[Air-L] Exercises for teaching digital ethnographic methods (remotely)

Tue Mar 17 05:37:01 PDT 2020

Dear all,

First the ideas shared so far, and then a reply to Annette 😊

Recommendations have included:

  1.  Jodi: trace ethnography http://stuartgeiger.com/papers/trace-ethnography-hicss-geiger-ribes.pdf
  2.  From Crystal:
     *   The exercises invite students to draw on their choice/knowledge of internet pop culture, which can be lighthearted and meta during this time.
     *   On paralanguage short films: https://wishcrys.com/paralanguage-short-film/
     *   On internet paralanguages: https://wishcrys.com/internet-paralanguages/
     *   On internet celebrity: https://wishcrys.com/internet-celebrity/
     *   This old but gold selfie syllabus put together by several AoIR members in The Selfies Research Network is a great resource: http://www.selfieresearchers.com/the-selfie-course/selfie-syllabus/
  3.  Evelina: presented fictive research cases for the students to discuss if the students taught the cases where ethical and how the students would go about to gather material in the most ethical way. Following the aoir research ethics guidelines. For reflection and not examination.
  4.  Jill: design an ethical research methodology for researching how people are using technology during the pandemic. Also, the Selfie Researchers and Deborah Lupton started a crowdsourced collection of resources for Doing Fieldwork in a Pandemic: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1clGjGABB2h2qbduTgfqribHmog9B6P0NvMgVuiHZCl8/edit?fbclid=IwAR3mwwrXMlKTMkJxjPtQaDaHJcTtLGSC49oupIChpSWI2_bnwOtCLolZ04w
  5.  Kristian: building on Jill's comment, online communities popping up everywhere focusing on corona and life in quarantine, everything from how to help each other to sharing memes. So your students could design a project for researching one of these ad hoc communities.
  6.  Annette:
     *   Two key questions I would be asking if I were doing this: What is the desired learning outcome for this 30-minute exercise? And will it fit into their current skillset?
     *   Consider, what do you really want them to *feel or experience* during these sessions? What can you do in a short session? Could have them do something that makes them think about research design in a more creative and ethical way. The outcome might be 'to raise questions,' rather than to 'build skill' or 'apply'. Suggested exercises:
        *   To get people to consider how much their own perspective matters in what they will see as 'the field,' or what they will notice in whatever they see as the field, I use an exercise called "write the room." The goal is to do three timed writing exercises with the verbal prompt, "write the room" and no further instruction. I disrupt their viewpoint in the second and third iteration in different ways so that they might understand the challenges of trying to understand culture in the first place. Hopefully, the exercise helps them appreciate the sensibilities underpinning a qualitative perspective. And helps them consider the power of observing, and the ethical responsibilities that could go along with this power. [I've written this up and am happy to share if it's interesting to you]
        *   To get people to think about ethics, I show or discuss a specific case and have them write a reflection essay in response to it, choosing one of the ethical guidelines from a reading like the AoIR ethics guidelines or an ethics article by one of our many AoIR members who write about ethics
        *   To get people to think about emic versus etic perspectives, I show a clip from Nightmare Before Christmas, when Jack the Pumpkin King is trying to describe the concept and feeling of Christmas to Halloween Town. And then, when he fails, he goes to his lab to dissect stuffed bears, analyze the chemical makeup of a Christmas ornament, and reads a book called "scientific method" to try to understand what makes Christmas so special (this only works with certain audiences, and in regions where Christmas is the big celebration)
        *   To get people to translate traditional ethnographic techniques to digital environments, I have them choose a typical technique X (interview, observe, participate, examine artifacts) and list what is desired from each of these activities, asking the question "why do we X in the first place?" What does X yield?". Then, taking the case of a specific app/platform, reverse engineer the "what is desired" into a set of research actions/activities that would have a similar yield and would fit the actual context of study. E.g., we do interviews to elicit. One thing we desire from interviews to hear information from people directly. Interviews give us an individual's perceptions, more than information of their actual behaviors. So interviews are good for learning how people feel or what they perceive. How would we achieve these goals in wechat? Twitter? ....

