[Air-L] Join the "Digital ethnography: tools, ethics, futures" seminar series 2024 (hybrid)

[Annette Markham]

Hello AoIR friends!

Announcing the second session in our new 2024 Digital Ethnography seminar series at Utrecht University (in person and also online). Can’t attend this one? We’ll have four more sessions this year with an exciting lineup of invited guests. Read about the whole series<https://www.rmes.nl/rmes-digital-ethnography-seminar-series-2024-tools-ethics-futures/> and sign up. Open to local, national, and international participants, any level (we’re also giving ECTS credit for PhD or MA students who want to attend at least 4 sessions).

Session #2 (of 6): Digital Ethnography’s Ethical Dilemmas: Doing Sensitive or Antagonistic Fieldwork
Featured Guests: Dr. Nermin Elsherif and Dr. Marissa Willcox
Date: May 28, 2024
Time: 14:30 – 16:00 (CEST)
In-Person Location: Utrecht, the Netherlands, Kromme Nieuwegracht 20, 3512 HH Utrecht (room  T.0.05; “Grote Zaal”)
Or Online: Teams link provided after registration
Registration: Free, but registration required. Sign up here<https://www.rmes.nl/rmes-digital-ethnography-seminar-with-dr-nermin-elsherif-and-dr-marissa-willcox/>
(coffee and tea at the outset, sponsored beverages and snacks at a nearby café/pub afterwards)

Session #2 Abstract: In contexts or communities that are precarious or antagonistic, how do digital ethnographers frame and conduct their research with a feminist ethics of care? How do they address social inequalities and risk for themselves and their participants, while also offering their participants a space to tell their stories in meaningful ways? This session takes two types of situations as examples, to reflect on some theoretical, methodological, and ethical challenges: Dr. Nermin Elsherif has studied politically conservative Facebook communities in post 2013 Egypt, where questions arise such as: how can we study political ideologies that drastically go against our own values without being patronizing or condescending? Dr. Marissa Willcox has worked with queer and feminist artists on Instagram that are known public figures or influencers with broad followings, which raised questions like: What types of ethical accountability and responsibility become apparent when working with marginalized and targeted people who are also public figures? In this talk, Willcox and Elsherif both address through different lenses, the combined elements of risk, care and community that go along with the building of a digital ethnographic study. In conversation, they ask; What creative digital ethnographic tools can we build to hold space for an empathetic critical reflection with our participants? How can we do research with marginalised or conservative communities that engages the participants while also allowing for rigorous, ethical and critical academic discussion?

Want some reading material before attending? See here<https://www.rmes.nl/rmes-digital-ethnography-seminar-with-dr-nermin-elsherif-and-dr-marissa-willcox/>

Featured Experts:
Nermin Elsherif is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Media & Culture Studies at Utrecht University. She is a critical geographer, designer, and an urban researcher, with a range of experiences between academia and the heritage practice since 2012. Her counter mapping collaborations with communities foregrounds question about what ‘remembering together’ means in the age of social media, and the kinds of subjectivities that are produced through this memory work.

Marissa Willcox is a Digital Ethnographer and feminist theorist. She works at the University of Amsterdam in the Media Studies Department as a Lecturer and Researcher. A former member of DERC, the Digital Ethnography Research Centre in Melbourne, Willcox has experimented with various techniques for engaging in the hybrid, networked and ever-shifting ‘field’ of Instagram. An important strand of her research research looks at how feminist, queer, non binary and POC artists use Instagram to create belonging for marginalised groups.

About the Series:
Digital ethnography is a research approach that applies anthropological sensibilities and tools to study digital technologies. Since digital ethnography occurs across many fields, it takes on different priorities and modalities. It extends from an ethnographic epistemology that privileges immersive and emergent qualitative methods, and applies techniques and ethical principles to explore the experiential aspects of socio-technical systems.

Regardless of focus or approach, digital ethnographers are drawn together because they find something compelling in combining the two concepts of “digital” and “ethnography” in their practice.

We invite interested persons to join our series of six seminars in 2024, to explore the power, potential, challenges, and ethics of digital ethnography as a lens. Each event in the series is a 90-minute session (hybrid format) that focuses on a specific topic and highlights the work of 1-2 practiced and well-regarded digital ethnographers. The speakers will spend the first 30 minutes talking with the series facilitator, Annette Markham, about their own approach or responding to pre-selected questions, which will then prompt the direction for wider discussion among participants.

You can attend these sessions in person at Utrecht University or online. Invitations are open for anyone to attend, and there is no fee for participating, but pre-registration is required.

The series is facilitated by Professor Annette Markham<https://annettemarkham.com/>, recent co-Director of the Digital Ethnography Research Centre at RMIT University in Melbourne Australia, and newly appointed Chair Professor of Media Literacy and Public Engagement<https://www.uu.nl/medewerkers/ANMarkham> at Utrecht University.

Of course, ping me if you have questions,

Annette

Annette N. Markham (she/her) | Chair Professor of Media [Future Digital] Literacies and Public Engagement | Utrecht University | Department of Media and Culture Studies<https://www.uu.nl/en/organisation/department-of-media-and-culture-studies> | Faculty of Humanities | Muntstraat 2a, 3512 EV Utrecht | Room 2.04 | a.n.markham at uu.nl<mailto:a.n.markham at uu.nl> | www.uu.nl/staff/anmarkham<http://www.uu.nl/staff/anmarkham> | professional website:https://annettemarkham.com<https://annettemarkham.com/>