Sonification: A Method of Inquiry

In “Writing: A Method of Inquiry,” Laurel Richardson and Elizabeth Adams St. Pierre (2005) discuss how writing is not just a means of dissemination or a way to communicate research findings. Richardson views writing as a research practice in its own right. Writing as a method of inquiry emphasizes and examines how researchers create knowledge about people, themselves, and the world through the act of writing. Richardson suggests that writing is a reflexive approach that helps us understand the process of knowledge production itself.¹

Similarly, we view sonification as a method of inquiry that allows us to understand (or misunderstand) our research data and the broader findings of the project. How might engaging with the same dataset in multiple ways provide us with different insights? Instead of using sonification solely to disseminate knowledge, what if we used it as a research method itself?

We appraise the possibilities offered by sonification by emphasizing the construction of knowledge through sound data, rather than merely translating knowledge into sound. How can sonification be applied to amplify and distort our understanding of data breaches as security crises? How might it help the research team discover new entry points into the data set and topic?

Interestingly, sound data is utilized as a cybersecurity tool to manage information security and analyze computer attacks by relying on auditory cues instead of visual methods. When sonification is applied to monitoring computer networks, it enhances situational awareness in network defense, allowing operators to gain a better understanding and performance with a reduced workload compared to visual techniques.^{2 3} From an accessibility standpoint, sonification can assist individuals with low vision by enabling them to perform this work without relying solely on visual information.⁴

In our work, sonification enhanced our situational awareness of data breaches as crises.

Because data is still sometimes perpetuated as objective ‘raw evidence’ that can produce universal knowledge independent of human influence when correctly managed, we wanted to stress through sound data how data originates from intricate, interconnected factors and requires human interpretation. Sonification allowed us to emphasize the subjective, personal, interpretive, and messy qualities of research data, connecting these complexities to the social, cultural, ethical, and aesthetic aspects of broader data paradigms.

Does producing multiple versions of a sonification undermine the knowledge derived from the project, or does it enhance it by demonstrating how data breaches are experienced, understood, and rendered knowable in diverse ways?

We used sonification as an exploratory and experimental method to examine data breach narratives in a multi-dimensional and multi-directional manner. Our goal was to create “an emotional rather than a narrowly intellectual experience”⁵ by engaging the different affective registers of data breaches beyond what discourse analysis made audible to us.

Sonification enabled us to revisit our findings from discourse analysis. Could sonifying the data reveal new insights or challenge our interpretations of data breaches as crises? We used sonification to enhance our critical understanding of data breaches as security crises, alongside critical discourse analysis.

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