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- Convenors:
-
Christian Ritter
(Karlstad University)
Juan del Nido (University of Cambridge)
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- Format:
- Workshops
- Stream:
- Digital
- Location:
- Aula 30
- Sessions:
- Monday 15 April, -
Time zone: Europe/Madrid
Short Abstract:
This workshop invites ethnographic researchers who seek to understand the role of digital media industries in cultural transformations. Attendees will discuss methodologies for researching digital media platforms and reflect on the materialities of digital culture.
Long Abstract:
This participatory workshop will bring together folklorists, ethnologists, and anthropologists sharing the aim to understand the role of digital media industries in cultural transformations. Digital media platforms emerged as the dominant infrastructural and economic model of the internet. Blogs, memes, and apps became recurring forms of cultural expression. Committed to a materialistic approach to digital media platforms, the workshop provides insights into the embodiment of media technologies in the digital age. Digital content, context, and technology are material in the sense that they carry the symbolic meanings individuals exchange over the internet. Not only data centers, computer screens, processors, and keyboards are elements of this material world, but also the affordances of interfaces facilitating communication through digital media platforms.
Inviting ethnographers conducting fieldwork on the current transformations of cultural phenomena, the workshop will present research strategies for unravelling the dynamics of accelerated change in the contemporary world (Eriksen, 2016). The ubiquitous implementation of media technologies in everyday life requires a rethinking of ethnographic data collection and analysis. In the first part of the workshop, attendees will become familiar with recent approaches in digital ethnography (Pink et al., 2017), and the walkthrough method (Light et al., 2016), while discussing research ethics and strategies for integrating internet research techniques with traditional ethnographic fieldwork. In the second part, participants will form small groups to reflect on experimental forms of ethnography and develop methodologies for studying cultural transformations. Attendees are encouraged to bring their own devices and use the local Wi-Fi (20 participants max).
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 15 April, 2019, -Paper short abstract:
Pepe, a frog-headed cartoon figure, has been a symbol of the US extreme right for some years, and was recently adopted by Scandinavian neo-Nazis. His appearances in social media are often parodic and ironic, and interpretation is often difficult.
Paper long abstract:
Pepe the frog, a frog-headed cartoon figure, was appropriated as a symbol of the 'alt-right' movement in 2016. His complex background story on websites such as 4chan and Reddit includes a link to the so-called 'Cult of Kek' and the fictional country of Kekistan. Pepe attracted mainstream media attention when his green flags and symbols adorned the backs of white supremacist protesters in the Charlottesville Riots in 2017. The last couple of years the Scandinavian extreme right has been inspired by the U.S, and one of the ways this inspiration is visible is in their use of Pepe memes, and flags similar to those of Kekistan.
This paper examines the possibilities and limits of digital ethnography when offline ethnography is impossible. Finding interviewees to explain the context and intention of hateful Pepe imagery on social media has not surprisingly proved very difficult. How to interpret hate speech and other threatening utterances online when they are purposefully carnevalesque and ironic, and face-to-face interaction is inaccessible? How to interpret the discourse when reading it as-is, as face value, is obviously fraught with possibilities of misunderstanding? The paper discusses a few instances of Pepe appearing in purely Scandinavian contexts, and what it may tell us of trans-Atlantic inspirations. At the same time, I show how I have used social media observation as method, and point to pitfalls in the absence of possibilities for offline ethnography contextualizing social media interactions.
Paper short abstract:
Memes created by students can serve as a new kind of visual elicitation technique, because they provide symptomatic information that is never articulated in students' direct communication with the academic or administrative staff, or in the higher education quality assessment surveys.
Paper long abstract:
In a transforming world among young generation or "digital natives" internet has became one of the most important platforms in the process of creation of new kinds of folklore, for example, memes (Bronner, 2017). Before the digital era student jokes were an integral part of their daily communication and have formed a separate folklore genre. In the contemporary world cutural expressions have changed, and one can notice that students are hardly telling jokes anymore. However, this does not mean that they have lost their skills and desire for joking, but insted of jokes, they are willingly creating memes and shearing them in virtual chats.
While analysing students' memes (194 memes made by 97 students where processed), their thematic continuity has been revealed in respect to traditional jokes. The comparative analysis revealed, that the function of student memes, like that of jokes, is not only to feature the peculiarities of student lifestyle, to make fun and to entertain, but also to reveal the social problems that arise because of the constant shortage of financial resources for living, to reduce the tension created by hierarchical relationship typical for the academic environment, to criticise the academic staff's disadvantages or ambiguous attitudes towards students, etc. Thus memes can serve as a totally new kind of digital ethnography and visual elicitation technique, because they provide symptomatic information that is never articulated in students' direct communication with the academic or administrative staff, or in the higher education quality assessment surveys.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the Chinese vernacular narratives as independent and not related to the Chinese government's propaganda stories that found on the Internet create a different "reality" in the censored media environment.
Paper long abstract:
Vernacular narratives, such as urban legends and conspiracy
theories belong to the vernacular culture, which is considered as the non-
professional, non-institutional and amateur culture. These stories can provide a
window to understanding the concerns and fears of Chinese modern society.
Currently, China is facing challenges in regards to the radical socio-economic
transformation.
Vernacular narratives can give us insight into how the Chinese society is trying to
accustom itself to new meaningful changes. Thanks to these narratives we can
attempt to understand the social construction of the community in unique ways.
It is important that vernacular narratives are independent and, as such, they are
not related to the government's propaganda. They are non-regime, unless the
government is the source of the rumor. At this point, it is possible to assume
that the "authentic"
voice of the Chinese people, can be found within these narratives.
However, the same stories found on the Internet create a different "reality" in
the censored media environment. Media censorship in China was created to
avoid potential subversion of the Chinese government’s authority. In this case,
the Internet is not a place of free speech but an area of filtered information with
the “supernatural” twist.
Therefore, the online story about Falun Gong, Chinese spiritual practice, won’t
be a story of persecuting its followers and mass murders for transplantation
purposes but it will be a story of the interference of the American government,
in the form of Falun Gong organization, into Chinese government’s interests. It
seems that the “authentic” voice of the Chinese people can be found more
quickly "on the street" than on the Chinese Internet, we just have to listen
carefully.
Paper short abstract:
A comprehensive literature review aiming to identify knowledge gaps and need within the fields of art and culture showed "a conspicuously lack of research within use of digital technology and how art and cultural organizations use such technology" (Art Council UK, 2017).
Paper long abstract:
The platform for decisions within the art and cultural sector as well as tourism has mainly been limited to experience based management, some analysis of transaction data and market analysis, as well as cultural policy guidelines (Voss og Zomerdijk 2011, Larsen, 2014, Aas et. al 2016,) . Due to the growth in low threshold technology with relatively low investment costs, new opportunities are created in order to use more advanced analysis. It has been argued that such technological platforms will create new fundaments for sustainable value creation, when and if small and medium sized institutions manage to implement digital data as a base for their own management and development (Lind og Raines, 2018).
In Norway, Bergen International Festival initiated a research project to curate the Fjords of Norway for an international audience, both digital and in-real-life (Hjemdahl, 2016). Based on conceptual models for open innovation, they invited a partnership of hotels, restaurants, art scenes and music venues, artists as well as a research team from a variety of disciplines to participate. The aim of the project called Norwegian Icons was to develop innovative attractions based on unique stories and concepts, that will reach new markets through new digital communication channels, based on sustainable business models and cooperation.
This paper will discuss approaches to, experiences from and lessons learned from the combined digital and real-life ethnography within this case study.