These are some small snippets from Annette Markham about methods for generating materials in ethnographic fieldwork, especially as related to the set of exercises for this course. Many other sources can be consulted in the resource list.
- Writing during observation stages
- What is a brain dump?
- Talking with others (or yourself)
- Collecting archival data or artifacts
- Capturing informational flows
- connecting with other studies and literatures
Writing during observations:
Writing observations as fieldnotes: Various ethnographers talk about the importance of keeping a research journal/diary throughout the course of a research project. In this course, fieldnotes are notes taken to capture descriptions of what is happening, record what is being said, or what is going on around you as an ethnographic researcher. Emerson, et al (2016) and James Spradley (1979) offer excellent details about how to take fieldnotes, transform rough fieldnotes into more clear pieces of writing, how to pay attention to details, etc.
Writing reflexively about your observations: As another layer of data, ethngraphers reflect on their own feelings, attitudes, and assumptions during the fieldwork process. This is a meta layer. These should be demarcated or bracketed (separated as a different column on the page, put in different color, or set off in [brackets]. These are often the voice in your head that is full of doubt, or is leaping to conclusions, or has some tangent of an idea. This can serve as valuable interpretive material later, so include these to keep track of your thoughts, moving them from your head (where they’re likely to be forgotten) to the page (where they can function as data for your inquiry). These reflections are different from observations. In addition to fieldnotes, these materials can be used as data to analyze. Writing them is also a form of analysis in itself, when conducted as ‘close reading’ of fieldnotes, archived information, etc.
What is a brain dump?
A brain dump is essentially a timed writing exercise to get what is inside the head out onto the page for external inspection. The term ‘brain dump’ is the term developed by Annette Markham as an informal title for what she more formally refers to in 2017 as:
“a form of self-directed introspective elicitation. Many techniques can be used for this type of exercise, but there are four important elements to include:
1. Time the writing exercise
2. Do not edit or backspace: use a black screen or white font on white background, or if handwriting, don’t look closely at the writing.
3. Do not stop writing during the entire exercise; When you lose track, hit enter or start a new line with a different thought. Do not dwell on what has been written. Do not try to complete a thought if you lose track of it.
4. Start with a prompting question. Repeat the exercise with a slightly different prompt.
Obviously, this technique aligns with elicitation techniques used in psychology, ethnography, and design studies, as well as classic techniques of brainstorming. Here, the distinction is that it is intended to both enact and produce cognitive processing from the self, to make it visible for inspection or introspection. This often produces an additional layer of data to analyze, especially in studies where the researcher is closely linked to the practice or situation being observed, but in this discussion of reflexivity, it is simply an easy way to produce material to critically analyze one’s premises, decisions, and interpretations.
Basically, consider this to be brainstorming. Thinking in words. Move your thoughts to the page. It might be useful to consider this phrase, attributed to many different authors, including Karl Weick: “How can I know what I think ‘til I see what I say?” You never know what sort of pearls might be buried in all that misspelling and unedited stuff that you’ll end up writing!!
If you want to learn more about the methods and techniques for spontaneous, reflexive, and evocative ethnographic writing, this book is strongly recommended: Writing the New Ethnography (H.L. Goodall, 2000, Alta Mira Press)
Talking (with yourself, with others):
Eliciting information through formal interactions (interviews): Interviews are valuable sources of information about yourself as well as about others. As a way of studying yourself, you could interview yourself, but you can also have others (in the class or your friends/family) watch you, look at your social media use, and ask you questions. You could do this in chat (auto-recorded and transcribed) or in person, with an audio recording, which you transcribe later, to transform the audio into a form that is suitable for close text/discourse analysis.
Discovering or eliciting information through informal conversations: A natural part of participant observation is casual interaction with others. It’s often called “naturalistic observation” or observation “in situ.” Interacting in particular social media and paying attention to the close details of such interactions can help you understand more about the medium or technology, if you’re paying attention to the details of your interactions and how they play out over time. Talking with people about their practices as they use social media is also a good way to learn about practices and habits–both theirs and yours (by comparison to theirs). If the conversations become more formalized, they might become interviews (sometimes there’s a very fuzzy line between these things).
Collecting archival data or artifacts:
Attentive observation is a key to any anthropological or sociological inquiry in a naturalistic setting. When entering a ‘field,’ to conduct fieldwork, one’s primary role is to observe action and behaviors of cultural members. But there is also the “stuff” of societies and individuals, in material form (pot shards, text or image archives, trash, memorials). Stuff can also be the traces of where we’ve been, how much time we spent here or there, etc.
How can you ‘observe’ and ‘document’ your participation? What is the “stuff” that is relevant for someone (like an ethnographer) to understand who you are, what your priorities are, where you’re at in life, and other big, abstract questions?
What is easy to log or track? Consider logging conversations, taking screenshots, doing some screen recordings, taking photos, making audio recordings.
What’s impossible to archive, record? How can that be captured, or is it something to reflect on, rather than “capture?” What will always remain elusive? Is it important?
These are not questions that have strict answers. But they’re good questions to reflect on as you choose and use different methods for gathering information or generating knowledge about the context.
Capturing informational flows?
How is this possible? We generally only see the outcomes of flows, not the flows themselves. This is an area for creative innovation, since we (sociologists, anthropologists) don’t have very good tools for capturing what is betwixt and between. There’s often tacit recognition that something is happening, or meaning is being formed, but this is an interpretation, after the fact, retrospective. So this is a good arena for experimentation.
Connecting to other studies and literatures:
Use scholarly resources to help guide your empirical work: You have many resources to help you access, engage in, and do fieldwork in this ‘field.’ We have supplied a massive resource list for your use.
These are just a fraction of what we could provide. The resources here are intended to give you basic principles and inspiration for how you might do an ethnographically-oriented study of digital identity. The discussions are intended to introduce you to and reinforce certain attitudes and practices as an ethnographer and phenomenologist.