Tag Archives: *edition page*

Co-Designing with Machines


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  • This month’s Ethnography Matters features writers from both the technical and humanities side who think about machines and humans in a symbiotic way. These are practitioners who haven’t fallen for the machines-vs-human binary. They have pushed the boundaries of their work to imagine what a world where computers act more like humans would look like. Above all, these are people who have embraced the complexity of where we’re going, and are encouraging us to adopt a new lens to interact with that complexity.

The future of designing autonomous systems will involve ethnographers

The future of designing autonomous systems will involve ethnographers

An Engineering Anthropologist: Why tech companies need to hire software developers with ethnographic skills

An Engineering Anthropologist: Why tech companies need to hire software developers with ethnographic skills

The human-side of artificial intelligence and machine learning

The human-side of artificial intelligence and machine learning

The hidden story of how metrics are being used in courtrooms and newsrooms to make more decisions

The hidden story of how metrics are being used in courtrooms and newsrooms to make more decisions

Why do brands lose their chill? How bots, algorithms, and humans can work together on social media

Why do brands lose their chill? How bots, algorithms, and humans can work together on social media

dreamcatcher stem

Mindful Algorithms: the new role of the designer in generative design

Lou and Cee Cee prepare for fieldwork in the future: a world where robots conduct ethnography

Lou and Cee Cee prepare for fieldwork in the future: a world where robots conduct ethnography

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The Person in the (Big) Data


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  • As researchers involved in studying life in an environment suffused by data, we are all (to at least some extent) asking and answering questions about how we employ digital methods in our research practice. The increasing reliance on natively digital methods is part of what David Berry calls the “computational turn” in the social sciences, and what industry researchers recognize as moves towards Big Data and the rise of Data Science.

Five Mixed Methods for Research in the (Big) Data Age

Five Mixed Methods for Research in the (Big) Data Age

Trace Interviews Step-By-Step

Trace Interviews Step-By-Step

Taking Stock

Taking Stock

Democratic Reflection: Evaluating Real-Time Citizen Responses to Media Content

Democratic Reflection: Evaluating Real-Time Citizen Responses to Media Content

Two conversation maps illustrating the different participation models found in a forum and on Twitter

Algorithmic Intelligence? Reconstructing Citizenship through Digital Methods

Thinking with selfies

Thinking with selfies

Trace ethnography: a retrospective

Trace ethnography: a retrospective

Datalogical Systems and Us

Datalogical Systems and Us

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Post Disciplinary Ethnography


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  • ‘Jargon free’ text is the name of the game according to the Ethnography Matters style guide, so titling the introduction to this edition ‘Post Disciplinary Ethnography’ – a bit of a mouthful if ever there was one – seems slightly counter intuitive. Before this post is finished I will invoke a range of other, less-than-straightforward, locutions and idioms. For instance I will have to touch upon the mysterious ‘HighWire’ and the lofty-sounding concept of the ‘method assemblage’. Thankfully, even if the words themselves are unfamiliar, I believe that with some simple explanations we can cut right to the point.

Lemon Difficult: Building a Strategic Speculation Consultancy

Lemon Difficult: Building a Strategic Speculation Consultancy

Don't panic: the smart city is here!

Don’t panic: the smart city is here!

Everybody's an Ethnographer!

Everybody’s an Ethnographer!

What's the matter with Ethnography?

What’s the matter with Ethnography?

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Tools We Use Edition


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Virtual Identity


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  • While working on this month’s edition on virtual identity, I’ve been reading Life After Death, Damien Echols’ memoir of a ruptured life. At 18, Echols was convicted along with two other men of the murders of three children, allegedly in a Satanic ritual. It wasn’t until 2011, after Echols had spent 18 years facing execution on Death Row, that he and the other two members of the “West Memphis Three” were released in the wake of new DNA evidence and critical media attention. One horror — the murder of three innocent second graders — was followed by another, in which three teenagers were convicted of those murders based on little more than the crime of liking Metallica [1]. Unfortunately stories like Echols’ aren’t that surprising… Identity gets intertwined with attention — how we see ourselves, and how others see (or don’t see) us.

Why Weird Twitter

Why Weird Twitter

"The @Adderall_RX Girl": Pharmaceutical self-branding and identity in social media

“The @Adderall_RX Girl”: Pharmaceutical self-branding and identity in social media

Onymous, pseudonymous, neither or both?

Onymous, pseudonymous, neither or both?

