture to 'seeing difference not as deviance but as a marker of the human condition'.

She says she moved away from relativism to relationship. i take this to mean a movement away from 'this is my position this is what i see, and from your position you will see it differently'; to relationship, 'this is my experience, my reality is different to your'. For myself, this suggests an ANT analysis; reals are made in relationship.

On being asked what is voice she says:

By voice I mean voice. Listen I will say, thinking that on one sense the answer is simple. it is simple. And then i will remember how it felt to speak when there was no resonance, how it felt when i began writing, how it still is for many people, how it still is for me sometimes. To have a voice is to be human. To have something to say is to be a person. But speaking depends on listening and being heard; it is an intensely relational act. (p.xvi)

Hauntingly familiar is when those spoken about have no voice, are not heard.
(Tis always a good question; whose voice is being heard.)

Often repeated is that teens are tethered to their phones (Turkle) but it is not teens who are describing it this way.
And in my data collect on youth counselling there were counsellors saying that young people would manipulate them into conversing by text instead of by calling. 20% of all texts coming in were loud and clear, for example: 'if i wanted to call i effing would have', and 'cnt i jus txt coz i don wanna be heard'.
The 'voice' moved to a different medium, it wasnt that relating wasnt wanted. On moving into this medium with young people, relating is enacted.
It connects inner and outer worlds.
To not listen is to deny the choice to relate.

"To give up their voice is to give up on relationship and also to give up on all that goes with making a choice."(xvii)

To choose not to relate in the spaces young people were/are choosing for counselling would be offensive twice over, first for not listening and secondly for disempowering choice.

Carol Gilligan further expands on what it means to have voice:

When people ask me what I mean by voice and I think of the question more reflexively, I say that by voice I mean something like what people mean when they speak of the core of the self.

It is the relational that is mediated by speech, it can also be mediated in print form; while voice in the digitally texted space of SMS messaging being used for txt counselling, is not part of a seen and heard experience of breath and sound in a rhythm of speech, this does not alter that breathing and being heard continues, that an intensely relational act is occurring.
And the costs of detachment are too great to think otherwise.

Reference
Claiborne, L. and Drewery, W. (2010) Human development; Family, place, culture. Auckland: NZ. McGraw-Hill.
Gilligan, C. (1993). Letters to readers In a different voice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

changing the way we are

Time magazine twitters. I hope it has a look at google wave next.

There are some areas of similarity for the doctorate;
1. its not like anyone sat around saying hey I know the next thing that can revolutionise telephone counselling; lets create a conversation space where no one has any clues about you unless you share them. They wont know if your male, female, young old, u'll be invisible, inaudible, and restricted to 160 characters or about one sentence. You can do the emoticon thingy to say how your feeling in two pushes of your mobile phone, and it doesnt really matter if u've got the time right now coz the conversation can be synchronised or asynchronised. YL will be there for you.
2. people were skeptical.
3. and yet thousands discover it works for them.

How come, coz lets face it, on the surface it doesn't seem to have a lot going for it.
Well, as with twitter, there's an extremely important component going on here about ambience, about being present and heard and acknowledged. There's a sociability not to be trivialised, being connected positively matters. There's concrete attestation to having others available, interested, responsive and focused for you.

While we thought we had reshaped the service being provided, there's a strong suspicion we too are shaped. We feared becoming too shallow to make a difference, but the evidence is a difference is being made that remains profound, Being there for people as and when needed matters, help is as far away as your phone, and that can be as close as your pocket. Its not like it all has to happen in one sentence or less, conversations occur. And the conversations are held, they dont dissipate unless actively deleted. I can choose to keep a message on my phone acknowledging that I feel heard and understood and affirmed, or of suggestions to explore.

Skeptics still abound, there is resistance to the unknown, there is also a demonising of mobile phones as if the only relevant link to counselling was because of their use for text bullying. Little regard had been given to the positive applications made possible and there are as many if not more. Its connectivity thats as close as your pocket, actively chosen, wherever, whenever.