I can add other things to this last as they come.

Thanks for your points, Annette. For context, this is an additional class in their methods course, and they have already done 18 lectures and seminars on methods. So I believe that they should already have a decent background in qualitative research methods. I know that ideally this topic would be an entire semester, this should not be a cut and paste job, but this is the only time the department can give me it seems (and I have to submit my thesis in 3 weeks time). As far as I can tell, if I don't do this session the students won't have a session, and time is short.

During the session i aim to familiarise them with debates on digital ethics (your writing included), the importance of understanding the field (how censorship, mobility, surveillance, privacy and visibility work, boundedness and the territoriality of certain sites -> i'm a geographer), several principles to consider (based partly on Pink et al.), how the techniques they already have can be used in digitally centred research, introducing ideas of playfulness in the field (to understand the field) and then exploring several potential field sites (Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, Weibo, WeChat, Skype). I hope that this session can be more of a provocation, they should not be using it to create a research plan for their dissertations, that would not be possible in such a short time. It should provoke the students to consider what they will need to pay attention to and consider in any digitally centred or digitally active research project, and that 'going digital' is not simple, that one is not prepared for it just because one uses Facebook, and that digitally centred or active research needs to take into account many additional points.

After what you said, I'm extending the exercise to 45-60 minutes. It is part of a 2 hour session with time for feedback and Q&A in the last part of the session. I also have office hours, if necessary there may be follow up sessions with the students, but that is out of my hands.  I'm going to use some of these suggestions as suggested assignments and additional tasks, particularly ethical reflection, writing and analysis. I will share this to their programme convener, and hopefully we can do more to prepare the students.

Carwyn

________________________________
From: Annette Markham <amarkham at gmail.com>
Sent: 17 March 2020 08:39
To: Jill Walker Rettberg <Jill.Walker.Rettberg at uib.no>; Morris,CJ (pgr) <C.J.Morris at lse.ac.uk>; air-l at aoir.org <air-l at aoir.org>
Subject: Re: [Air-L] Exercises for teaching digital ethnographic methods (remotely)

I like the idea of focusing on current issues as Jill mentions, but in general, I think this would be difficult in a 30 minute exercise.  Maybe that could be built into the main lecture more than the exercise.... In any case, I think 30 minutes is too short for designing a study. And if I understand correctly, Carwyn, you're giving a single lecture on the topic, right? So how would they get feedback on their research design?

Two key questions I would be asking if I were doing this: What is the desired learning outcome for this 30-minute exercise? And will it fit into their current skillset?

Do you want them to understand the steps in designing a research project? (are they skilled at creating research design generally, so that they can translate this into whatever you're framing as 'digital?) Or do you want them to feel how tough it is to design a study in a short period of time? (cuz 30 minutes is super short). Or to review basic ethical principles?  Do you want them to practice some techniques? Or consider the size and scope of a possible study? These different goals require different setup.

In this situation, you  might ask yourself a different question: What do you really want them to *feel or experience* during this 30 minutes? If you don't know your audience, maybe you could have them do something that makes them think about research design in a more creative and ethical way. The outcome might be 'to raise questions,' rather than to 'build skill' or 'apply'. This is what I would do, but then again, I like exercises that are more provocative than anything else.

