How I Used MaxQDA: A Research Presentation

This research presentation will walk attendees through an example of how MaxQDA was used for the research project described here:  

The De-Racialization of Latino Space: Gentrification and Race in San Francisco, 1990-2014

Gentrification is a process of neighborhood change from predominately low-income to predominately middle-class that is both informed by and influences ethnoracial neighborhood composition. As neighborhoods experience class and ethnoracial change, what happens to their cultural heritage, particularly their ethnoracial heritage? This paper investigates the legacy of raced cultural neighborhood identity in the face of change. Using newspaper articles that mention gentrification from two newspapers from 1990 to 2014, I trace the presentation of the ethnoracial composition of the Mission and Bayview-Hunters Point over time using text analysis and qualitative coding in MaxQDA. I find that the Mission is increasingly presented as multi-racial with no mentions of its historical legacy as a Latino neighborhood even before the neighborhood was no longer majority Latino. In contrast, Bayview-Hunters Point is consistently identified as a historically black or predominately black neighborhood despite the steady decline of the black population over the period of study. I argue that Latinos’ “honorary white” status allows their cultural spaces to be both accessible to gentrification and erased as cultural spaces. Ultimately, the paper demonstrates that race is central to perceptions of neighborhood change.  

Prior knowledge: No prior knowledge is required. If you have an interest in learning more about real-world applications of qualitative data analysis tools, feel free to register.