Its entirely possible it wont last. But the service provided is to the current generation of young people, and they are using it. The medium of choice for a generation. Seems its tied to identity of a generation and its shaping them as they live their emotional lives through one more means of connecting. Might be fickle, the costs currently make it a preferred option, its cheap when Vodafones text 2000 or Telecoms txt for $10.00 makes it seem unlimited. Young people are then shaping the service in saying 'i jus wanna txt, k?' And they (re)shape and (re)create a service demonstrating both resilience and flexibilty.

Having a txt life, and being a txt worker

Being without a social life as a part time PhD student, FT academic, and most time human being, I was enticed into a conversation with an elderly article (its all relative but in communication studies 1996 was a long time ago).
The social life of documents by John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid had me considering how such a document might now be written upon; writing in the margins superseded through hyperlinked blog.
Their article predates blogs, wikis, wikipedia, text messaging, twitter yet still carries a knowing wisdom;
fixity is not as limiting as might be thought. The document, they note, changes by virtue of staying the same. This paradox draws attention to interactions between fixed documents and flexible social practices.

There is a lot worth commenting on here, and which deserves better treatment than i will be giving it. However, my task is not to write or right the world but to get a phd done, so I try not to structure, edit or wordsmith it (much), and I'm just going to blog; an al2gether more liber8ing way 2 live with txt :)

I was pulled into this acquaintance via another blogger, google alerts told me of someone in the blogosphere writing of Bruno Latour, so I tripped upon this article and was brought up by the reference to 'qualifiers in writing.' What delineations are made as to what's in and what's out. One of my earlier phd writing forums had required me to consider such qualifiers for placing ones work in the world, and this one's hard to beat:

Art and eternity are beyond the scope of this essay.

And so enticed with such frivolity I was enticed into a really good read.
In its entirety, the qualifier, which btw comes near the end of the essay, states:
Art and eternity are beyond the scope of this essay. Nonetheless, the idea of an interchange between the immutable and the transient, the fixed and the fleeting seems central to understanding documents and their many uses.

The article begins with the exaggerated rumours of death; what lives or dies when a new technology is born.
Documents as darts brought made the transport notion of documents more lively. Important here, these writers claim, is that the conduit notion of message bearer fails to observe that what is observed as written typology also underwrites social relationships; that text becomes evidence of performed social interaction, a way of being with others. The article draws in both Bruno Latour and Anslem Strauss in support of the idea that documentation is so much more than type on a page, that it also is community, if not social world building.
(And this is where life is surely breathed in; for i think- and yes there it is, another of my fav authors Susan Leigh Star links to Anslem, and a colleague Antoinette via Anslem & Glasser...and so the social wold is made smaller, a bit more of a community is built).

Brown and Duigan also point to the community and nation building quality of documents, such as with establishing treaties which they see as being as much about the words on the page as about meeting. A sense of community is built through circulation, where documentation creates the audience for community to occur.
Similarly here, I make the claim that txt is more than an immediate message of pixels on a screen, even without consideration for the content of the message; it is a catalyst for, and evidence of, connection and of engagement.
The life of the message goes on, there's an ephemeral quality where even in the absence of the message, there is memory of its existence.

Txt provides a context for finding meaning.
This can be manipulated further in text messaging for counselling. As much as there is a lot of press on text bullying, and that erasing the message does not 'make it go away' so too is there possibility for affirming messages where a counselling centre can also counter such messages, acknowledging difficulties, affirming actions taken, demonstrating empathy of it being tough, and reinforcing strengths the person has in seeking assistance. The anywhere anytime nature of the message carrier, a cell phone, supports choice for maintaining affirmative messages, allowing for a tangible positive message that transcends time. There is potential through text to connect with supportive counsellors and agencies such as Youthline for assistance, and through this connection to be aligning more strongly with one's inner strengths. The cell phone becomes the conduit in assembling and strengthening both interpersonal and intrapersonal relating.
Being txtually active is undoubtedly linked with both positive and negative possibilities, and neither outcome is inevitable. Given that having a txt life is a wide spread activity, then its more useful to think of such technology as enabling and to actively foster the conditions supporting positive outcomes. Such work is not determined by the technology itself but by those who invest creatively, negotiating and working the medium for connecting with young people in the places of their choosing.

