Ethnography Matters

 Editor’s note: This is the final post in Wendy Hsu‘s 4-part series, On Digital Ethnography. Wendy asks what does an ethnography beyond text and print look like? To answer this question, she calls on us to reconsider what counts as “ethnographic knowledge.” Wendy provides examples of collaborative multimedia projects that are just as “ethnographic” in nature as… Read More… Ethnography Beyond Text and Print: How the digital can transform ethnographic expressions

Editor’s Note: Tricia provides an excellent segue between last month’s “Ethnomining” Special Edition and this month’s on “Talking to Companies about Ethnography.” She offers further thoughts building on our collective discussion (perhaps bordering on obsession?) with the big data trend. With nuance she tackles and reinvents some of the terminology circulating in the various industries… Read More… Big Data Needs Thick Data

While ethnography generally draws on qualitative data, it does not not mean that quantitative approaches shouldn’t be employed in the research process. Combining the two leads to a “mixed-method approach” that can take various forms: data collection and analysis can be either separated or addressed together, and each of them can be used in service of the other. Of course, this isn’t new in academic circles and corporate ethnography but there seems to be a renewed interest lately in this topic…The large data sets created by people’s activity on digital devices has indeed led to a surge of “traces” from smartphone apps, computer programs and environmental sensors. Such information is currently expected to transform how we study human behavior and culture, with, as usual, utopian hopes, dystopian fears and *critical sighs* from pundits. Read More… April 2013: Ethnomining and the combination of qualitative & quantitative data

Tips for writing your post All posts should be written in an accessible language, free of academic and industry jargon, and in a first person voice.   It’s best to ask someone who isn’t familiar with your work or even the field to review your post. Keep in mind that our audience consists of ethnographers… Read More… Guest Contributor Guidelines

Editor’s Note: Unlike other posts that start off text or images, Wendy Hsu @WendyFHsu opens up her third post in her guest series on digital ethnography with sound. She wants us to click PLAY before reading on. It doesn’t matter if you don’t use sound in your fieldwork, you’ll still find this to be a… Read More… On Digital Ethnography, magnifying the materiality of culture (3 of 4)

Editor’s Note: Can ethnographers use software programs? Last month’s guest contributor, Wendy Hsu @WendyFHsu, says YES! In Part 1 of On Digital Ethnography, What do computers have to do with ethnography?, Wendy introduced her process of using computer programming software to collect quantitative data in her ethnographic research. She received a lot of great comments and suggestions… Read More… On Digital Ethnography: mapping as a mode of data discovery (2 of 4)

This month we celebrate Ethnographymatter’s first year with a bumper edition of features about ethnographic practice in the world, as well as some exciting news about the growth of our team! Tricia Wang writes a reflection of the past year at Ethnography Matters, covering some of the more remarkable discussions over the year as we’ve… Read More… Ethnozine: November 2012 (Anniversary) Edition

When Tricia asked me to contribute a series on Ethnography Matters, I thought that I would take this opportunity to bring together the notes on digital ethnography that I have collected over the last couple of years. I would like to push the boundaries of computational usage in ethnographic processes a bit here. I really want to expand the definition of digital ethnography beyond the use of computers, tablets, and smart phones as devices to interact with online communities, or to capture, transfer, and store field media.

In this three-part series, I am going to discuss how working with computational tools could widen the scope of ethnographic work and deepen our practice. I will stay mostly within the domain of data gathering in this first post. In the second post, I will talk about the process of field data interpreting and visualizing; and the last post, I will focus on how the digital may transform ethnographic narrative and argumentation. Read More… On Digital Ethnography, What do computers have to do with ethnography? (1 of 4)

Gabriella Coleman’s research on the enigmatic Anonymous network has provided unique insights and dispeled myths about the group. In a guest contribution this month, Coleman writes about tensions in her work and what it means to be implicated in “the dance between Anonymous and journalism.” Our other guest contributor, Cisco’s Mike Gotta, writes about rethinking… Read More… Ethnozine: October edition