I used to imagine putting together a presentation where a person and a computer program competed to see which could perform better at qualitative coding. There were a lot of problems with this including the need to define "perform better." But this idea was motivated in part by learning about some of the auto coding functions. I have never used any of these functions in a qualitative software program but assume they are based on some version of a "keyword in context" code and search process (that can be done with basic programs like AntConc. My presentation was also motivated by an old folk tale and/or folk song John Henry about a man who competed against a machine. The man won, sort of, although he also passed away from the exertion, in most versions of this story. Wikipedia (follow my link) suggests instead he died from dust inhalation, which sadly, seems more realistic although is less dramatic. The thing that made me think about all of this this was the KFC promotion that I read about in the news last week. The link I used actually says "KFC blames its bot" for an inappropriate product promotion in conjunction with Kristallnacht - an anniversary having to do with Holocaust related events. Clearly, I thought, when I saw the first report, KFC has relied on some type of algorithm to search out holidays throughout the countries where they have locations, so social media posts can be generated automatically. As an aside, this makes me consider how impressive it probably was for the first people who received customized form letters with their name(s) and other details, sometime around the early days of word processers in the 1980s. My parents certainly got letters like this: "Dear Robert and Bonnie: Have you wondered how to improve the quality of your lawn where you live at 3678 Bryan Road, Obetz, Ohio...." (these are all approximations of real names and places.) I assume the fonts for the placeholder text were all a little bit off. I use a lot of mail merge myself for data management (moving things from Excel to Word) and it is pretty much seamless these days, as long as you are careful in where you put the placeholders. This whole KFC things last week also reminded of a prompt I had in my Amazon account, in the early 2000s. I had purchased a classical Greek work - translated - for a friend who was interested in that sort of thing (but not interested enough to read it in the original Greek). After I made the order, Amazon tried to be helpful, and suggested I sign up to be alerted whenever "Pliney the Elder publishes a new book." Since reliable records indicate he died in AD 79 - interestingly during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii - I passed on the alert offer.
Since that time, Amazon has gotten incredibly efficient at making (mostly) appropriate recommendations, as has Ebay, although, of course, neither can differentiate between real need or interest, versus just curiosity about how much something actually costs, or those things I bought to give to someone else that I would never ever use. And there is no real capacity, I suspect, to identify some idiosyncratic behaviors, like my refusal to buy things that are put in certain types of packaging, even though I buy similar or even identical things when made available in different types of packaging. But, over time, places like Amazon and Netflix tend to do a reasonably OK job in identifying patterns. Still, there are those one off mess ups, like KFC, which is owned by the same company that owns Taco Bell and Pizza Hut so is pretty substantial, telling people to buy cheese-covered chicken in honor of Nazi violence. The thing I kept wondering as I read about this incident, was how much would it cost KFC to employ someone to double check all of these alerts before they went out? I don't know how many countries they are in, but definitely not all, or even most. And lots of high income countries share holidays with other high income countries. It seems that the corporation that owns these businesses ought to have the resources to hire one, or even a few part time screeners who know how to use Google, to do a double check before any potentially embarrassing social media alerts go out.
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AuthorI am Sheryl L. Chatfield, Ph.D, C.T.R.S. I am a member of the faculty in the College of Public Health at Kent State University. I also Co-coordinate the Graduate Certificate in Qualitative Research and I am a member of the Design Innovation Team at Kent State. Archives
February 2024
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