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Mara Williams

Vectors Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular - 3 views

vectors.usc.edu

journal presentation week9 beautiful design flash

shared by Mara Williams on 24 Apr 12 - Cached
  • Mara Williams on 24 Apr 12
     
    Vectors is a beautiful journal of culture and technology. It pushes its contributors to present research in innovative ways. Not every piece is ethnographic, but it may inspire us to present our research in visually stunning ways. This would be great to consider in week 9.
John Fenn

Methods for Shaping Society | DMLcentral - 1 views

dmlcentral.net/...methods-shaping-society

methods digital read this week9

shared by John Fenn on 08 May 12 - No Cached
  • Research methods are routinely understood as objective techniques for getting to know the world. Yet they may be more influential and socially significant than this, particularly as more digital methods are being developed and deployed. So what, too, do digital methods do?
    • John Fenn
      John Fenn on 21 May 12
       
      post focused on 'digital media and learning' field, but how might these questions apply to "ethnography"?
  • However, underpinning the technicality of methods is the assumption that they are able to capture and represent the world just as it is. Methods are understood rather like a photographic device that can capture, freeze-frame and reproduce a facsimile of reality. As researchers, we can say we've done a good job if our methods have been up to the job of capturing a picture of an objective reality as it really is—or at least pretty accurately so.
  • But much the same can be said of anthropological ethnographers returning from fieldwork. Their fieldnotes, photographs, dictaphone recordings, transcripts and video data are much like the neuroscientist's CAT and PET scans. They represent a reality—a human brain, a culture, whatever—that has been recorded and made presentable enough for interpretation. But are research methods really so objective? Or do they do other things?
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • It is that our research methods may in some important ways fabricate the very things we want to observe.
  • Methods are not neutral or innocent tools but necessarily construct, shape, configure, frame and make up the social worlds they study—methods help create society.
  • in 18th and 19th century map-making and census-taking, as well as popular contemporary methods such as sample surveys and focus groups, and the emergence of new digital methods in the 21st century.
    • John Fenn
      John Fenn on 21 May 12
       
      implication/application for this line of inquiry re: digital ethnography (across the many manifestations we've encountered thus far...)? Also, how do methods of "analysis" figure in to this conversation?
    • Mara Williams
      Mara Williams on 29 May 12
       
      One way into this may be to carry out the author's exercise on the subject of the focus group (social, able to make choices, able to be influenced, likes sandwiches) on the subject of digital research. The piles of ideological baggage from the offline world are still in place - but what changes online? I'm really struggling with this one - maybe it's the water I'm swimming in - but I'm finding it difficult to describe (with any degree of texture) my online activity as separate from offline life.
  • Such details demonstrate the importance of recognizing the social life of methods. These are not neutral tools but politically charged instruments.
  • Methods are also social, however, because they in turn help to shape that social world—or, as it's put in the social life of methods program, methodologically speaking “what you see is what you get.”
  • Important questions are raised for research in digital media and learning by these insights. Newer forms of digital methods are now being developed and deployed that will enable researchers to make data on learning in new kinds of ways.
    • John Fenn
      John Fenn on 21 May 12
       
      To the point of questions/applicability around 'digital ethnography'...
  • open source social analytics are all beginning to change the ways in which learning can be tracked, recorded, visualized, patterned, documented and presented
  • Is this a big deal? If methods allow us to know more, then doesn't that mean we can intervene more effectively to improve learning? Isn't making new social worlds an admirable aim? Maybe so
    • John Fenn
      John Fenn on 21 May 12
       
      the ethical dilema...and not necessarily a 'new' one when it comes to ethnographic work; but what changes with the "digital"?
  • Perhaps the key point to be made about many such digital methods is that they generate transactional data without the awareness or intervention of research subjects—we are being aggregated as research data based on our transactions online without even thinking about it.
  • Digital media and learning research traces learning processes as they occur in new digital and networked spaces where they are inseparable from transactional data.
  • Yet one risk, as we have seen, is that the rise of digital methods has begun to emphasize transactional data over human participation in research
    • John Fenn
      John Fenn on 21 May 12
       