It is not a case of “either or” but of “and, and”.

But it’s not the original, it’s just a facsimile!”. How often have we heard such a retort when confronted with an otherwise perfect reproduction of a painting? No question about it, the obsession of the age is for the original version. Only the original possesses an aura, this mysterious and mystical quality that no second hand version will ever get. But paradoxically, this obsession for pinpointing originality increases proportionally with the availability and accessibility of more and more copies of better and better quality.

In discussing “The Migration of the Aura – Exploring the Original through Its Facsimiles” (2008) Latour explores an area that is patently contentious.
Bruno Latour says unequivocally the existence of something precedes its essence; the question is, does it? While I disagree with Kvond who appears to argue against this proposition with reference to art, yet his argument to my mind demonstrates exactly what Latour says. The minutae of detail, the pressure of the paint on the page, the texture of brushstrokes and the variability in paint pigmentation...are all 'things' preceding essence. Essence came in the aggrargation of such things in a time and place and viewed in a context, or so I understand Latour. But what then of other 'things'?
I find myself comparing these arguments of authentic art to the stories I have heard when talking of the shift of phone counselling to text. And am also reminded of the historic stories captured on moving conversation to phones. But to stay with counselling for the moment, is its 'essence' lost when the medium changes? The logic from Latours argument, is that it cant be as essence is always preceded by existence.
And now i get tangled up in knots, for what of the photo vs the painting? The reproduction has no pressure on the page, the pigmentation and colour 'enhancement' alters the rendition, the size becomes immaterial, the context within which it is shifts...how many have commented on the smallness and darkness of the Mona Lisa. The original compared with a multiple hord of facsimilies is altere and sometimes rendered a dissapointment. Klimt's mother and child becomes more known than its original source, the three ages of women C.1905. Edited enhancement for popular release? If essence is in the existence, what is loved by the masses becomes a projection.

Latour takes the argument further from photography to plastic surgery. I would anticipate the argument to be its not better or worse but different, that translation creates a new entity.

Hidden behind the commonsense distinction between original and mere copies, lies a totally different process that has to do with the technical equipment, the amount of care, the intensity of the search for the originality that goes from one version to the next. Before being able to defend itself for re-enacting the original well or badly, a facsimile is discredited beforehand because it is associated with a gap in techniques of reproduction. A gap based on a misunderstanding of photography as an index for reality.

Instead of arguing a better or worse, there is space for arguing not the either or, but the "and,and". The photo is different. "Photographs of paintings are not respected as aura entrenched primarily because the change in recording surface and technique is understood to present a change in marked causal histories" responds Kvond. The photograph brings with it, its own aggragations, one of which is multiplicity for popular demand, which is noted by Latour as contributing to the originals own value.
In counselling then, is there an essence? Is being there in the moment an essence? One that cannot be replicated in the absence of synchronised connectivity? Is texting a poor facsimilie? The line of argument explored would suggest the answer is no. Instead it is different. The essence is in it's existence, not an antecedent event, but in it's being performed. Does the reproduction in another form lessen its value? Perhaps. The processes of translation from one medium to another may fail to capture the 'things' of importance , what then can be added or removed? Is it essential to counselling that it be 'in the moment' that it be synchronised not asynchronised? Far from becoming “sterile” counselling so reconstructed becomes more accessible. So where does the crime lie? I suggest it lies in the gap where the index for reality is misunderstood. Text counselling far from being barren or sterile is serving a purpose attested to by those who continue to make use of it.
It provides an option, the value of which is evident in its being used and in its ongoing development and ongoing translations.

