1st Edition

The Routledge Companion to Digital Ethnography

    520 Pages
    by Routledge

    520 Pages
    by Routledge

    With the increase of digital and networked media in everyday life, researchers have increasingly turned their gaze to the symbolic and cultural elements of technologies. From studying online game communities, locative and social media to YouTube and mobile media, ethnographic approaches to digital and networked media have helped to elucidate the dynamic cultural and social dimensions of media practice. The Routledge Companion to Digital Ethnography provides an authoritative, up-to-date, intellectually broad, and conceptually cutting-edge guide to this emergent and diverse area.

    Features include:







    • a comprehensive history of computers and digitization in anthropology;






    • exploration of various ethnographic methods in the context of digital tools and network relations;






    • consideration of social networking and communication technologies on a local and global scale;






    • in-depth analyses of different interfaces in ethnography, from mobile technologies to digital archives.


    Part I – Debating Digital Ethnography





    1. Computers in/and anthropology: the poetics and politics of digitization





    2. From virtual ethnography to the embedded, embodied, everyday Internet





    3. Vectors for fieldwork: computational thinking and new modes of ethnography





    4. A performative digital ethnography: data, design, and speculation





    5. The fieldsite as a network: a strategy for locating ethnographic research





    6. Remote ethnography: studying digital politics in Spain and Indonesia from afar





    7. Mixing it: digital ethnography and online research methods—a tale of two global digital music genres





    Part II – Relationships





    8. Small places turned inside out: social networking in small communities





    9. "Doing family" at a distance: transnational family practices in polymedia environments





    10. Researching death online





    11. Relational labor, fans, and collaborations in professional rock climbing



    Part III – Visibility and Voice





    12. "Our media"? Microblogging and the elusiveness of voice in China





    13. Participatory complications in interactive, video-sharing environments





    14. Influencer extravaganza: a decade of commercial "lifestyle" microcelebrities in Singapore





    15. Nah Leavin’ Trinidad: the place of digital music production among amateur musicians in Trinidad





    Part IV – Place and Co-Presence





    16. Locating emerging media: ethnographic reflections on culture, selfhood, and place





    17. Making "ournet not the Internet": an ethnography of homebrew high-tech practices in suburban Australia





    18. Locative mobile media and the development of unplanned, fleeting encounters with pseudonymous strangers, and virtual acqu

    Biography

    Larissa Hjorth is Distinguished Professor and Director of HDR in the College of Design and Social Context at RMIT University and was co-founding (with Professor Heather Horst) Director of RMIT’s Digital Ethnography Research Centre (DERC).



    Heather Horst is Professor in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University and Director, Research Partnerships in the College of Design and Social Context at RMIT University. She was the director of DERC from 2012-2015.



    Anne Galloway is Senior Lecturer in Culture+Context Design at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.



    Genevieve Bell is currently a Senior Fellow and Vice President at Intel Corporation where she works in their Corporate Strategy Office, driving long-term strategic visioning and insights.