Anyway here are some exercises that take around 30 minutes that I do:

To get people to consider how much their own perspective matters in what they will see as 'the field,' or what they will notice in whatever they see as the field, I use an exercise called "write the room." The goal is to do three timed writing exercises with the verbal prompt, "write the room" and no further instruction. I disrupt their viewpoint in the second and third iteration in different ways so that they might understand the challenges of trying to understand culture in the first place. Hopefully, the exercise helps them appreciate the sensibilities underpinning a qualitative perspective. And helps them consider the power of observing, and the ethical responsibilities that could go along with this power. [I've written this up and am happy to share if it's interesting to you]

To get people to think about ethics, I show or discuss a specific case and have them write a reflection essay in response to it, choosing one of the ethical guidelines from a reading like the AoIR ethics guidelines or an ethics article by one of our many AoIR members who write about ethics

To get people to think about emic versus etic perspectives, I show a clip from Nightmare Before Christmas, when Jack the Pumpkin King is trying to describe the concept and feeling of Christmas to Halloween Town. And then, when he fails, he goes to his lab to dissect stuffed bears, analyze the chemical makeup of a Christmas ornament, and reads a book called "scientific method" to try to understand what makes Christmas so special (this only works with certain audiences, and in regions where Christmas is the big celebration)

To get people to translate traditional ethnographic techniques to digital environments, I have them choose a typical technique X (interview, observe, participate, examine artifacts) and list what is desired from each of these activities, asking the question "why do we X in the first place?" What does X yield?". Then, taking the case of a specific app/platform, reverse engineer the "what is desired" into a set of research actions/activities that would have a similar yield and would fit the actual context of study. E.g., we do interviews to elicit. One thing we desire from interviews to hear information from people directly. Interviews give us an individual's perceptions, more than information of their actual behaviors. So interviews are good for learning how people feel or what they perceive. How would we achieve these goals in wechat? Twitter? ....

I'm happy to talk more about these,

Annette

On 3/17/20, 08:22, "Air-L on behalf of Jill Walker Rettberg" <air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org on behalf of Jill.Walker.Rettberg at uib.no> wrote:

    What about asking them to design an ethical research methodology for researching how people are using technology during the pandemic, or something like that? I think they're more likely to be able to focus on coursework if it's directly relevant to the worries and anxieties of their current digital life, and this might even help them feel slightly more in control of their situation. And maybe some of them will keep going and do really interesting research?

    Other resources:

    Deborah Lupton started a crowdsourced collection of resources for Doing Fieldwork in a Pandemic: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1clGjGABB2h2qbduTgfqribHmog9B6P0NvMgVuiHZCl8/edit?fbclid=IwAR3mwwrXMlKTMkJxjPtQaDaHJcTtLGSC49oupIChpSWI2_bnwOtCLolZ04w

    The Selfie Research Network set up an online syllabus with lesson plans that would mostly work online from home. It was developed in 2014 but I think you could still use some of this.
    http://www.selfieresearchers.com/the-selfie-course/

    Jill

    On 17/03/2020, 00:16, "Air-L on behalf of Morris,CJ (pgr)" <air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org on behalf of C.J.Morris at lse.ac.uk> wrote:

        Hi all,

        I'm now putting together lectures on digital qualitative/ethnographic/field methods for my departments undergraduate and postgraduate students. This seems like one of the few ways they will be able to safely do some of their assignments. I'll be giving this lecture via Zoom, a digital classroom.

        The current lecture design is: Intro -> My research background (digital ethnography of WeChat/Weibo activism) -> Understanding the digital field -> Ethics -> Q&A -> Doing ethnography in... (FB, WhatsApp, Weibo, Twitter, WeChat, Douyin/TikTok, Reddit, Insta, hashtags) -> being playful in the field -> exercise -> feedback -> final Q&A.

        I'm putting together a 30 minute exercise, but i was wondering if anyone had examples of successful digital, ethno/qualitative research methods exercises they've done. Particularly those that reflect on ethics, research design and methods.

        I'm currently planning on going basic, asking them putting together the research plan of a digitally centred study. This is open to change, but if I continue with this, does anyone have any recommendations for topics that they could do the plan for? I'd rather assign topics to the groups to help focus them in the short time period we have.

        Carwyn Morris
        PhD Candidate in Human Geography and Urban Studies
        Department of Geography and Environment
        London School of Economics
        Co-organiser LSE China Reading Group
        Tweeting @carwyn<https://twitter.com/carwyn>
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