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

[Morris,CJ (pgr)]

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>