INFO 272. Qualitative Research Methods

Outline  The Field Site  Challenges to the Early Model  Multi-Sited Ethnography  Virtual Ethnography  Examples

Selecting a ‘Field Site’  Where can you position yourself as participant-observer? (logistics)  What about the research topic is spatial?

Spatial Aspects of Field Work: Field sites are discovered One distinct, bounded site the site = focus of ‘whole culture’ total enumeration of the population Ethnography ala Malinowski s

Challenges: ambiguous spatial terrain  cyberspace  borderlands and transnational communities  global institutions (the UN)  the mass media  non-places (airports) [Auge]

Challenges: urban settings  complex, heterogeneous, overlapping cultures [Hannerz]  “the challenge of foregrounding”

Challenges: media and technology  ‘double articulation’ [Silverstone] one can study the television (as a consumed object, it’s place in the home, it’s shape/size/style) and the television program  Internet can been studied as both culture and as cultural artifact [Hine]

Approaches: Multi-Sited Ethnography  studying the local as embedded in the global [Marcus and Fischer]  studying the global system itself [Marcus]  fieldsite need not be static and bounded  “follow the object” “follow the people” “follow the metaphor” to create coherence

Approaches: Virtual Ethnography  CMC vs. Online Ethnographers  Cyberspace – “profoundly anti-spatial…You cannot say where it is or describe its memorable shape and proportions…But you can find things in it without knowing where they are” [Mitchell 1996]  Questioning the nature of ‘dwelling’ and ‘participation’

Approaches: Online + Offline  Can you study someone online without studying them offline? (authenticity)  Theories of ‘cyberculture’ as detached and self- contained

Studying a Part of the Whole  Selecting an ‘entry point’  How does the part relate to the whole?  What position do you take within the whole and how do you justify that position?

Couldry: ‘passing ethnographies’ questions: - what is the role of media in the legitimation of wider power structures and inequalities? - how are media institutions and media people thought about? what are our beliefs about media power and how do they contribute to the legitimation of that power? what position do you take within the whole and why? - moments where the process of legitimating media power was made explicit, visible - exceptional sites

Couldry: ‘passing ethnographies’ questions: - what is the role of media in the legitimation of wider power structures and inequalities? - how are media institutions and media people thought about? what are our beliefs about media power and how do they contribute to the legitimation of that power? method: - participant-observation - leisure sites (Granada Studios Tour) - protest sites - interviews - media clippings about the protest

Turkle: ‘Life on the screen’ Questions: - how has the computer shaped our ways of thinking and feeling? - how does a nascent ‘culture of simulation’ affect our ideas about mind, body, self and machine? - how is the way we create and experience identity shifting? What position do you take within the whole and why: - the culture of simulation as part of a larger cultural context - the eroding of boundaries between real and virtual

Turkle: ‘Life on the screen’ Questions: - how has the computer shaped our ways of thinking and feeling? - how does a nascent ‘culture of simulation’ affect our ideas about mind, body, self and machine? - how is the way we create and experience identity shifting? method: - ethnographic component - participation in a virtual world - clinical component - offline, in-person interviews with participants

Ethnography without borders  The field site is constructed (not discovered)  studying a ‘part’ of the whole  studying multiple sites  studying movement

In Conclusion 1. Before: Ask yourself – where is the social process carried out? where is it especially visible? where is it contested? 2. To Start: Seeking entry-points (not sites) 3. Follow people, things, themes to other sites (iterative approach) 4. To Stop: With meaning saturation re-situate yourself or quit

Thursday 1. No more fieldwork 2. Start preparing your fieldnotes to submit to me (due next Thursday) 3. Get some large notecards and make up 20 cards with notes (hone in on engagements with technology in public)