ethnographic juggler

Ireland being the theme, I wanted a powerful but not overpowering green background and I wanted the image of the stone chairs to illustrate the Arts polymath that Yeats was. Those found, I made the decision to take the route: poetic extract, photo then commentary in that order. I was aware as I did so that the commentary part would be too thin for my satisfaction, due to time and project size constraints. I decided the main thing I could hope for was to get the project adequate to the procedural needs rather than a completed study. In short, I wanted to come away at the end and know that I understand how the basics of online ethnography function, which parameters need to be taken into account, how my text reporting can be framed and which media seem to me to be appropriate for such a project. Concerning the suitable media I expect to learn a lot from the contributions of my peers. Looking at them is my next pleasurable task and then I can complete the summary by commenting on them.

closely observing my peers

We always start by brainstorming our sub-themes (if necessary with some added by me if they seem unbalanced in the weighting of sub-topics). Then each of us prepares presentations on our chosen theme(s), using any medium, although power-point often predominates. The talks are accompanied by a skeleton handout and are recorded to be placed alongside the visuals into our private English wiki. We also watch and discuss suitable films suggested by any one of us.

Discussion follows in class and in the wiki on a discussion board and feedback is provided formally by me but also in peer form. Anyone may add to the wiki (or amend it) at any time. Generally most of the early contributions come from me but as they master the subject, from them. Parallel to this we do text analysis work about once per week with a follow-up homework. For Ireland we decided that we would each do two presentations: one political and one cultural. My cultural presentation was on the poetry of Yeats and we analyzed three poems together: ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’, ‘Easter 1916′ and ‘Sailing to Byzantium’. This then is the stage on which my research idea was born.

Yeats Statue, Sligo

The origin of my mini-research idea was to take the name ‘William Butler Yeats’, the great Irish dramatist and Poet, and paste it into flickr to see what materialized. What appeared was a link which used the anniversary of Yeat’s birth as a stimulus to get people to choose a photograph to illustrate a poetry extract taken from his poems. The verse selection thus became the stimulus for the visual selection. There were too many offerings for me to handle in the time so I chose some of them. Some disqualified themselves because the pictures were no longer available. Others because I exercised my ethnographic right to act as a filter. The resultant fifteen verses and photos I put into power-point following broadly the pattern:

1. verse  input
2. visual input
3. commentary key points

The commentary questions I chose to answer were:

1. Which cultural aspects of the chosen poetic extract does the picture highlight?
2. Which cultural aspects of the extract appear to be NOT reflected in the picture?

I decided to concern myself more with content than poetic form in my work.

The ethnographic principles which I tried to follow were:

Hine in Virtual Ethnography Revisted (2004)

• to investigate the ways in which the use of the Internet becomes socially meaningful
• interactive media such as the internet can be understood as both culture and cultural artifact
• virtual ethnography is a process pf intermittent engagement, rather than long term immersion
• virtual ethnography is necessarily partial. Our accounts can be based on strategic relevance to particular research questions rather than faithful representations of objective realities
• intensive engagement with mediated interaction adds an important reflexive dimension to ethnography
• virtual ethnography is ultimately, an adaptive ethnography which sets out to suit itself to the conditions in which it finds itself.

Creswell (2007):

• the clear identification of a culture-sharing group
• the specification of cultural themes that will be examined in the light of this culture -sharing group
• an explanation of how the culture-sharing group works
• a self-disclosure and reflexivity by the researcher about her or his position in the research

Further, I posed myself the following questions at the outset:

Is this a good place to study this cultural theme?

I decided it was because of the visual and textual elements and because I started with Yeats and Ireland in mind. The weaknesses were that for almost the whole time the quotations and pictures had to speak for themselves with only a visit to the flickr sites of those whose works were being studied as a guide.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

Can the individuals we see interacting here be described as a culture-sharing group?

Clearly so; they identify themselves with Yeats by participating and with flickr by being members.

What might be the main themes emerging from the investigation of this group and how does one go about identifying them?

The majority of the group are pros in flickr which means they post substantially and regularly and clearly from the limited comments some of them know one another’s real identities behind the flickr screen name mask.

What level of involvement is to be justifiably expected of the researcher?

My involvement can only be post-event because many of the postings happened four years ago.

How will the participants’ perspectives be given an appropriate voice?

Their platform is flickr and they have selected in writing and visually. I reflect upon what I observe which is what they present.

What are the ethical issues at stake?

pondering on what is to be included

Before publishing such research on a wide scale, I would give my comments to the participants to respond to which would greatly enhance interactivity and introduce a further deep structure to it. I think that because the publication of flickr is public, they have placed themselves in the public domain. On a larger scale, copyright checks would need to be run on the Yeats’ quotes and on the pictures chosen.

How does the personal experience of the researcher come to bear on the analysis and the proposed interpretation?

Without a deep interest in and knowledge of the poetry and poet’s background I think I would have been unwise to attempt such a topic.

How transferable to different sites is an approach which might work here?

In terms of different poets, poems or songs; highly transferable. Verse and pictures alongside are highly popular in New Age materials and one of the best examples of its early use is Blake’s poetry and engravings – without ethnographic commentary of course. Any photo sharing site or a site such as Animoto or You Tube would lend itself to ethnographic analysis as does cinema but it is far more difficult if the pictures are not still images.

Blake's Tyger manuscript and engraving

This is the slide-show I produced:
William Butler Yeats And Flickr

Technically I faced difficulties posting my slide-show. It was rejected by Wordpress as being too large at 3.09MB. So I transferred it to Slideshare and this was successful except that I was only able to embed the link not the slide-show itself and the hyperlinks at the top of some slides were lost. When I find the time (and the tips from my colleagues) I will try to correct that.

I printed the pictures and laminated them. Then I numbered the quotations separately and will initiate a discussion in my 13th class and in our class wiki about the appropriateness of the pictures to the quotes. I think this will prove a fitting conclusion to our work on Yeats. At the very end they can discuss my slide-show and my comments.