Digital Methods for Ethnography: Analytical Concepts for Ethnographers Exploring Social Media Environments
Abstract
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...
... Their findings indicated a largely fragmented yet highly-clustered structure in the network of Facebook groups, adding new insights into the literature on political participation and civic engagements in the mediated society. Moreover, social media configures new environments for ethnographers in the digital age (Caliandro, 2017). In particular, "netnography" is an emerging method to enrich ethnography for the analysis of culture with social media, corresponding to the challenges of increasing mobility and digitalization in online ethnographic research . ...
... Hallett and Barber, 2014;Kavanagh, Miscione and Ennis, 2019;Lange, Lenglet and Seyfert, 2019). Second, exploring how these technologies impact research, for example: affording communication between geographically spread researchers working on the same project (Raento, Oulasvirta and Eagle, 2009); facilitating the presentation and dissemination of research results (Cheek and Øby, 2018); and addressing the challenge of how to define, conceptualize and map new social forms (Caliandro, 2018). ...
Technology's impact on conducting organizational research is axiomatic. Studies on the topic focus on how digital technologies are used to collect data and how people use or interact with technology in online spaces. Although it is generally agreed that boundaries between online and offline realms are becoming increasingly blurred, few studies exist on the impact of digital technologies on the work and life of organizational ethno-graphers. Our contribution lies in alerting new and experienced ethnographers engaging in hybrid ethnography-a developing methodology encompassing both face-to-face and online interactions-to how boundaries may blur between space and time, professional and personal, participation and observation, and what is real and what isn't. We emphasize the importance of anticipating relational shifts-understanding how new forms of sociality emerge when digital and physical interactions are an integral part of the field; and we examine subsequent advantages and challenges. To illustrate, we offer examples from a hybrid ethnography conducted in an investigative police force, where smartphones and WhatsApp are embedded in work and consequently became an integral part of the research.
... They were all over the age of 18 and gave their consent to participate in an interview on the topic of violence in Neve Shanan's public space. (c) Online ethnography (Airoldi, 2018;Caliandro, 2018) and content analysis were performed on social media pages, profiles, and groups dedicated to struggles in STA from November 2017 to February 2020. The content included videos (N = 72), images, posts and group discussions (N = 210) of the STA Needs a Fix Facebook group and the public profiles of "Sheffi Paz," the leader of the SLF, and "Otef Tahana Merkazit." ...
Recent studies demonstrate how violence, social media, and protest intertwine. This article complements this body of knowledge and indicates how social media enables new modes of small-scale protest events and how it is being used by right-wing and middle-class groups to influence urban politics. The article conceptualizes local-digital activism as a particular form of protest that is based on a hybrid framework of action that entangles physical actions in public space with virtual acts of dissent, creating embodied digital activism in specific locales. The key arguments are threefold: (1) local–digital activism initiates a particular framework of action that is embedded in digital culture and can be used by different ideological groups. (2) The approach to place in this type of dissent is central and manifold, with physical and virtual spaces codefining one another. (3) Triggering violent encounters and using violent representations in place is strategic and intentional, a means to expand visibility on digital platforms. Empirically the article analyses two groups in South Tel Aviv, presenting their protest strategies and tactical use of place, digitization, violence, and the body in creating the iconography of the “other in the place.” The study is based on geographic and ethnographic work, in-depth interviews (N = 24) with various actors, and social media content analysis (videos = 72, posts = 210). The final discussion addresses the characteristics of local-digital activism and its role in urban political struggles and offers paths for future research.
... In this study we used a retrospective digital ethnographic approach [28], which involved collection of behavioural data of participants in their natural real life settings without the use of questionnaires, whereby what they say and what they do can be vastly different [29]. The ethnographic approach was done online. ...
Background
Globally, there has been a decline in breastfeeding rates. This has resulted in increased infant mortality due to infectious diseases and inappropriate feeding practices. The aggressive marketing of breastmilk substitutes (BMS) by manufacturers has contributed, in part, to these declines. With the progressive use of social media, marketing has shifted from traditional methods to the use of influencers, who command a huge following on their social media accounts and influence the daily decisions of their followers. This study investigates the infant feeding methods and associated products promoted by South African influencers in relation to crying and sleeping and their followers’ responses.
Methods
This was a retrospective study, which used a mixed methods digital ethnographic approach to analyse posts related to infant feeding methods that were made by seven South African Instagram influencers between the period of January 2018 to December 2020. Framing analysis was used to analyse qualitative data and quantitative data were analysed descriptively.