together wherever

A technosocial story.
The actors in mobile telephony include those who use as well as those who push.
In the advertising pushing mobile phones in NZ there are two major players. Its not surprising that the service providers will push the product, the contracts generate an ongoing source of income. Seems because of the costs of ongoing services the products can even appear very cheap if not 'free'. And then there are the other persuasive aspects these pushers sell in their advertising.
Vodafone is currently pushing the mobile ph (and contract) as it makes it possible to "take your bestmate with you wherever you go".
The accompanying imagery is a guy about to leave a flat but goes back packing his girlfriend by folding her as if a cardboard construction that folds successively small enough that she/it fits in his pocket.
"Now you can take your world with you when your part of the worlds largest network". His girlfriend then blows him a kiss from the screen of his phone before he puts her back in his pocket.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFm83drMr54

Or an earlier Vodafone advert had the miniature bestmate popping out of the pocket to share in the experiences to the accompaniment of a song:

Your my friend
and I'll depend
You'll be there forever
dear my friend
these words I penned
for your ears to treasure
oh my friend I'd like to spend
All my time with you together
let me be your second eyes
let me share in your surprize...

voice-over: with vodafone bestmate your together wherever
And the statement;
BestMate ™
Together, Wherever

The opposition also plays on the best friend anywhere anytime concept. Telecom has Kaz, one of their smart toy range- a play on phones as smart toys- saying of her friend, "hi everyone this is totally my best friend Bex, we go everywhere together". And where texting continues while a conversation ensues, and the texting being so available that txting can occur until your paw catches fire.

What the advertising promises is that one need never be alone, your relationship is as far away as your pocket, with you everywhere anytime, available always.
However, it assumes relationships are attractive, going to be positive in the connection and that the connection will be this easy.
What of the need to have the contract, the prepay paid up, be in a region covered by satellites of the service provider, have a ph that is charged, have a best mate who also has a ph charged and paid and in cell ph cover area plus have a memory that's not full if by text, has a mobile ph turned on, as well as being carried with them....And more than this, have a bestmate that's going to be available anywhere anytime, can talk or text, wants to hear, listen and or look and all in a positive way. The ph becomes a part of me and a part of them; always on.
If the service had not already existed, the businesses might have needed to invent it.
Youthline NZ telephone and text counselling- just as well its here, the service providers do well to invest in it.
For the reality is that our friends, mates may not be as available to us or as helpful as the adverts suggest.
Apparently, according to telecom, a cell ph (and a contract with them) provides "everything your household needs to communicate".
Both Telecom and Vodafone go beyond selling product (phones and contracts). They are also attempting to sell dreams. What people might want is not enough, they try to create a demand, and they do this as Mol (2007) states of other advertisements "not with arguments but with seduction".

For example; get this phone, free, on our best ever txter plan....comes with fm radio, mp3 player....roam the web, maps, know where your friends are... what might seduce them into thinking telecom, vodafone will provide is freedom or even love...
"Share the love with a gift from us ( Vodafone NZ, Nov 2008, web banner).
What people want is not enough, a mobile also needs to look great...it appeals to people who want to go anywhere, its fun and its escape, captured.

In real life, relationships include sadness, loneliness and depression and can be distressing. The majority of calls and texts received by counselling agencies such as Youthline are about relationships causing distress.
In advertisements there is seduction and all-time, real-time, availability.
Who can't resist?

reality is multiple

There is a tension between multiplicity and singularity.
In my research this singular:multiple tension is evident in considering the practice of counselling. It's called counselling when its face2face, f2multiple faces, verbal but not f2f, nonverbal and not f2f, synchronised or non-synchronised.
In order for counselling to occur, at least two people are required. The practice occurs in relationship.
One initiates the conversation, and one makes themselves available to hear the story of the other. If counselling is to be enacted, it is crafted from the story of the one and the communication skill embedded with the other.
In this agency, responses from those who 'do counselling' suggest a singular entity, a set of skills or processes that fit together. The skill set of listening, affirming, being client-centred, a strengths based approach. A single reality. Definite and singular.

What then of differences? Obviously not every story is the same, nor every skill set. How is listening shown when the conversation is non verbal? What is meant by being client-centred, does this extend to intervening when the counsellor identifies saftey trumps autonomy? There are hen examples of contradictions. Differences in counselling when the story differs, when the actors differ, when the actors might include non-human actors such as mobile phones, computer screens...

