Gascón Grajales, Valeria Carolina (2024) Connecting in quarantine: music playlists and dialogue about Covid-19 lockdown experiences in Mexico City and Glasgow. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.
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Abstract
This research focuses on the role of music playlists during the COVID-19 lockdown in Mexico City and Glasgow, with particular attention to the significance of playlists as a conduit of expression, reflection and connection. Pre-pandemic literature outlines how playlists can be used to connect individuals through shared experiences and helping organise their memories and emotions. The study is guided by the following research questions: how did participants in Mexico City—and I, in Glasgow—create playlists specifically for the research study to reflect on our experiences during the COVID-19 lockdown? What was revealed in and through the dialogue elicited by the sharing and discussion of these research-specific playlists among participants in Mexico City and myself in Glasgow? How did the creation of the playlists and the dialogue they elicited contribute to how participants and I processed and made sense of our pandemic experiences?
The study used a mixed-methods approach, combining thematic analysis of narrative interviews and autoethnography. I conducted 25 in-depth online interviews with participants in Mexico City, who created individual playlists as a music elicitation technique. In these interviews participants shared their lockdown experiences and reflected on the significance of their playlists. The dialogue elicited through the reflection on the playlists was integral to understanding the way we processed our lockdown experience. The analysis of these interviews, combined with insights from my own playlist and autoethnographic reflections on my lockdown in Glasgow generated ten key moments from the pandemic, discussed in the Findings chapter, including Loss, Perseverance, and Internal Changes.
Further data analyses and a review of post-pandemic literature generated four broad Key Findings, outlined in the Discussion chapter. Key Findings shed light on the process of playlist creation, the transformative power of sharing music, bearing witness to the lockdown experience, and playlists as maps of emotional spaces.
The autoethnographic perspective, provided additional tools to approach and analyse my data and with insights of the intersection between my experience and participants' stories amid personal hardships, including bereavement. The study contributes original theoretical perspectives on playlists, emphasising their role as scaffolding structures and curio cabinets for self-narrative and emotional memories. By offering a collective perspective of the lockdown, this study identifies landmarks of collective experiences through playlists, enriching our understanding of emotional geographies during the pandemic. The research also provides a particular view of the intersection between personal and collective experiences, enriching the knowledge about the role of playlists in navigating crisis and uncertainty. In the closing chapter implications for research and practice are considered.
Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) |
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Qualification Level: | Doctoral |
Subjects: | M Music and Books on Music > M Music |
Colleges/Schools: | College of Social Sciences > School of Social & Environmental Sustainability |
Supervisor's Name: | Odena, Professor Oscar and Green, Dr. Andrew |
Date of Award: | 2024 |
Depositing User: | Theses Team |
Unique ID: | glathesis:2024-84721 |
Copyright: | Copyright of this thesis is held by the author. |
Date Deposited: | 29 Nov 2024 16:06 |
Last Modified: | 29 Nov 2024 16:07 |
Thesis DOI: | 10.5525/gla.thesis.84721 |
URI: | https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/84721 |
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