Results
From the 62 posts that were analysed, 27 were sponsored advertisements (some violating local regulations) and 35 posts promoted breastfeeding. The 18,333 follower comments and 918,299 likes in response to the posts were also analysed. We found that influencers presented BMS products as a solution for a child who cries a lot and has trouble sleeping. BMS were framed as helpful for children who are seemingly always hungry and dissatisfied with breastmilk alone. The study also found that some influencers promoted breastfeeding on their Instagram pages. Unlike BMS posts, breastfeeding posts were not sponsored. With a few exceptions, followers tended to support and reinforce the framing of influencers.
Conclusion
Stiffer regulations should be enforced against companies using influencers to promote infant formula and other BMS products, with proactive monitoring of social media. Professionals giving advice contrary to the guidelines from the WHO should be reported according to Regulation 991 and made accountable. Proactive engagement with Instagram influencers to promote breastfeeding should be considered.
The term ethnography comes from the Greek ethnos (folk, the people, cultures) and gráphein (to write, to describe), and therefore, its literal meaning refers to the description of cultures. The current perspectives of ethnographic research are widening to digital contexts for several interrelated motivations: decolonization, globalization, information and communication technologies (ICTs). The classical loci of digital ethnography is represented by online communities, delimited digital spaces of social aggregation around a given domain of interest. However, in the last years, these privileged sites are complemented or sometimes substituted by social media sites and metadata in digital ethnographic research. As a result, new sites for ethnographic fieldwork are emerging fostering new types of ethnographic practice. The difference in digital ethnographic fields imply an internally diverse array of approaches. The chapter starts from the origins of ethnographic research to investigate its digital developments, methodological challenges, and variety of approach.
The contemporary political landscape of the Italian extreme right is characterized by the presence of two main movements: CasaPound Italia (CPI) and Forza Nuova (FN). These two movements are often referred to alternately and synonymously as extreme right or neofascism. The Russia-Ukraine war shattered this area of political radicalism and brought out the relevance of cultural and political circles such as National Bolshevism and Eurasianism. Adopting Zeev Sternhell's (Sternhell, Z. (1983 Sternhell, Z. (1983). Ni droite ni gauche. Editions du Seuil. [Google Scholar]). Ni droite ni gauche. Editions du Seuil; Sternhell, Z. (1993 Strernhell, Z. (1993). Nascita dell’ideologia fascista. Baldini & Castoldi. [Google Scholar]). Nascita dell’ideologia fascista. Baldini & Castoldi; Sternhell, Z. (1997 Sternhell, Z. (1997). La Destra rivoluzionaria. Le origini francesi del fascismo 1885-1914. Corbaccio. [Google Scholar]). La Destra rivoluzionaria. Le origini francesi del fascismo 1885-1914. Corbaccio) definition of fascist ideology as a reference, it is important to understand the distinction between the extreme right and neofascism after the ideological upheavals produced by the conflict and its geopolitical implications. Through a qualitative multimethodological approach composed of thematic and political analysis and using open-source archival data it emerges that the war has split the political area of the Italian far right/neofascism into three clusters: the pro-Western and Atlanticist extreme right, nostalgic and pro-Putin neofascism, and an ideological evolving area composed of National Bolshevists and Eurasianists.
Penggunaan sistem informasi teknologi (ICT) dalam suatu proyek akan sangat membantu kolaborasi dari para stakeholder internal persuahaan tersebut. Free Open-Source Software (FOSS) merupakan sebuah software yang dapat digunakan secara gratis oleh para penggunanya. Penelitian ini akan menganalisa Google Spreadsheet yang merupakan salah satu bentuk FOSS yang diberikan oleh provider Google. PT Intan Prima Kalorindo (Kalorindo), perusahaan manufaktur Heat Exchanger dan Pressure Vessel yang berlokasi di Jalan Tekno Raya B1-F, Kawasan Industri Jababeka III, Cikarang, Kabupaten Bekasi, Jawa Barat, Indonesia, merupakan perusahaan berskala besar. Dalam komunikasi internal di Kalorindo menggunakan Google Spreadsheet untuk beberapa hal sebagai berikut: (1) merencanakan pembelian barang dan jasa; (2) monitoring pembelian barang; (3) monitoring cost control proyek; (4) monitoring jadwal pelaksanaan proyek; dan (5) monitoring keuangan proyek. Penelitian dilakukan dengan pendekatan kualitatif dengan metode sebagai berikut: (1) Studi literatur digunakan sebagai kerangka teori terkait pemanfaatan sistem informasi (Google Spreadsheet) dalam manajemen prooyek; (2) Online ethnography, dan (3) Observasi dilakukan dalam kurun waktu tiga bulan untuk melihat bagaimana interaksi, komunikasi dan kolaborasi yang terjadi dalam pelaksanaan pemanfaatan FOSS. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukan bahwa FOSS dalam hal ini Google Spreadsheet dapat menjadi solusi yang sangat kompetitif dari sisi biaya untuk melakukan interaksi, komunikasi dan kolaborasi secara efektif dan efisien.