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Talking to Companies


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  • I wanted to focus my own contribution to this month’s special edition (about “how to talk to companies about ethnography”) on presentation formats. That research findings will ultimately be delivered or presented is a given, but the particular format varies and seems often to be a matter of the conventions within particular organizational or research cultures. I’ve participated in ethnographic projects within the corporate sector. I’ve done a bit of consulting work for an NGO. The bulk of my career I’ve spent in Academia doing ethnographic work as most conventionally defined – culminating in the writing of an 80,000 word ethnographic monograph (which was text by-and-large with just a few black and white photos). On this basis, I’ve passed through a few different micro-worlds where different presentation practices prevailed.

Big Data Needs Thick Data

Big Data Needs Thick Data

Interviewing Users by Steve Portigal

Interviewing Users by Steve Portigal

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Student Ethnography


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  • I remember the first time I adopted an ethnographic persona – very tentatively and with a great deal of trepidation. I’d applied for a job as an ethnographer with Ushahidi after graduating from my Masters degree and was miraculously accepted – miraculous because most ethnographer jobs require at least a PhD, not to mention loads of ethnographic experience. The stars were aligned… or were they? […] Ethnography doesn’t accord with the usual tenor of development projects and we faced a number of challenges that, looking back on it now, were bound to happen; challenges that, in the end, had really good results but meant that things weren’t exactly plain sailing en route.

Technology and Fieldwork: Ethnographic quandaries

Technology and Fieldwork: Ethnographic quandaries

Christine Hine on virtual ethnography’s E3 Internet

Christine Hine on virtual ethnography’s E3 Internet

Digital Visual Anthropology: Envisaging the field

Digital Visual Anthropology: Envisaging the field

Glorious Backfires in Digital Ethnography: Becoming an Urban Explorer

Glorious Backfires in Digital Ethnography: Becoming an Urban Explorer

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Stories to Action


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  • Welcome to the Stories to Action edition of Ethnography Matters! Over the last few decades, organizations have learned to use the tools and approaches of ethnography to inform product and service development.[1] But the idea of gaining context-specific insights about users before a product or service is engineered is still relatively new. This month, we want to show that the ethnographic process is more than just an insight-generating machine. As ethnographers, we gather stories, analyze them, and identify the relevant insights. But, we do so much more.

Play to Plan: mobile games to value street-level trade

Play to Plan: mobile games to value street-level trade

The Chickens and Goats of Uganda's Internet

The Chickens and Goats of Uganda’s Internet

Performing Success: When mythologies about a technology dominate first impressions

Performing Success: When mythologies about a technology dominate first impressions

Isolated vs overlapping narratives: the story of an AFD

Isolated vs overlapping narratives: the story of an AFD

Reaching Those Beyond Big Data

Reaching Those Beyond Big Data

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Speculative Ethnography


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  • This month’s theme is about the relationships between ethnography and fiction. It is not necessarily something that we explored a lot here at Ethnography Matters, which is why it seemed an interesting topic for this September edition. Another reason to address this now is because of recent experimental ways of “doing ethnography” (e.g. the work by Ellis & Bochner or Denzin), as well as curious interdisciplinary work at the cross-roads of design, science-fiction and ethnography (e.g. design fiction).

What Would Wallace Write? (if he were an ethnographer)

What Would Wallace Write? (if he were an ethnographer)

Ethnography and Speculative Fiction

Ethnography and Speculative Fiction

Ethnographies from the Future: What can ethnographers learn from science fiction and speculative design?

Ethnographies from the Future: What can ethnographers learn from science fiction and speculative design?

Towards Fantastic Ethnography and Speculative Design

Towards Fantastic Ethnography and Speculative Design

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Openness Edition


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  • On Saturday the 12th of January, almost a month ago, I woke to news of Aaron Swartz’s death the previous day. In the days that followed, I experienced the mixed emotions that accompany such horrific moments: sadness for him and the pain he must have gone through in struggling with depression and anxiety, anger at those who had waged an exaggerated legal campaign against him, uncertainty as I posted about his death on Facebook and felt like I was trying to claim some part of him and his story, and finally resolution that I needed to clarify my own policy on open access.

The ethics of openness: How informed is "informed consent"?

The ethics of openness: How informed is “informed consent”?

Designing for Stories: Working with Homeless Youth in Boyle Heights

Designing for Stories: Working with Homeless Youth in Boyle Heights

YouTube “video tags” as an open survey tool

YouTube “video tags” as an open survey tool

On Legitimacy, Place and the Anthropology of the Internet

On Legitimacy, Place and the Anthropology of the Internet

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