This week I have really used my lifestream to collate sources related to the ethnography project. It has proved invaluable for this purpose because it has been a very busy week workwise, and I haven’t had a great deal of time to do the reading. The lifestream has enabled me to save the links and revisit them in my hotel room when I have time to go through them at my leisure. It also allows me to follow hyperlinks without getting too lost!
So my lifestream this week began with some basic research into what ethnography means and how it differs from anthropology.
“The Objective of anthropology, I believe is to seek a generous, comparative but nevertheless critical understanding of human beings and knowing in the one world we all inhabit. The objective of ethnography is to describe the lives of people other than ourselves, with an accuracy and sensitivity honed by detailed observation and prolonged first-hand experience. “Tim Ingold “Anthropolgy is not ethnography” Aug 2008
According to Tim Ingold anthropology is a much broader topic than ethnography, with ethnography being a more focused beam of light shed onto an element of individual existence rather than the entire culture.
I also enjoyed the work of Michael Wesch at Kansas Sate University – there were some very usefull resources made available on youtube and using NetVibes which was a resource I had never seen before!
Face to Face research
Another issue that I have been examining is how we can undertake research into digital culture when it cannot be undertaken face to face. Does the anonymous nature of the internet and the lack of physical contact between participants mean that members of the digital communities are more inclined to lie than if they met researchers face to face? Hine asked the question; can non face to face interactions be considered authentic when the researcher cannot confirm the details communicated to them? This also made me ask the question; are the participants lying, or is there a different view of authenticity when the world inhabited is a digital (and largely unauthentic) environment? This is a question that I am still asking myself and I think it is a big one!
Therefore can textual research studies really be considered valid in the same way that field research was considered academically viable?
“Traditionally, oral interactions have been foremost for ethnographers, and texts have taken a somewhat secondary role as cultural products, worthy of study only as far as they reveal something about the oral settings in which culture resides.” Hine The Virtual Objects of Ethnography 2000
However the existence of the world wide web & the virtual world mean that the idea of the spoken word representing a more authentic statement of reality has to change. Therefore ethnographers will need to look at text as neither truth or lie, but should “draw on their own ‘socialized competence’ in reading and writing to interpret them as culturally situated cultural artefact” (Hine 2000). Therefore in our own research we should consider the value of text but not immediately ‘believe everything we read’!
Tags: ethnography, lifestream
“is there a different view of authenticity when the world inhabited is a digital (and largely unauthentic) environment?”
I agree that this is a really important question – as I commented to Andy, though (http://digitalculture-ed.net/andym/2009/10/20/etnography-and-digital-communities/#comment-33), I find virtual ethnography a really good excuse for thinking about how ethnography and research in general positions itself in relation to authenticity. Do we ever have reason to claim ‘authenticity’? What does that mean? These are the sorts of questions I especially like…
I was thinking about this on the way home in the car this evening. How ‘authentic’ am I in real life, let alone in the VR. In reality I am partner, sister, daughter, widow, friend, collegue, teacher, crafter, reader, smart arse… I interact in a different way depending on which of these heads I am wearing, like a real life Worzel Gummage.
So if I do this in real life how can I complain if people only represent portions of themselves to me in the VR?