The inconsistency with what is counselling is altered. How then is difference contained?

Mol suggests the need to work with multiple possible truths. What counts as best depends on circumstance. And points to Wittgenstein on how rules do not make their own applications. Rather than an actual inconsistency, the scenario is described in terms of apparent inconsistency. In respecting autonomy but acting on a person's safety expressing concern by contacting emergency services despite the client asking you not to, gets described as "if they were in their right mind, less tunnel visioned, less distressed, less drunk, less depressed, they would appreciate it ... they are telling us for a reason...at least they will know that we take their safety seriously..."
The implication is that what is best, desirable, advised as best practice, depends on the circumstances. Thus inconsistency gets explained away. Such storytelling of practice help to sustain the singular version of a cohesive practice. Such an analysis would suggest that concern for inconsistencies is one of perspective. However this does not do enough to explain how the same actor tells of their own practice.

When the counsellor says:
"no difference, phone, text, health.
then 15 minutes later says
"I am aware of doing it differently, role of psychodrama. Everyone does it differently, brings different backgrounds.
I am the triage(insert name), phone counsellor (insert name), text/email (insert name )counsellor.
Such an example supports what Law describes as poorly coordinated realities. Or what Mol points to in distributed practice. Contradictions evolve in enactment, working out what to do. In shifting between medium there's a sense that some things change and some stay the same, and even described as the same and different. Law picks up on the implications brought about by this same and different discourse.
He identifies how the contradiction provides opportunity to work out best options where there are contradictions, in the less than perfect world of health practice the work involved requires adaptation. In addition, this requires an ability to make judgments. The craft of counselling growing out of past experience, conversations and reading.

At the site of this study, the past experience in counselling was predominantly to use the medium of choice of the target group, telephone counselling. With a shift to the target group using mobile phones, an attempt to provide a portal to counselling by text was also initiated. The standard for counselling comparisons is frequently made. A need for judgments being contingent led to policy development. A guide for judgments when the situations were contingent on the type of 'call' or on the medium being used. The decisions required are even more complex. As expressed by one counsellor:
"I worry of how young the caller might be, could be 10-11 not teens, and I might be affirming sexual activity and stuff and assuming [they're] old enough and sending a mesage that might be colluding with activity that might not be appropriate for the age....on verbal if they sounded young we would probably find a way of asking that. Definitely makes [me] text cautious. If i have a 10 yr old saying my boyfriend wants to have sex with me, that's very different than an 18 yr old."
The type of response is contingent, shaped by the realities experienced in the moment. In texting a cautious response is then given based on how little is known, this counsellor describes herself as not being able to work with instinct or intuition on a txt platform. Nor having enough knowledge to do more than affirm that the situation sounds difficult and inviting the person to phone up.

What this reflects is that difference is produced with difference assemblages, there is an overlap but it is not the same, there are some things that stay the same, such as affirming, but there is also difference, call us. A move away from being client centred, or a reinterpretation of what it means to be client-centred.

Enacting is not then a matter of perspective, and includes more than a crafting by the people involved. The non-human actors too have influence. A combination of people, technique or skill, and text and technology evolves. The realities of practice are produced in relationship and these relationships extends beyond the people directly involved to include the technological actors. It also includes unseen actors, invisible actors and invisible work (and power differentials...all of which point to a new posting opportunity).

The ontological politics of voice

Reading for a PhD is an iterative process (the big words come thick and fast, my earlier reading let them slide past while I hoped that familiarity would one day lead to enlightenment. And repeated revisiting, rereading and reading the readings others have made of books i have read, does make understanding easier). Helen Verran pulls on the writing of Annemarie Mol, reminding me of Mol's intent of exploring the ontological politics of medicine.
And I am back to wondering: what am I doing?
I suspect half way through data collect is not the time for doubt, but it feels to me that there is no better time than this. My research does not follow a straight tangent regardless of the texts or the ethics application that suggest that this is so.
While exploring the actor network of a voluntary youth telephone counselling agency undergoing change with use of text, internet and message boards, I begin to appreciate that I am involved in a study that explores the ontological politics of voice.

