3 Methodology
3.2 Data Collection
While this study focuses on a cultural flagship regeneration process, including the solution of which culture should be presented and how a culture can be used during the whole process, the data collection for this research needs to be multi-faced in collecting multiple pieces of evidence. Therefore, there will be two main levels of data collection for this research: secondary documents and expedition. The former will be collected from reputable institution’s resources such as the government documents and the mass media.
The latter will be based on the author’s personal investigation in both observation and participation during the expedition back in Belfast. Finally, as local communities, organisations, sectors, and tourists are the immediate or indirect stakeholders in the cultural flagship regeneration, their voices will also be collected from a semi-structured interview, social media, and online forums.
Secondary Documents
Documents will also be used for accumulating a circumstantial knowledge of the case and to answer the research questions. Data sources will be collected from historical documents, official governmental reports, websites, publications, local newspapers and also the mass media to offer both institutional and public textual narratives for the research. Moreover, content analysis is also another important analysing method for examining through documents, as it becomes popular for researchers in the field of tourism to convince readings of cultural texts and to help to draw various outcomes by looking straightly through the texts themselves (Slater 1998).
A. Reports from government and organisations
Official reports could reflect the administrative perspectives on related topics. There are a variety of publications and reports offering further developmental reference and academic research. Data that contains cultural planning, cultural tourism, and regeneration developments will be accessed from annual statistics. As the network between sectors and stakeholders in both local and supranational levels plays an important role during the regeneration project in cities, their point of view will replenish the evidences for this study.
Nevertheless, the reports will be selected from these following organisations:
Belfast City Council (www.belfastcity.gov.uk/)
Tourism Northern Ireland (http://www.tourismni.com/)
Department for the Economy (https://www.economy-ni.gov.uk)
Titanic Foundation Ltd (http://titanic-foundation.org/)
Gov.uk (https://www.gov.uk/)
B. Official Websites
Official Websites are the façade of the event or activities that enable visitors, investors, and researchers have a glimpse of the whole information.
The government, organisations or foundations will periodically update official information that provides abundant data for this study. Therefore, by browsing the Titanic Belfast Official Website[TBOW] (http://titanicbelfast.com/) it is easy to gather data about this museum, including the providing experiences during visiting, the annual events, the additional entertainment services, and many official press releases data and videos. Moreover, the research also discusses the influences on the Titanic culture and the issue of promoting it. To look into the Titanic Foundation Limited[TFL] and Titanic Quarter Limited [TQL] (http://www.titanic-quarter.com/) will also be a contributing means to understand how they ‘create a dynamic maritime destination where preservation of heritage complements regeneration’ with other sectors and organisations (titanic-foundation.org[TFL], 2008). Other governmental sectors and organisations such as the Northern Ireland Tourist Board[NITB]
(http://www.discovernorthernireland.com/), Visit Belfast (visitbelfast.com/), and the Belfast City Council will also furnish various evidences of discussing topics that will be applied to this study.
C. Press and Media Coverage
Media and press play the role as the fourth estate to supervise governmental administration and to report the information to public objectively.
It is also an approach to collect various public opinions for this research.
Therefore, this study will employ data from the Belfast Telegraph, the Belfast Daily, the Irish News, and BBC. In addition, videos from YouTube and Facebook Fan Pages are also an important material for analysis the positions of those organisations. This research will include the Titanic Belfast Official YouTube Channel, as it not only provides information about the Titanic Belfast’s present activities, but also offers the original establishing concept of
this cultural flagship project speaking by various viewpoints.
D. Interactive travel forums with reviews of travel-related content
Owing to the fact that it is unavailable to stay in Belfast for a long period and to implement a fieldwork study, interactive travel forums with reviewing comments will be one of the data to understand all kinds of opinions from both visitors and locals. The main analytical interactive travel forum is the
‘TripAdvisor’ that it can explicitly classify different mark levels of the visiting experience of the Titanic Belfast.
The selection of the visiting comments will be chosen upon the following reasons which it will contribute this study to understand the visitor’s perception with the Titanic Belfast museum and Belfast this city itself by content analysis:
(1) Comments between 31 April 2012 to 30 October 2016 (2) Comments in only English
(3) Comments from 5 stars to 1 stars
(4) Comments that codes on the basis of correlative keywords such as
‘images’, ‘reasons’, ‘design’, ‘attraction’, and ‘city’ which links to the objectives of this study.
After the above selections, there were more than 170 comments that correspond with the standard. 134 comments are from tourists and 36 comments from the local including a planner of the visiting site. The full list of detail selection numbers will be contained in the appendix.