      Is this where "ethnographic" attention or impulse can fit?
    • Mara Williams
      Mara Williams on 29 May 12
       
      That seems to be the argument - though it could be clearer. Transactional material != social and human activity. Perhaps an integrated approach that combines the transactional traces with stories from "actual" humans.
  • Mara Williams on 29 May 12
     
    I really like this piece! I'm not super familiar with DML as a field, but the author's attention to the world-making capabilities (and not even capabilities - it's built in or "politically preloaded") of research methods. The post provides a clear defense against those who would argue that research is just objectively recording the world. At the same time, it doesn't slip into a poststructuralist wormhole about meaning. There's an attention to politics here that 's fruitful [Ah! but politics in general.. What are this author's projects' politics? What departmental/ disciplinary political fights shape the ground on which DML research takes place?]
Ed Parker

Mapping the Social - 11 views

This is quite an amazing development, and only the tip of the iceberg when considering the wide array of mash-up possibilities that social graphs provide. While this project deals with place - che...

mapping product visual

started by Rosalynn Rothstein on 15 May 12 1 follow-up, last by Ed Parker on 11 Jun 12
John Fenn

Rhizome | Mapping the Social - 1 views

rhizome.org/...mapping-social

week9

shared by John Fenn on 21 May 12 - No Cached
  • Livehood uses the data of over 18 million foursquare check-ins to map both geographic distance of frequented venues as well as plotting its ‘social distance’, or ‘the degree of overlap in the people that check-in to them’
    • John Fenn
      John Fenn on 21 May 12
       
      an approach to visual analysis that accounts for physical movement & social relationships...a possibility of 'digital ethnography'? any predecessors re: tools or analog approaches?
John Fenn

yEd - Graph Editor - 1 views

www.yworks.com/...products_yed_about.html

tools visualization graph

shared by John Fenn on 29 May 12 - Cached
  • John Fenn on 29 May 12
     
    yEd is a powerful desktop application that can be used to quickly and effectively generate high-quality diagrams. Create diagrams manually, or import your external data for analysis. Our automatic layout algorithms arrange even large data sets with just the press of a button.
Aylie B

Guides - Source: An OpenNews project - 1 views

source.opennews.org/...guides

citizen journalism mapping tutorials data visualization

shared by Aylie B on 14 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Aylie B on 14 Apr 14
     
    Wow! poked around just a little bit - great open-source tutorials on accessing census data, representing data in maps, creating news apps, coding, as well as some more manifesto-y pieces on new directions! "Source Guides are collections of tutorials, project discussions, and advice on topics of interest to developers and interactive designers in newsrooms. Is there a Guide topic missing that you'd like to see here?"
David Martin

Many Eyes : Network Diagram - 0 views

www-958.ibm.com/...Network_Diagram.html

shared by David Martin on 24 Apr 14 - No Cached
    • David Martin
      David Martin on 24 Apr 14
       
      This site can be used to create visual diagrams of networks. I haven't used it myself, but those of you who are interested in any kind of network analysis using digital tools should check it out. 
Erin Zysett

About The Film - 0 views

www.thephotoleaguefilm.com/...about-the-film

visual ethnography

shared by Erin Zysett on 24 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Erin Zysett on 24 Apr 14
     
    ORDINARY MIRACLES: THE PHOTO LEAGUE'S NEW YORK is a feature-length documentary film which tells the story of the rise and politically motivated fall of the Photo League, (1936-1951) which for fifteen years served as the center of the documentary movement in American photography at a time when the camera was held to be, in James Agee's words, "the central instrument of our time."
mikecorr

visualcomplexity.com | A visual exploration on mapping complex networks - 1 views

www.visualcomplexity.com/vc

media digital culture

shared by mikecorr on 27 Apr 14 - Cached
  • mikecorr on 27 Apr 14
     
    Another source for data illustration.
flrdorothy

אשר סבידסנקי צלם | Asher Svidensky Photography - 1 views

www.svidensky.com/post.aspx

photojournalism ethics representation anthropology

shared by flrdorothy on 18 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • flrdorothy on 18 Apr 14
     