If the technology works, it will be used .... for porn, activism and cute cats

Of porn, cute cats and activism,; the measures of successful web 2.0 at Ethan Zuckerman writes of successful digital media.

I’d offer the hypothesis that any sufficiently advanced read/write technology will get used for two purposes: pornography and activism.

Text messaging by this premise is working.

As far as the Porn goes, "its a weak test for the success of participatory media - it’s like tapping a mike and asking, “Is it on?” If you’re not getting porn in your system, it doesn’t work.

I was naive when it came to the stories of txt counsellors, no they don't do the smiley face thing, and definitely no winking. The people who make calls just to get a sexual gratification find such inducements too enticing. So no-one gets the softening touch. And so txt counselling is shaped. Whats possible vs what could be misconstrued albeit by (thankfully) a very few. The work that goes into shaping a txt could be conceived as the missing the work, whats taken out.

Activism is a stronger test - if activists are using your tools, it’s a pretty good indication that your tools are useful and usable.

Its the method of choice when the young person has no voice, or is scared of their own voice- hearing yourself saying your not coping can be a trauma in itself. Txting seems to make the personal aspect less threatening. I hear young people who text saying, there's stuff i say in txt that i wouldnt dream of saying outloud or 'to the person' (!). There is some sort of a cognitive dissonance thing going on here.
And then there is the cute cat syndrome.
As stated:
Web 1.0 was invented to allow physicists to share research papers.
Web 2.0 was created to allow people to share pictures of cute cats.
They are a little harder to fit into the 160characters of the txt SMS, but so far I have received cute bears, so i am pretty sure it is ony because i dont have enough friends that i have yet to experience a cat in this realm...

Dont be polite, bite it.

Prelude: this blog is impolite, at least in academia.
I practice my writing style as if i were another.
I fully acknowledge that I lean heavily on the writing of Anne Marie Mol for providing ideas and structure as i explore the use of her writing as if it were to apply to text, email, or the Internet for counselling.
All errors of understanding are my own.

Section title: Telling it like it is.
This is a social science exploration of a network, one involved in youth oriented counselling. However before proceeding too far, the use of the word network needs to be clarified. the meaning called on here is less about "the net" or the links between people. The emphasis is instead on the network . That is, the work entailed in how counselling is shaped, what work goes into configuring counselling when the medium shifts: when it involves text, email and Internet for counselling. this is a story less about connecting wires or even wireless connections, it is instead a story about work practices. And one might not even want to call it a story for there is no smooth narrative, there is no one tangent of beginning to end, instead I present a juxtaposition of many stories, snapshots on a theme showing contrasts and performances of counselling.


Who is at work also needs unbundling. For counselling does not happen in a vacuum. 'Counsellor and counsellee' coexist in relationship and the 'work' is a dynamic that occurs in relationship. Contributing to this work are the participants, but also computer and communication technologies. In the use of such technologies, participants engage differently. Whether talking and listening, or by hand and type, reading and sight. The heterogeneous factors involved are further unbundled, the work involves more than the obvious players of counselor and counsellee, there is also the work involved in making the media available for using for counselling, the cellphones, the PCs. It is this unbundling of the work involved in supporting the counselling moment that the fuller picture of what it is to provide counselling using new media is able to be discerned. This matters because how counselling occurs is changing. And the changes are not always anticipated or known.

Discerning the heterogenous factors allows me to tell about counselling. The stories told will not be about social causes resulting in social needs, or about pathology, diseases or disabilities as requiring healthcare. Nor about any specific form of counselling having precedence over another. There are those who have gone to a lot of trouble in arguing the supremacy of one over another. This thesis will not contribute to such debate of domains conquered or of forms of counselling deemed to be holding supermacy. Instead i will talk of practice. Practice as it is experienced.

