Mission Continues Blog Series pt.1
My name is Jin Kong. I am a husband and a father, an immigrant and a veteran. I am a practicing attorney by training, but I think of myself as a forever student.
I will be a guest research fellow with The Greater Cincinnati World Affairs Council (GCWAC) for the next six months. This fellowship is sponsored by The Mission Continues. As part of my fellowship, I am writing a weekly blog. Today’s first post is an introduction.
Meet the folks (picture below) who have shaped my life’s continuing mission in their short years of embracing me as part of a team. Together we accomplished amazing things.
Mosul, Iraq (2005) — I-24 INF HHC Medical Platoon
This fellowship is an opportunity for me to get a better understanding of the populist sentiment towards immigrants in my region. In the next six month, I plan to dig through printed editorials and opinions in Cincinnati’s media since the 1860’s. I want to know more about:
- How people debated immigration in the past?
- What were the issues?
- Did the issues change over time?
- Do the issues vary with different immigrant groups?
- Were the debates rational and civil?
This research fellowship is a learning exercise in qualitative analysis. GCWAC has a network of individuals that may find the work product interesting. I hope to connect with them. My goal is to promote international understanding in a local context through a disciplined dialogue about immigration. GCWAC serves as a platform for building cooperation on the topic and I wish to lay my few bricks.
Qualitative content analysis is entirely something new and I am hoping to apply what I learned without too much stumbling around. I rely on GCWAC to peer-review my work. But I will do my earnest to ensure my work is empirical, my method is controlled, my analysis is conducted within the context of the communication, analytical rules are closely followed, and I will resist the impulse of rash quantifications. I hope to produce two research papers once I’m finished.
As for these weekly blogs, however, I give no guarantee that I will refrain from the occasional fun.
Jin Kong and his wife Lauren, 2013
Blogs part of the Mission Continues series are written by Jin Kong and therefore all words and thoughts are his own and not of GCWAC.