Direct and Participant Observation
The concept of observation is to systematically observe a phenomenon or a specific activity in a natural or controlled situations with the intended purpose (Yeh, 2006). The observing record should be written in an objective context in which to gather first-hand information.
There are many kinds of observing method, but in this research, there will be two
major ways to collect data: direct observation and participant observation. Firstly, direct observation has the advantage to collect data from the objective third party without interposing the object in a natural way. Despite the fact that this method could use various dimensions to observe the object, some confidential information will not be possible to have much understanding. Secondly, participant observation is a different way of collecting data which the observer will completely participate inside the observing objects.
This will contribute the observer to experience the activities with other participants.
However, the risk of this method is that the observer needs to be fully independently during the whole process, or else the level of observing sensitivity will decrease and cause some errors during data collection.
On the other hand, an on-the-screen awareness, direct observation has been conducted before and after the interviews to determine the tourist’s and local residents’
reactions toward the Titanic Belfast. The author has attended the Titanic Belfast Museum tour during its grand year opening in 2012 with photos as evidences. A more objective direct observation was during 28 July to 14 August in 2015, as the author walked to the museum and observed inside and outside the building for more than two hours per day by using notes and photos to record every observing information.
Semi-Structured Interview
The method of interviewing is an oral communication with an outline which the investigator has prepared in advance; moreover, the process is a direct conversation with the object by using discussing or dialoguing. It is an effected method for collecting data from the respondents such as their social-economic background, attitudes, opinions, and motivations. According to the attributes of this research, an in-depth interview will be applied in this study due to its possibility for collecting a deeper understanding of the issues from the respondents. Rather than defining constructs in advance, researchers can allow interviewees to express themselves in their own terms and subsequently derive the most relevant categories of responses inductively in an in-depth interview.
In the light of the situation, controlling during the interview by researchers and the
content of the interview, Bernard (1988) identified four major interviewing types:
informal interviews, unstructured interviews, semi-structured interviews, and structured interviews. This research will utilise a ‘semi-structured interview’ which the method has been suggested that the interviewer usually ‘maintains control over the interview, asking questions, but contributing little else’ (Sorrell & Redmond 1995, Melia 2000 cited in Whiting, 2007). In other words, a semi-structured interview has these two features: a) with a regular topic with focal points, but not an inflexible structure, b) a flexible interviewing method to add or delete questions at any time during the interview with a prepared outline in advance. By using Semi-structured interviews, as Kavla (2007) noted, the hidden fundamental of the interviewees’ motives, attitudes, beliefs and preferences can be obtained by both institutions and in-depth personal narratives for ensuing analysis (Kvale 2007). Moreover, the analysing method of the major data in this research will be using simple coding to distinguish evidence from the interview, which the contents will also be deliberated through the analysis.
This research aims to understand the influence of cultural flagships to cities in the regeneration process, the use of heritage in practice and the influences, and the debates in presenting Belfast of using the Titanic culture. Opinions from the locals are important for this study, which a semi-structured interview will be the most suitable method for collecting their perceptions and feelings. Therefore, the interview agreement is based on the new motifs from the literature and document review, including issues of regeneration and tourism strategy plan, cultural flagship projects, the experience of the programme, tourism and catalysis for the urban regeneration and sustainability. ………
According to the expedition during summer in 2015, the author had an interview opportunity with the Northern Ireland Tourist Board Regional Development Officer and Culture and Creative Vibe Development Officer Seaneen McGrady by email. Moreover, as willing to understand the viewpoint from the residents in Belfast, the author also randomly interviewed 13 local residents to discover their own personal opinions of the Titanic Belfast museum during the fieldwork. ……….
Interviewees
Thanks to the limitation of time and cost, the interview is based on consciousness questions that link to this study by using convenience sampling as the main method to select local interviewees in Belfast. On the other hand, the selection of cultural planners is by purposive sampling because this method has a more direct aim of picking interviewees.
