Re: [Air-L] Virtual Ethnography and CyberAnthropology
Dear AIR-ers - This continues as one of the best topics in AIR in recent years (for me, anyway). I forgot to mention two people who influenced the approach I took in my thesis. Such as the one offered by Phil Howard: (In fact I have thanked him personally with 'saving' my thesis - all credit to him and no blame!) Howard, P. N. (2002). "Network ethnography and the hypermedia organization: new media, new organizations, new methods." New Media & Society 4(4): 550-74.
From his paper: "Social scientists are increasingly interested in innovative organizational forms made possible with new media, known as epistemic communities, knowledge networks, or communities of practice, depending on the discipline. Some organizational forms can be difficult to study qualitatively because human, social, cultural, or symbolic capital is transmitted over significant distances with technologies that do not carry the full range of human expression that an ethnographer or participant observer hopes to experience. Whereas qualitative methods render rich description of human interaction, they can be unwieldy for studying complex formal and informal organizations that operate over great distances and through new media. Whereas social network analysis renders an overarching sketch of interaction, it will fail to capture detail on incommensurate yet meaningful relationships. Using social network analysis to justify case selection for ethnography, I propose 'network ethnography' as a synergistic research design for the study of the organizational forms built around new media."
Second great approach was provided by Jo Tacchi, Greg Hearn, and their team. This is specifically a method, and while I haven't read the book, what I know of Tacchi and her colleagues, it's an approach well worth considering if one is framing the research towards action research. Tacchi, J., G. Hearn, et al. (2004). Ethnographic Action Research: A Method for Implementing and Evaluating New Media Technologies. Information and Communication Technology: Recasting Development. K. Prasad. Delhi, BR Publishing Corporation. Apologies if these have been mentioned previously, I haven't read the whole string yet. Denise N. Rall, PhD. Internationalisation Project Officer Southern Cross University, Lismore NSW 2480 AUSTRALIA Office: Room T2.17, +61 (0)2 6620 3577 Mobile 0438 233 344 http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/esm/staff/pages/drall/ Presenter, Internet Research 9.0, 15-18 October 2008, Copenhagen, DK Make Yahoo!7 your homepage and win a trip to the Quiksilver Pro. Find out more
Dear Colleagues, Please find below a call for papers for M/C - issue theme 'obsolete'. For more information on this issue, email obsolete@journal.media-culture.org.au, or contact the editors directly. More information on m/c can be found at the m/c website http://media-culture.org.au 'obsolete' "Obsolescence is the leading product of our national infatuation with technology." -- Jonathan Franzen, in “Scavenging” Since digital technologies have emerged as a focus for media and cultural studies, so too has an overwhelming concern with the new. New media scholarship often veers between utopian, pessimistic and “revolutionary” accounts of the “newest” media and practices. But newness is relative, and must be seen in relation to its opposite, obsolescence. Specific technologies’ passages to obsolescence are not sudden, but stealthy and gradual – Sterne and other scholars point out that obsolescence comes after extended periods where newness fades in the historical life of technologies, and the obsolete can be redeemed. Obsolescence is usually reversible, as nostalgia industries work to resuscitate the cultural value of faded technologies (for example, seeking out the “analogue” as a marker of distinction). Obsolescence can mean the supersession of the technological capacities of a technology – as in the replacement of analogue phone networks – or the phasing out of particular uses of a technology – as in the earliest videogames’ demonstration to audiences of the potential of television beyond its uses as a channel for broadcasting. Observing persistent use of obsolescent technologies can reveal social divides, or determined resistance to the onward march of technology. In a world increasingly preoccupied with environmental concerns, technologies’ structural obsolescence has broader ramifications. This issue of M/C Journal seeks accounts of how old technologies survive, how and why people preserve or make do with them, and tales of the shadings and gradations between the latest thing and yesterday’s gadget, between retro-chic and junk. The concept of the obsolete raises a range of questions. In aesthetics: how do technologies and texts pass from the sublime “new”, to the ugliness of obsolescence, to the recovered beauty of the collectable and the antique. In policy terms, what of the large numbers of people struggling on with obsolete communication technologies, on obsolete networks? Is policy and scholarship biased to early adopters? More critically, how does the constant contemporary production of obsolescence square with an ethics of waste? Does the distinction struggled over by early adopters reveal something about other divides – the city and the country, class, gender? Details * Article deadline: 8 May 2009 * Release date: 1 July 2009 * Editors: Jason Jacobs and Jason Wilson Please submit articles through this Website. Send any enquiries to obsolete@journal.media-culture.org.au. Dr Jason Wilson Lecturer in Digital Media School of Social Sciences, Media and Communication University of Wollongong NSW, Australia, 2515 e jasonw@uow.edu.au t (+61) (0)2 42213088 skype jason_a_w http://twitter.com/jason_a_w http://delicious.com/jason_a_w http://gatewatching.org Make Yahoo!7 your homepage and win a trip to the Quiksilver Pro. Find out more
participants (2)
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Denise N. Rall -
Jason Wilson