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- Convenors:
-
Deniz Duru
(Lund University)
Roger Norum (University of Oulu)
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- Formats:
- Panels
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 22 July, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
This panel queries to what extent studying aspects of media (e.g. media practices, social media engagement, the mediation of everyday life) calls for innovative tools and approaches in ethnographic fieldwork, particularly when anthropologists engage in interdisciplinary or collaborative research.
Long Abstract:
Anthropology as a discipline often holds as sacred its ideas about what ethnography is and how it should be carried out, with anthropologists at times staunchly defending the classical Malinowskian mode as the preeminent ethnographic approach. But other disciplines also make use of various forms of ethnographic methodologies, albeit in sometimes distinct ways. Taking Howell's (2017) article on the inseparability of anthropology and ethnography as a point of departure, this panel questions whether and/or to what extent studying various aspects of media (e.g. media practices, engagement on social media, the mediation of everyday life, non-visual or non-logocentric forms of data collection) might call for different tools, methods and approaches in ethnographic fieldwork - particularly when scholars are engaged in interdisciplinary and collaborative research. Following the work of Hine (2015), Pertierra (2018) and Pink et al. (2018), we put anthropology's ethnographic methodology in discussion with that of media studies. The papers on this panel address some of the following threads: a) the interdisciplinary tensions of conducting media/digital ethnographic research; b) whether or not anthropologists need to update or shift their methodological toolkits while exploring digital media practices; c) how to best represent research findings (e.g. showing that writing is not the only effective way of capturing, analysing and understanding ethnographic insights); and d) what interdisciplinary ethnographic methodologies might contribute to anthropological knowledge and theory.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 22 July, 2020, -Jamie Coates (University of Sheffield)
Paper short abstract:
This paper focuses on methodological insights from research on Chinese media practices in Japan. Leaving the ethno-graphic for the photo-graphic, video-graphic, and praxio-graphic, I argue that 'ethnos' need not be the sole guiding principle of fieldwork-based anthropological inquiry.
Paper long abstract:
The suffix '-graphy' in the English language denotes forms of knowledge production that make a mark or 'trace' the world. More than just writing or representation, practices such as ethnography, have become a dominant mode through which we inscribe the worlds of others. Within this paper, I take inspiration from recent efforts to decouple anthropology from ethnography (Ingold 2014; Rees 2018), to show how other ways of tracing fieldwork are made possible when we abandon 'ethnos'. These insights draw on 4 years of fieldwork among young mobile Chinese people in Japan, separated into two separate research projects. Having conducted 2 years of research focused on the question of 'Chineseness' in Japan I found that much was overlooked when focusing on this question from the perspective of ethno-graphy. Returning later to explore questions of migrant media use, I quickly found digital, audiovisual and practice-focused approaches revealed new ways of seeing the field. Connections among those I researched did not adhere strictly to an ethos of ethnos, but rather followed the contours of multiple sensory, semiotic and ludic topologies in Tokyo. Leaving the ethno-graphic for the photo-graphic, video-graphic, and praxio-graphic then, I argue that 'ethnos' need not be the sole guiding principle of fieldwork-based anthropological inquiry.
Deniz Duru (Lund University)
Paper short abstract:
When the subject of anthropological research concerns people's mobility practices and digital media use, one needs to adjust ethnographic methodological toolkit, which leads to a reconceptualization of ethnographic terms, such as "field", "insider"/"outsider" and the ethnographer's "positionality".
Paper long abstract:
When it comes to researching mobility practices that are intertwined with social networking sites, the use of social, mobile and digital media (e.g. among commuters, business travelers and users of platforms such as AirBnB and Workaway), practices are often more individualized. It can be extremely difficult to follow a single extant offline community. When the subject of anthropological research concerns people's mobility practices and their use of digital media when they are on the move, one is frequently compelled to adjust one's ethnographic methodological toolkit. This can lead to a reconceptualization of ethnographic terms, including the "field", "insider"/"outsider" nature and the "positionality" of the ethnographer. This paper builds on 15 months of ethnography researching Workaway, a long-term hospitality site, as a means of investigating new forms of mobility, sociality and conviviality. During this period, my home became my field site. Once guests' departure, I followed many of them digitally (although some also returned), complemented a traditional ethnographic study with digital content shared across the Workaway website as well as on various social media (Reddit, Youtube), and interviews via Skype. The digital content (unobtrusive data) and Skype interviews were necessary to overcome the shortcomings of conducting "fieldwork at home", and of being an "insider", a user of the platform, and a host.
