Blog Post 3: Research Gap

For my project, there was a research gap that included the lack of ethical advocacy of Alaskan Natives on a company level. Reflecting back on advocacy seen in real life in corporations, there is an emphasis on the LGBTQ+ community, Black History Month, and Climate Change, but when does that cross the line of exploitation for a profit gain? During my research that utilized the technical communication journals, there was limited amount of information about ethical advocacy for Indigenous populations, let alone the more specific focus on the Alaskan Native population. What I did find were various accounts on how to conduct research on Indigenous communities and current feelings on past research encounters. That paired with how companies portray their advocacies, led me down the path to the crater of missing information, and a solution that could potentially help guide companies or individuals on how to ethically advocate in partnership to Alaskan Natives on a business level. 

To recap: the research gap is that there is little to no discourse about how corporations advocate for Alaskan Native communities, yet Sealaska could be the foundation that corporations can look to for guidance. Specifically looking at how Sealaska advocates through different platforms.

Comments

  1. Hailey PetersonOctober 20, 2025 at 6:00 PM

    That is quite the research gap! I like how you stated where the gap is and how it extends to others areas as well then presented a possible solution and further research for your study. I think it's pretty interesting that such an important area was overlooked, plus it would also be interesting to see when that "advocacy" enters into exploitation. It'd be neat to see the efforts of Sealaska in your paper and read about how they've managed to achieve more advocacy for Alaskan Natives where other corporations or research might've failed. It sounds like you would also be pioneering some of this research by looking into it and studying and analyzing where other research has failed. The various platforms is an interesting angle as well.

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  2. Mitski AvalōxOctober 21, 2025 at 10:47 PM

    I think ethical advocacy is super important. I’m presenting on my key takeaways for research ethics through the form of autoethnography and I found that cunning/metis, privacy as power, dialogue with a community member, and participatory adaptation are super important for projects like these.

    If you do end up working with Sealaska on a project like this, I think you could employ some of these tactics or at least address them in your proposal. Excellent work

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