Social Media and Society brings together a range of scholars working at the intersection of discourse studies, digital media, and society. It is meant to respond to changes in discourse technologies, i.e. the techno-discursive dynamic of social media discourses. The book critically engages with the digital dynamics of representations around discourses of identity, politics, and culture. Other than its topical focus on highly pertinent discourses, the book aspires to offer some fresh insights into the theory, methods, and implementation of CDS in digital environments. The book can be viewed as part of the developing research framework of Social Media Critical Discourse Studies which seeks to integrate the impact of new mediation technologies on discursive meaning-making with its critical contextualisation. In addition to its strongly global outlook, the book incorporates a wide range of research perspectives including CDA, sociolinguistics, political discourse studies, media and technology, discourse theory, popular culture, feminism etc.
The Covid-19 pandemic and the intensified digitalization of life-worlds has especially affected younger generations, also in Austria. In this paper, we approach digital practices of 43 young adults between 16 and 18 years in a frame-analytical perspective to understand forms of politicization during the Covid-19 pandemic. We analyze memes in order to make sense of youth’s life-worlds during the pandemic. The memes were created by youth as a result of a workshop series with the researchers. Our research shows that memes have provided a means for engaging and dealing digitally and emotionally with Covid-19-related problems. We show that the respective youth address educational, social and democratic issues by problematizing ‘homeschooling as overburdening’, a ‘lack of planning’ and ‘social divisions’. Moreover, meme-creation offers a perspective on how youth express and create a ‘sense of community’ through digital practices. During the pandemic youth have increasingly come to understand and represent themselves as a group with shared experiences in digital space, going along with a positioning as ‘younger generation’ vis-à-vis older generations. We argue that the fact that the pandemic has affected youth heavily and the fact that they do not see their issues and needs represented by political representatives or media shows the potential and limits of digital spaces for younger generations to connect (politically).
In Digital Methods, Richard Rogers proposes a methodological outlook for social and cultural scholarly research on the Web that seeks to move Internet research beyond the study of online culture. It is not a toolkit for Internet research, or operating instructions for a software package; it deals with broader questions. How can we study social media to learn something about society rather than about social media use? Rogers proposes repurposing Web-native techniques for research into cultural change and societal conditions. We can learn to reapply such “methods of the medium” as crawling and crowd sourcing, PageRank and similar algorithms, tag clouds and other visualizations; we can learn how they handle hits, likes, tags, date stamps, and other Web-native objects. By “thinking along” with devices and the objects they handle, digital research methods can follow the evolving methods of the medium.
Rogers uses this new methodological outlook to examine such topics as the findings of inquiries into 9/11 search results, the recognition of climate change skeptics by climate-change-related Web sites, and the censorship of the Iranian Web. With Digital Methods, Rogers introduces a new vision and method for Internet research and at the same time applies them to the Web's objects of study, from tiny particles (hyperlinks) to large masses (social media).
Digital methods have previously been described as ‘a term that seeks to capture a recent development in Internet-related research, summarized as approaches to the web as data set’. Using this as a starting point, this paper positions digital media methods as a methodological approach that incorporates internet-based data, while also including other communicative and social media platforms such as Instagram, Vine, Twitter, giffy, Periscope, and Facebook amongst others. Digital media methods also extends to database research, data generated by sensors, drones and autonomous automobiles. Contemporary research engaging digital media methods is built upon the ‘computational turn’ where ‘computational approaches is increasingly reflected across a number of disciplines, including the arts, humanities and social sciences, which use technologies to shift the critical ground of their concepts and theories’. As media and communication scholars, our ‘research is increasingly being mediated through digital technology… affecting both the epistemologies and ontologies that underlie a research program’. This paper highlights three significant points of departure for digital media methods in the media and communication discipline: the increasing need for typologies and ontologies in social media research; the significance of mapping public issues; and the difficulties researchers face as text-based communication shifts to visually oriented platforms.