Ruth Dorothea Eggel (University of Bonn)
Paper short abstract:
This paper highlights contemporary entanglements of "the digital" with everyday practices, following the multi-sited research of computer game events. It discusses how we can apply innovative methods in ethnographic research, to follow uniquely composed situations in our field.
Paper long abstract:
Researching the everyday, we find our fields interwoven with digital and media practices in manifold ways. We need to reflect and adapt our methods accordingly, to create innovative ethnographic approaches to follow - often multi-sited - fields. This paper presents creative ways of researching "messy" fields and asks how we can represent research findings accordingly.
Researching large-scale computer game events and conventions in Europe, I will discuss the challenges and possibilities of ethnographic work in a field, that constitutes itself in conjunction with digital (gaming) practices. How can we tackle these collapsed distinctions between "online" and "offline" research? Like the field, my ethnographic research is not situated exclusively in- or outside "the digital" but is characterized by its interconnections. The ethnographic research, such as extended fieldwork and participant observation at gaming events in different European countries, also includes various means of digital ethnography. By combining different approaches in unique ways, we can follow the lines, knots and twirls unfolding between the various phenomena of the field. Gaming Events exemplify how (digitally) entangled aspects are embodied in local experiences. To communicate these findings, we need to search for equally creative ways of representation, to make these situated processes of the field visible. Gaming Events are a condensation of contemporary dynamics surrounding the entanglements of "the everyday" and "the digital" and invite to apply innovative methods for ethnographic research in the "in-between".
Elisabetta Costa (University of Antwerp)
Paper short abstract:
Drawing on two ethnographic fieldworks on uses and consequences of social media in a medium-sized town in southeast Turkey and among the Kurdish population in Milan, the paper reflects on the methodological issues at stake in the study of digital media and people's private and intimate life.
Paper long abstract:
In the last two decades, ethnography has acquired a central role in media studies, design research, and visual and digital studies. Ethnographic methods are particularly well-suited to study the significant role that digital media and technologies play in people's everyday life. However, the diffusion of ethnography in an interdisciplinary context is often informed by positivistic agenda and results in short-term ethnography and mixed-methods analysis. Also, digital methods have mostly developed visions and strategies to study public or semi-public digital data produced on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, as well as blogs and forums. Yet, private conversations constitute a relevant component of digital communication and cultures, and are intertwined with crucial aspects of people's life in the digital age. How can we study the large amount of conversations taking place in the private spaces of social media, and their impact on people's life? The paper discusses the importance of fully immersive long-term ethnographic fieldwork to gain access to people's private worlds and their digital practices. It draws on two ethnographic fieldworks on uses and consequences of social media on people's everyday life, respectively in a medium-sized town in southeast Turkey (Costa 2016), and among the Kurdish population in Milan (Costa & Alinejad 2020), to reflect on the methodological issues at stake in the study of digital media and people's private and intimate life.
Thijs Jeursen (Utrecht University)
Paper short abstract:
Digital gaming has become an important everyday pastime and a leading global cultural industry. This paper offers new conceptual and methodological insights as to how anthropologists can approach this “playful digitality”.