I. Local residents
As willing to understand the influence of a cultural flagship-led regeneration in various dimensions, by using the case study ‘The Titanic Belfast’
would be the integer proposition of this research. Due to the fact that ‘time and space’ matters in Belfast, the selection of location and age both become an important factor in this study as well. The interviewees are numbered and listed as below (See Table 3.2):
Table 3.2 The list of Resident Interviewees in Belfast
Interview Location Gender Age Occupation Number
1 Church F 70~80 N/A K1
2 Church M 70~80 N/A K2
3 Church F 22 Graduate, Part
Time Working K3
4 Cathedral Quarter M 25 Photographer K4
5 City centre F 21 Graduate K5
6 City centre F 22 Graduate K6
7 City Centre M 22 Graduate K7
8 Queen’s University F 19 Student K8
9 Queen’s University M 21 Student K9
10 Cathedral Quarter F 53 Artist K10
11 Outside Belfast
20mins M 53 IT Engineer K11
12 Outside Belfast
20mins M 69 Retired K12
13 Queen’s University F 23 Graduate,
Media Worker K13
As the answers from the interview and fieldwork have become more and more similar without other new information, it means that the data has been saturated by degrees (Flick, 2007). During the interviewing in Belfast, most of the answers have started to duplicate after interviewing 13 people.
A clear introduction of the aim of the interview will be requested before starting. This includes the research objectives, the range of topic during this interview, the investor’s personal information with a business card, and the necessity of recording through the whole interview with a semi-structured interviewing style. As mentioned in the previous paragraphs, by using a semi-structured interview is a flexible method at a time-limited interview, which it could increase the elasticity of questions during the whole access. As a result, this method could help the investigator to collect adequate data, especially in a case study that needs to rely on the respondent’s own thoughts, time, and space (Yeh, 2006). Hence, the semi-structured interview is grounded on Hayes (2009) and Grodach’s (2010) concept of a cultural flagship with a combination of the heritagisation affection to discuss the local’s opinions on the case study of the Titanic Belfast (See Table 3.3).
Table 3.3 The Interview Questions for Local Residents in Belfast Interview Questions Theory Framework
Have you been into the Titanic Belfast before? Intro
What do you think about the establishment of the Titanic Belfast for Belfast this city?
Vision, Location &
Community Fit
What do you think about the design of the
Titanic Belfast? Design
What is your opinion by using the Titanic culture as the major tourism selling point?
What is your opinion by using the Titanic Belfast as a symbol of re-imaging a new Belfast proud?
Visitor-Attractiveness, Location & Community
Fit, Heritagisation
II. Cultural Planners
Before the expedition, the author has done a few researches on the topic of this study, especially the reports from official organisations. In the beginning, the author contacted the person in charge of the Titanic Belfast; however, on account of the restriction that it is unavailable to conduct any academic or other interviewing fieldwork inside the Titanic Quarter (including the Titanic Belfast), the manager in charge could only grant two staffs and herself for a 5minutes interview without recording for this research (See Table 3.4 & 3.5).
Table 3.4 The List of Working Staff Interviewees in the Titanic Belfast
Gender Occupation Number
1 M Information Desk M1
2 F Guide Tour M2
3 F Market Manager M3
Table 3.5 The Interview Questions for Working Staffs in the Titanic Belfast
Interview Questions Theory Framework
What kind of experience do you want to give to the visitors when they are in Belfast?
How do you balance the expectations between catalyst of developing a better-quality lifestyle of Belfast?
Vision, Location &
Community Fit
What is your opinion by using the Titanic culture as the major tourism selling point for this cultural flagship?
What is your opinion by using the Titanic Belfast as a symbol of re-imaging a new Belfast proud?
Visitor-Attractiveness, Location &
Community Fit, Heritagisation
Owing to the time limit of the fieldwork in Belfast, the author went to the Northern Ireland Tourist Board Office in the Cathedral Quarter and asked if it is possible to ask some questions with any cultural planner that had worked on the establishment of the Titanic Belfast project by email. After a few weeks, Seaneen McGrady, who was responsible for the development and delivery of the iconic Titanic Belfast visitor attraction, replied back and agreed to answer the major questions that linkages with this study. She has worked as the Northern Ireland Tourist Board Regional Development Officer and Culture and Creative Vibe Development Officer and had worked in this institution for more than 10 years. These experiences surely convince that her point of view of the case study will be credible (See Table 3.6).
Table 3.6 The Interview Questions for Cultural Planners in Belfast
Interview Questions Theory Framework
What was the idea of establishing a cultural flagship project in Belfast in the beginning?
What is the potential of the Titanic Belfast to be a catalyst of developing a better-quality lifestyle of Belfast?
Vision, Location &
Community Fit
What is your opinion by using the Titanic culture as the major tourism selling point for this cultural flagship?
What is your opinion by using the Titanic Belfast as a symbol of re-imaging a new Belfast proud?
Visitor-Attractiveness, Location &
Community Fit, Heritagisation
What kind of experience do you want to give to the visitors when they are in Belfast?
How do you balance the expectations between tourists and residents?
Vision,
Visitor-Attractiveness