Exploring the new professional scenes in digital and freelance knowledge, this innovative book provides an account of the subjects and cultures that pertain to knowledge work in the aftermath of the creative class frenzy. Including a broad spectrum of empirical projects, The Reputation Economy documents the rise of freelancing and digital professions and argues about the central role held by reputation within this context, offering a comprehensive interpretation of the digital transformation of knowledge work. The book shows how digital technologies are not simply intermediating productive and organizational processes, allowing new ways for supply and demand to meet, but actually enable the diffusion of cultural conceptions of work and value that promise to become the new standard of the industry.
This paper explores the four difficulties of actor-network theory: the words "actor," "network," "theory," and the hyphen. The originality of ANT lies in the fact that this not so much an alternative social theory as it is a method of unravelling the activities of the actor who constructs their own world. By focusing on operations of structuring and summation rather than on concepts of "actor" and "network," we are able to show that the tension between the macro and the micro levels in the social sciences is largely artificial. ANT allows us to overcome this tension by channeling our attention away from objects and towards circulations instead. According to the author, the main contribution of this theory to the social sciences is the transformation of the social from the surface, territory, or region of reality into circulation. In the latter half of the paper, the author discusses the potential of ANT as a symmetrical anthropology of the modern and the defining structure of modernity. This implies accounting for the emergence of the ontological opposition between "out there" and "in there" (the nature and the subject), and (the deletion of) political and theological interests. The difference between ANT and many kinds of reflection on modernity, post-, hyper-, pre-, and antimodernity, is simply that it took to task simultaneously all of the components of what could be called the modernist predicament. According to the author, ANT is not a theory of the social any more than it is a theory of the subject, or a theory of God, or a theory of nature. It is a theory of the space or fluids circulating in a non-modern situation. In the conclusion of the article, the author offers an optimistic take on the potential of developing ANT further and giving it new forms.
Social media play a prominent role in mediating issues of public concern, not only providing the stage on which public debates play out but also shaping their topics and dynamics. Building on and extending existing approaches to both issue mapping and social media analysis, this article explores ways of accounting for popular media practices and the special case of ‘born digital’ sociocultural controversies. We present a case study of the GamerGate controversy with a particular focus on a spike in activity associated with a 2015 Law and Order: SVU episode about gender-based violence and harassment in games culture that was widely interpreted as being based on events associated with GamerGate. The case highlights the importance and challenges of accounting for the cultural dynamics of digital media within and across platforms.
Twitter’s hashtag functionality is now used for a very wide variety of purposes, from covering crises and other breaking news events through gathering an instant community around shared media texts (such as sporting events and TV broadcasts) to signalling emotive states from amusement to despair. These divergent uses of the hashtag are increasingly recognised in the literature, with attention paid especially to the ability for hashtags to facilitate the creation of ad hoc or hashtag publics. A more comprehensive understanding of these different uses of hashtags has yet to be developed, however.
Previous research has explored the potential for a systematic analysis of the quantitative metrics that could be generated from processing a series of hashtag datasets. Such research found, for example, that crisis-related hashtags exhibited a significantly larger incidence of retweets and tweets containing URLs than hashtags relating to televised events, and on this basis hypothesised that the information-seeking and -sharing behaviours of Twitter users in such different contexts were substantially divergent.
This article updates such study and their methodology by examining the communicative metrics of a considerably larger and more diverse number of hashtag datasets, compiled over the past five years. This provides an opportunity both to confirm earlier findings, as well as to explore whether hashtag use practices may have shifted subsequently as Twitter’s userbase has developed further; it also enables the identification of further hashtag types beyond the “crisis” and “mainstream media event” types outlined to date. The article also explores the presence of such patterns beyond recognised hashtags, by incorporating an analysis of a number of keyword-based datasets.
This large-scale, comparative approach contributes towards the establishment of a more comprehensive typology of hashtags and their publics, and the metrics it describes will also be able to be used to classify new hashtags emerging in the future. In turn, this may enable researchers to develop systems for automatically distinguishing newly trending topics into a number of event types, which may be useful for example for the automatic detection of acute crises and other breaking news events.