    This is the site of the photographer from the BBC News piece on "A 13-year-old eagle huntress in Mongolia." His own account is completely different from the BBC article. He is not, as BBC portrayed him, an ethnographer who stumbled onto a cultural shift in gendered activities-he is a storyteller who went looking for an unusual story, and made it happen. "I had gone looking for my eagle huntress. . .I was amazed by her comfort and ease as she began handling the grand eagle for the first time in her life." I have the same question I asked on the bookmark for the BBC article; why was it important to the BBC to represent this story as ethnography?
  • ...2 more comments...
  • Kyle McDaniel on 18 Apr 14
     
    I am not familiar with Svidensky's work so thanks for passing this along. Regarding the story of the eagle huntress: it's clear that many of the photographer's images are "posed" or, at least, were made during the "magic hour." What are the implications for this type of "portraiture?" Some of the images are supposedly "candid" (and some not), but I would question the degree to which Svidensky directed his informant's position/direction for the camera. Assuming the photographer's purpose was documentation, are there overarching ethical implications for this type of visual storytelling?
  • emknott on 23 Apr 14
     
    I think perhaps, I read it differently. In the article he uses phrases like: " I also photographed him during sunset, on horseback, proudly holding on to his golden eagle."--This reads to me like he knows that it's posed and he isn't making any excuses for it. "I tried coming up with new ways of photographing the eagle hunters." This is when he talking about previous documentation that had been done. "photography session" Again, I read this as the photos being obviously posed. But that's just out I read it. If the article had been lacking phrases like this, then I would have to question the ethical implications.
  • Kyle McDaniel on 24 Apr 14
     
    Agreed - and even without the quotes, a casual observer could tell that these images are posed. However, I think portraiture-as-documentary photography raises some intriguing methodological questions/concerns. Considering the original piece was published through a (well-respected) international media organization, my guess is that some interesting conversations occurred during editorial meetings regarding the nature of Svidensky's work. Maybe this example points to the blurring lines between traditional news photography and pictures made for ethnographic purposes?
  • emknott on 24 Apr 14
     
    Quite possibly. And if that is the case, it is certainly evident in the two contrasting articles we have here. But I also wonder if we're not watching a paradigm shift to the photo-essay style that Svidensky is making use of. With the rising popularity of sites like Buzzfeed, I wonder if--in order to bring more interest to his work--he's utilizing that same style in hopes of being more "readable" for the masses. What will be interesting, though, is if we see a similar shift to the photo-essay from the sites that push traditional news photography.
John Fenn

New Left Project | Articles | Feminist Music Worlds - Riot Grrrl, Ladyfest and Rock Cam... - 1 views

www.newleftproject.org/...dyfest_and_rock_camp_for_girls

music worlds feminist research tools networks visualization mapping

shared by John Fenn on 22 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Kyle McDaniel on 23 Apr 14
  • Shannon East on 24 Apr 14
     
    Thank you for sharing this! This is right up my alley in alignment with my research. This article is really helpful to compare other forms and locations where collective identity is shaped through culture and music and where social change can occur. "But perhaps Rock Camp for Girls is managing to challenge the status quo from a very early stage by getting young girls involved in positive creative activities and helping to build confidence and self-worth. Understanding the social networks of feminist music worlds can help minimise stress and improve the collaborative activist experience benefiting the local participants and a wider transnational audience by sharing lessons learned by organisers, participants and performers within a wider music based community." -https://diigo.com/01s7f5
John Fenn

Ushahidi Products - 0 views

ushahidi.com/products

tools media ushahidi opensource data visualization mapping

shared by John Fenn on 01 May 14 - No Cached
  • John Fenn on 01 May 14
     
    "Products for democratizing information, increasing transparency and lowering barriers to sharing stories."
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