Paper long abstract:
This paper discusses how we can approach the socio-spatial and cultural-political implications of digital gaming ethnographically. What tools are necessary in order to explore the convergence and clustering of on- and offline worlds in gaming? While play has historically been understood as a practice characterized by freedom from corporate and political interests, the digitization of play is driven by global capitalist dynamics and/or by distinct political projects and state practices of censorship or mandatory data-sharing. Gaming, particularly within multi-player games, involves experiencing and co-creating new virtual public spaces. Within these virtual public spaces, interactions may reproduce racialized and gendered inequalities and exclusion, strengthening dominant ways of imagining dystopian futures and political cultures of injustice. Yet within the unique online/offline spaces of gaming, producers and gamers also demonstrate committed efforts to develop virtual commons and to imagine more inclusive alternatives. The study of these intersections of gaming and everyday life, I argue, calls for a mixed-method approach that extends (digital) ethnography with cultural and interface analysis. The in-depth exploration of playful digitality, therefore, may provide media anthropologists with valuable and timely methodological approaches for working in and on the digital age.
Sofia Sampaio (CRIA, ISCTE-IUL)
Paper short abstract:
The paper revisits American anthropologist Hortense Powdermaker's pioneer ethnographic study of the American film industry, in the forties, to discuss what a media anthropological approach to cinema might look like today.
Paper long abstract:
In 1950, Hortense Powdermaker published 'Hollywood, the Dream Factory' (1951), the first ethnographic study of a film industry. As an experienced anthropologist, she drew on Bronislaw Malinowski, Franz Boas and other anthropological authorities to frame her inquest and justify her (then rather unorthodox) research object. Powdermaker's aim was to 'look at the movies as an anthropologist', by applying some of the general premises and viewpoints of anthropology to 'an institution of contemporary society' (Powdermaker, 1947). The result remains striking, revealing as much about the kind of anthropology that was being practised in those days as about the American film industry itself. I am about to launch a similar ethnographic inquiry into the film production field in Portugal. Though still in its initial stages, the project is placed at the crossroads of media anthropology, media industry studies and media production studies, and shares some of the concerns voiced in this panel. In this paper, I will revisit Powdermaker's contribution to discuss what it means to choose ethnography to study film production and what a media anthropological approach to cinema might look like.
Roger Norum (University of Oulu)
Paper short abstract:
This talk investigates the methods involved in a research project on studying the materialities of silence in the European Arctic.
Paper long abstract:
This talk speaks to the methods involved in a new research project that considers the ways in which silence is experienced and understood across rural and urban contexts in the European High North. The project seeks to see silence not as mere absence of words or sound, but rather a resource that exists across multiple, diverse social and nature-based forms, carrying with it multiple significations. Through an investigation of how the material and symbolic infrastructures of silence give it meaning as it is produced, consumed and experienced in place, it deconstructs the expectations of silence through its wider social and cultural processes, to show silence to be a fundamental aspect of everyday life and cultivating it as a utilizable immaterial resource. Through playing and experimenting with new constellations of mixed methods from across several disciplines, I want to see what forms of observation and documentation might effectively encapsulate the significance of silence, and show how researchers can implement a more nuanced understanding of the significance of silence in everyday life.
Gözde Cöbek (Kadir Has University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper has two goals. The first is to reveal the gendered and stereotypical arguments that online dating studies mainly have put forward. The second goal is to propose a non-representational methodology for studying dating apps to challenge these arguments.
Paper long abstract:
Based on a critical literature review, this paper aims to make a feminist intervention to online dating studies that mainly generate gendered and stereotypical arguments. Following dominantly quantitative research methods, the existing literature insists on two arguments. First, women use online dating technologies for seeking love whereas men use them for hookup even though the majority of e-daters use such apps for hookup. Second and in relation to the first, men prioritize physical appearance while women tend to value socio-economic
status in mate selection because women, as mostly economically dependent, must think of future income potential despite that women have become more economically independent. To avoid the beauty-status and love-sex dualisms, this paper puts an emphasis on the conceptual difference between affect and emotion and suggests a non-representational methodology which concentrates on affective atmospheres. It argues that decisions, thoughts, and actions regarding mate selection are not simply already socially constructed, but they are very much influenced by affective atmospheres, hence they are given in action. To understand this
thought-in-action process, the non-representational methodology encourages scholars to engage with audio-visual materials, sensuous descriptions, and creative writing.
Julius-Cezar MacQuarie (University College Cork)
Paper short abstract:
Nightworkshop methodology unveils the close relationships between the visual and touch senses in ethnographic fieldwork. The innovative portfolio of tools captures hidden experiences of migrants working all night (MWAN) and reaches out to various audiences via mixed audio-visual outputs.
