ITRM 2021 // Week 7 - Digital Ethnography

Pablo Velasco & Ane Katrine Gammelby // Information Studies // pablov.me

Topics for the day:

• Digital Ethnography
• Flow logic and flow as method
• Ethics of doing ethnographic research in digital environments

DIGITAL ETHNOGRAPHY 101

• virtual ethnography
• connected (relational) ethnography
• ethnography of the everyday

Ethnography

Ties through cultural competence communication

Malinowski, B. (1926). Crime and Custom in Savage Society.

an attitude or mindset that influences how researchers act in the practice of social inquiry

• "in collaboration" with people (or objects)
• not looking from above: but going through
• things that are hidden (not obvious) to the subjects (which won't be revealed in an interview)
• "in the making"
• not finished methods: methods evolve, and we as researchers have to adapt them

Markham, A. (2018). Ethnography in the digital era: From fields to flow, descriptions to interventions

Virtual ethnography (web 1.0)

• text as main form of communication

Hine
Hine, C. (2000). Virtual Ethnography

• people producing websites
• participants in online discussions

Hine methods:

• document analysis on websites or media coverage
• discourse analysis
• participation in online events
• interviews

Cyberspace

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live.

Barlow, J. P. (1996). Declaration of Independence for Cyberspace

• immaterial (metaphysical) places
• virtual communities / virtual worlds
• a notion of persistence when the world is "offline" (Markham 2018)
  "The ethnographic gaze was focused on how individuals come together
  via computer-mediated interaction and developed common rules, collective norms and values, as well as a sense of belonging"
  Ardévol, E., & Gómez-Cruz, E. (2014). Digital Ethnography and Media Practices

Meta. (2021, October 28). The Metaverse and How We’ll Build It Together—Connect 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uvufun6xer8

Connected ethnography (web 2.0)

Commonly used in Digital Anthropology, Digital Sociology, HCI and STS

• Blur or integration between online / offline ethnographic work
• Heterogeneous network of subjects and devices (relational ontologies, networks, etc)
• Field site as the locus where empirical work is conducted, less than a place or a community
• Strands of digital ethnographies:

Coleman, E. G. (2010). Ethnographic Approaches to Digital Media

• Digital media and cultural politics: representation
• Digital media vernaculars

"ethnographic lens to practices, subjects, modes of communication, and groups entirely dependent on digital technologies for their existence" (Coleman 2010, 492)

Coleman, G. (2015). Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous

• weapons of the geek: What they all have in common is that their political tools (…) emerge from the concrete experience of their craft (Coleman 2015, 107)

Internet in everyday practices and media ethnography

• Ethnography about living in media
• Ethnography for the internet
  • adaptative approach
  • "embedded, embodied, and everyday" (not as cyberspace)
    Hine, C. (2015). Ethnography for the Internet: Embedded, Embodied and Everyday
• Sociology of infrastructure: the internet becomes an infrastructure to do other things
  Bowker, G. C., & Star, S. L. (1999). Sorting things out: Classification and its consequences.

[Ethnography as something that allows to] inhabit and capture the simultaneous centrality of the digital
Markham, A. (2018). Ethnography in the Digital Internet Era: From Fields to Flows, Descriptions to Interventions"

Consider the notions of social shaping of technology and domestication:

5 principles for doing digital ethnography

Pink, S., Horst, H. A., Postill, J., Hjorth, L., Lewis, T., & Tacchi, J. (Eds.). (2016). Digital ethnography: Principles and practice.

• multiplicity: multiple ways to engage (depending e.g. on places or infrastructure)
• not centered in "the digital": media as part of something wider (environment, activities, experiences, relationships)
• openness: processual (open-ended, collaborative, not bounded, not a start-to-finish activity)
• reflexivity: considering and reflecting on their own knowledge production and ethics
• unorthodox: beyond, academia, disciplines, and standard written production

http://energyanddigitalliving.com/

Activity: Digital case-based ethnographic discussion

MIRO board here

• The case should be "health-related" and can be related to the apps observed last session. We won't collect any data for this activity, but the data should exist.

Constructing the field site

• How is access to settings and research subjects to be obtained?
• How would you be present in the field?
• What kind of data can be gathered and through which specific means (scraping, interviews, observation, etc)?
• Where should the former means of research be conducted?
• What would be the advantages of a "flow" approach?

Dealing with ethics

• What ethical dilemmas does the "construction of the field site" involve?
• What would be your take on the notion of "contextual integrity" in your specific case?
• What would be your take on the notion of "distance principle" in your specific case?
• What other ethical considerations are to be considered for your specific case?