Network Assignment

After examining the entire classes’ responses, I noticed that Contemporary Western, some East-Asian and Indian cultural musical choices were frequently among those songs chosen, whereas Indigenous North/South American Percussion and Classical choices were less popular. Although speculative, I believe that this may indicate that our unconscious bias primes us to value those musical cultures with which we are most familiar. When we consider that the majority of students in our class are likely from the lower mainland and in close proximity to UBC Vancouver, it becomes plausible to suggest that these cultures are those with which we as a group have the most collective shared experience, whereas those not chosen en-masse represent those with which we are less familiar and therefore their merit is more difficult for us to evaluate (there were indeed some exceptional subset groups who did represent some Indigenous North/South American, some Percussion and some Classical).

“But exactly why are these responses similar? Is the visualization able to capture the reasons behind the choices?”

I do not feel that the visualization of individual groups implicitly suggests the reason for their choices (data such as regions where individuals reside, prior work/study experiences, etc. would be helpful in this respect), but what was apparent was how many group members made connections to their song choices, as several had only 2 or 3 song choices in common where the entire group was in agreement, whereas others had 5 or 6 selections shared between all group members. As suggested above, I would stipulate that those groups who had more song choices in common likely have greater common familiarity with the cultures they represented via their song choices than those that had fewer choices in common.