Paper long abstract:
This methodology unveils the close relationships between the visual and touch senses in ethnographic fieldwork. The innovative portfolio of tools captures the hidden experiences of migrants working all night (MWAN). The mixed audio (podcast) and visual (documentaries) outputs reach out to various audiences responding to such representations of research findings classically presented in written formats. From collection to dissemination, the nightworkshop research design includes a set of core components needed to make visible the experiences engrained into the participants bodies and hidden lives of nightworkers-turned-daysleepers. Nightworkshop builds on classical anthropological methods (informal conversations and interviews), and expands into media methods (projecting short films, and off-air podcasting), complemented by 'bodynote' taking by the researcher immersed in London's largest wholesale fruit and vegetable market. The paper combines podcast excerpts from the authors' audio library (NightWorkPod, CEU Podcasts, 2018) and film excerpts from the trilogy of short films he made for research and teaching: Invisible Lives (2013, UK); Nocturnal Lives (2015, UK) and Nightshift Spitalfields (2020, UK). All three films focus on London's "other workers". Each film marks a different time (politically, before and after EU transitional controls (ended 2014), and before and after Brexit referendum (2016 and 2020, respectively); and the author's stages of research (prior and post-doctoral fieldwork). Though, all emerged from researching migrants working all night in London, Invisible Lives is the brainchild of a collaboration between a filmmaker (Tim Marinnan) and an anthropologist. Films tackle issues faced by nightworkers: isolation, sleeplessness, bodily exhaustion due to nature of nightwork.
Ximena Málaga Sabogal (New York University)
Paper short abstract:
Radio today means way more than its airwaves: facebook, whatsapp, telegram and other digital media come together for the everyday functioning of ROA, the oldest indigenous radio station in the Altiplano. This paper explores ROA's inter-medial practices and how to approach them ethnographically.
Paper long abstract:
What is "local" in a local radio station? Although, apart from Spanish, ROA (Radio Onda Azul) broadcasts in two local indigenous languages (Quechua and Aymara, in its Puneño linguistic variant), its media life is involved in a series of regional, national, and international connections. Every day, ROA's Quechua programmers produce short segments that will travel the airwaves and servers of Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia through the international network of Quechua and Kichwa radio stations. Whatsapp groups and Telegram calls are crucial in mediating these radio productions, while Facebook serves as the favorite platform for immediate interactions with ROA's public. When I started doing research on the media practices and linguistic ideologies of this trilingual radio station I was faced with an inter-medial reality. In trying to organize the data that kept flowing (and intersecting/ overlapping) from these different media forms, I had to reshape my methodological toolkit and rethink some of the notions that lay at the base of ethnographic research, such as participant observation, fieldwork/fieldspace and the practice of note-taking. Since my daily work involved media professionals, I was also constantly pushed by them to include more of their own methodologies in my ethnographic approach, such as classic content analysis and the production of "media-cards" (similar to bibliographic entries) for the organizing of my data. Following the inter-medial format of my fieldwork interactions, this paper interpolates ROA's everyday media situations with my methodological reflections, doubts, and graphs/drawings, as well as fieldwork interdisciplinary encounters.
Wanda Balbé (ICAUniversidad de Buenos Aires) Soledad Torres aguero (University of Buenos Aires)
Paper short abstract:
Focusing on the relationship between performance-camera-sensitive embodiment, we will reflect on the use of images in the development of methodological strategies we named as performance-research sharing various experiences of participatory and interdisciplinary projects.
Paper long abstract:
We are interested in contributing to the understanding of interdisciplinary research processes based on different methodological strategies we have been developing collectively and we named as performance-research. From a critical intercultural and decolonial perspective in the fields of social research, artistic creation, teaching, extension and dissemination, we seek to strengthen the articulation of the sensory, affective and reflective dimensions of the experience, through words but also through the diversity of gestures, postures, movements, sounds and images with the intention of promoting processes of inquiry-reflection but also of collective-creation transformation