This shift to praxiology is not a naive abandonment of epistemology but is an appreciation of reality; "telling it like it is". Telling it like it is, is situated. I do not talk of what counselling is by nature, nor what form it could or should take. I will not bracket what is counselling from what is not, nor focus on the counselling skills. For in practice what is counselling shifts. In practice 'what is' is altered. The ontological genre of 'what is' shape shifts. In part this is altered in response to the media utilized. It is this shapeshifting that is therefore explored.

The praxiographic 'is' is not universal, it is situated, it is local, and it requires spatial specification. What is empathy when it is experienced face to face is different to when conveyed audibly by phone and different again when conveyed by text. How do I experience being heard or listened to when the conversation is inaudible, when the conversation only occurs in text? the trouble taken by counselling texts and authors is not wasted but is absorbed into enactments. The enactment of counselling practice via phone, text and Internet is then explored as situated relationships. What the is the art of the spoken or written form, the act of counselling when it is shaped by the media used and the actors involved? This is the substance explored in this thesis.

the strength of weak ties

"Strength does not come from concentration, purity and unity, but
from dissemination, heterogeneity and the careful plaiting of weak ties."

(Latour, 1997).
Plaiting the weak ties is the metaphor used in making a more durable entity: "...resistance, obduracy and sturdiness is more easily achieved through netting, lacing, weaving, twisting, of ties that are weak by themselves, and that each tie, no matter how strong, is itself woven out of still weaker threads..."
In applications of communications and computer technologies for counselling, there appears to be some strengthening of the weak ties; another actor is enrolled. Lifeline has launched txt messaging, and using an Internet based website for postings through a web page targeting young people with depression. This seems to add a little more substance to a 'novel' practice, the larger and arguably more conservative organisation seems to add a veneer of respectability to a method of counselling considered suspect by others.
I really want to follow this lead... it is a new endeavour for lifeline, being launched 3/12/07. Youthline's text service began December 2004 and Internet postings much earlier with the launch of the Urge website. One aspect argued by the CEO OF Youthline in an October 2007 press release was about not reinventing the texting wheel. The competitive funding model to my mind, continues to put services up against each other. The potential is that threads unravel.

A further musing installment on the question: what is occurring as counselors (re)shape their practice; and what is practice doing back?

evidence based practice

And where can i get some?
I am finding it hard to move on.
The day job has a mountain of marking, the family juggling has my mum in hospital after a fall and after a further fal while in hosp, a broken hip. The PhD would benefit from some uninterrupted dedicated thinking and data collecting time.

Meantime I have had reason to revisit my ethics application using the NEAF Australain system.
4.2.9 (c) The research aims to benefit the category of children or young people to which this participant belongs
The target group for Youthline is young people aged 14 years to 24 years. The research aims to benefit young people who access Youthline counselling involving text messaging, message board postings or email.
The purpose of the research is to investigate the use of text messaging, message board postings and email for counselling so that there is a better understanding of how these services are received, as well as provided, and to inform the shaping of services to best meet the needs of young people. There is currently no evidence base for practice in the provision of text messaging for counselling. There is no research in the transformation of a telephone counselling agency moving from verbally mediated counselling to include the use of txt and text mediated counselling. There is no research in the transformation from verbal to text mediated services of a telephone counselling agency whose target group is young people. There is local and international research identifying txt as a predominant mode of communications for young people (BBC News, 2004; Joyce & Weibelzahl, 2006; Statistics New Zealand, 2006).
The proposed research is responsive to having services shaped by and for young people. Requiring parental consent for young people has at times hampered research into adolescent health and is described as unethical when it is a barrier to participation, research validity, and improving health outcomes in response to research findings (Dagmer, Sanci, Patton, & Sawyer, 2005; Renzetti & Lee, 1993; Sanci, Sawyer, Weller, Bond, & Patton, 2004). To deny the participation particularly of young people who are estranged from their parents, or who are wary of parental involvement, denies an evidence base for practice that could result in improvements to health care as a result of the research.
There is no other group that the information could be obtained from.

Just sometimes, having an evidence base for practice feels incredibly important.