How can collaborative artifacts mediate processes of researcher–practitioner interactions to make research more co-generative? Research on knowledge co-production has paid little attention to how joint theory building is socio-materially mediated and tends to downplay discovery and wonder as sources of generativity. This article provides an empirical investigation of the use of thin categories on hard-copy A5 cards, combining brief texts and images to communicate tentative theoretical categories and involve practitioners in theorizing. Playing these cards opened up a new discursive space in the dialogue, making it an event of tactile engagement, ludic interaction, and power symmetry. We discuss how the transformed dialogue can be understood as processes of (a) dealing–touching–receiving collaborative artifacts that invite participants into rating, comparing, and combining, and (b) thickening of thin categories by recognition/appropriation and expansion/search. The article implicates a new vocabulary for mediating collaborative research, combining visual and material elements with notions of social poetics.
This chapter explores the use of metaphor to change temporal structuring of work practices in a news organization—from deadline to flowline. Deadline has been an ingrained institutionalized norm in the newspaper industry, representing a traditional temporal configuration that enables coordination and production of the printed newspaper. At present, it is out of sync with how news is produced and published online on a continuous basis throughout the day and night. To assist a news organization in making the shift towards an open-ended, near-future-oriented workflow, an action-research project was initiated for collaboration, co-construction of metaphors, and intervention in the newsroom. The chapter highlights the performative qualities of metaphors as enablers for transformative change and suggests that metaphorical events, understood as temporally enacted performances, have the potential to enact and spur sequences of change by creating new temporal structures and possibilities for action not previously imagined.
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