Ethnography, they argue, provides thick, specific, contextualized understanding, which can complement and sometimes correct the findings of the more quantitative, formalized methods that dominate in tech companies.
it is also useful for understanding the processes through which technologies get built
I know some of you are familiar with this site - some helpful video tutorials on a number of useful software programs, including Final Cut Pro and Photoshop.
The Interest Group for Digital Practices in History and Ethnography will address the data concerns of history as a research domain and those of the ethnographic disciplines (including cultural anthropology, folklore studies, ethnomusicology, interpretive sociology, and science and technology studies). This group proposes to build a medium sized tent (smaller than the whole of the digital humanities or of the social sciences, larger than a particular discipline) to explore strategies and frameworks for the collaborative care and use of research data of diverse types.
This is an interesting case study on how ethnographic methods are being used by arts and cultural groups to help make their case to funders.
"There is growing pressure to provide concrete evidence of impact to funders and institutional and civic leaders. And yet, numbers and metrics rarely capture the complex individual transformation and collective social change at the heart of many impactful community-based arts and humanities-based endeavors. Stories and qualitative data more readily meet the challenge but are often viewed as "soft" evidence. How can we reap the valuable content- and context-rich learning that qualitative approaches to assessment afford, while enhancing the credibility of qualitative evidence toward more effective case making?"
This is a video of one of Taylor's discussions on her research regarding the computer game Everquest. I thought this might be useful to anybody who found our discussion on "lurkers", ethics, and the gaming world interesting.
TL Taylor is a world-renowned video game researcher, who spends a majority of her investigations viewing the interactions within a digital world. She researches topics like: how players choose to represent themselves in contrast to their physical appearance in reality, and even going so far as to see how and why relationships occur in a video game setting that are strong enough to get players to marry each other without ever meeting in person.
An organization that uses an internet platform to assist planning agencies and consultants in allowing citizens to participate in decision-making efforts.
Just to piggy-back off of my last post - I read this piece by Eve Tuck recently and I think it's really powerful. In her letter, Tuck calls on communities, researchers to reconsider the long-term impact of "damage-centered research" - research that seeks to document peoples' pain and brokenness to hold those in power accountable for their oppression." Speaking to Witness' approach, this quote was particularly salient: "It is a powerful idea to think of all of us as litigators, putting the world on trial, but does it actually work? Do the material and political wins come through? And, most importantly, are the wins worth the long- term costs of thinking of ourselves as damaged?"