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Digital Methods for Ethnography: Analytical Concepts for Ethnographers Exploring Social Media Environments

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The aim of this article is to introduce some analytical concepts suitable for ethnographers dealing with social media environments. As a result of the growth of social media, the Internet structure has become a very complex, fluid, and fragmented space. Within this space, it is not always possible to consider the “classical” online community as the privileged field site for the ethnographer, in which s/he immerses him/herself. Differently, taking inspiration from some methodological principles of the Digital Methods paradigm, I suggest that the main task for the ethnographer moving across social media environments should not be exclusively that of identifying an online community to delve into but of mapping the practices through which Internet users and digital devices structure social formations around a focal object (e.g., a brand). In order to support the ethnographer in the mapping of social formations within social media environments, I propose five analytical concepts: community, public, crowd, self...
... Empirically, we combine some principles of netnographic sensibility (Reid & Duffy, 2018) with the digital method approach (Caliandro, 2018;Caliandro & Gandini, 2017;Rogers, 2013) to study pro-gun YouTubers in Brazil -an under-investigated context dominated by conservative and illiberal audiences (Ulver, 2022), which regularly attack institutions (e.g. traditional media, NGOs, left-wing political parties, politicians) and progressive groups (e.g. ...
... This study was conducted by combining some principles of netnographic sensibility (Reid & Duffy, 2018) with the digital methods approach (Caliandro, 2018;Caliandro & Gandini, 2017;Rogers, 2013). We started by exploring several social media platforms -YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, before deciding which was more appropriate for our research purposes. ...
... While on the other platforms the content about guns was characterised by the massive presence of news, journalistic discourses, and polarised views about rights and social consequences of individuals owning and carrying guns, on YouTube it was configured as a consumption collective formed by SMI, who created channels dedicated to the topic of guns, and their followers, who expressed favourable worldviews and affectivities about guns and clear oppositional affectivities and discourses about those with whom they disagree. Thus, to follow the medium (Rogers, 2013) and the natives (Caliandro, 2018), we adopted YouTube channels as the ideal space to study online consumer gatherings with an oppositional social identity. Importantly, we only noticed the counterpublic nature of these consumer gatherings after the initial rounds of data analysis (i.e. ...
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There is growing concern about the proliferation of radical groups and violent content on social media platforms such as YouTube. These platforms present unique capacities to promote radicalised content, as they allow the flourishing of digital creators who amass large audiences and communicate their ideas in a compelling video format. Notwithstanding, consumer research has not yet provided a conceptualisation of such antagonistic online consumer gatherings in the ephemeral social media context. We investigate this phenomenon by combining netnographic sensibility with digital methods to explore the case of pro-gun YouTubers in Brazil. We propose the notion of online consumer counterpublics, which are online consumer collectives socio-technically shaped and promoted by social media influencers and their audiences on social media platforms based on strong oppositional discourses, ideas, affectivities, and values associated with a consumption topic, and who develop a compelling counter-hegemonic social identity.
... Se implementó una estrategia metodológica fundamentada en la etnografía virtual (Caliandro 2018), comenzando con entrevistas en profundidad. Posteriormente, se realizaron dos observaciones de sesiones en línea de los estudiantes; la primera radicó en cómo buscan información educativa en entornos virtuales, y la segunda, por igual pero al explorar los resultados a partir del diseño de una secuencia didáctica. ...
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A raíz de la pandemia por SARS-CoV-2, la exposición a los medios digitales se ha incrementado en la educación superior, lo que acentúa la dificultad de los estudiantes para reconocer, evaluar y utilizar la información que obtienen en la web. Cabe destacar que, producto del aislamiento, se requiere de nuevas formas de investigar, sintetizar e interpretar la información de internet. Estas suelen desarrollarse al leer en internet, no solo con la alfabetización digital sino con la alfabetización informacional. Por lo tanto, el objetivo es problematizar el uso de información académica en entornos mediados por la tecnología, específicamente, analizar cómo los estudiantes de Ciencias de la Educación utilizan la información y cuáles son sus estrategias en entornos mediados por la tecnología. Para esto, se realizó una reflexión interrelacionada de dos escuelas de pensamiento: los nuevos estudios de literacidad desde el enfoque sociocultural y, la segunda, la teoría de los saberes digitales en la educación desde un enfoque de capital tecnológico y hábitus digital. Para comprender mejor cómo los futuros docentes interpretan la teoría y utilizan la información en línea, la etnografía virtual, aportó la metodología y la técnica para analizar estos fenómenos educativos. La estrategia metodológica se implementó bajo un contexto virtual, primeramente, a través de entrevistas en profundidad. Después, se efectuaron dos observaciones de las sesiones en línea que realizaron los estudiantes, la primera al momento de buscar información educativa en entornos virtuales y la repetición de la observación permitió interpretar los resultados a partir del diseño de una secuencia didáctica. Así pues, se observa cómo el futuro docente genera estrategias propias de acceso a la información y cómo estas convergen en la planeación de una secuencia didáctica. Los resultados indican, con base en las entrevistas y las observaciones, que el manejo de información académica incluye la práctica de lectura y escritura, pero, previamente, hay un fenómeno mayor que son las habilidades digitales informacionales. Por consiguiente, existe la necesidad de discutir y promover estrategias renovadas para el desarrollo de las habilidades informacionales desde el campo disciplinar y el nivel educativo donde se desempeñarán los futuros docentes.
... We understand case-study as the lens, strategy, and research design for an empirical inquiry that «investigates a phenomenon in its real-life context» (Priya, 2021, p. 94). Since this is an 'exploratory'case study, we used «multiple methods of data collection» (Priya, 2021, p. 94), including ethnographic digital explorations (Caliandro, 2018) that is, online press reviews -to identify key actors. ...
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