Social Media Ethnography: The Digital Researcher in a Messy Web

2012 ◽  
Vol 145 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Postill ◽  
Sarah Pink
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Research Participants ◽  
Media Ethnography ◽  
Media Practices

Social media practices and technologies are often part of how ethnographic research participants navigate their wider social, material and technological worlds, and are equally part of ethnographic practice. This creates the need to consider how emergent forms of social media-driven ethnographic practice might be understood theoretically and methodologically. In this article, we respond critically to existing literatures concerning the nature of the internet as an ethnographic site by suggesting how concepts of routine, movement and sociality enable us to understand the making of social media ethnography knowledge and places.

scholarly journals Decolonizing mobile media: Mobile Internet appropriation in a Guaraní community

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-103
Author(s):  
Sarah Wagner ◽  
Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Mobile Internet ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Central Position ◽  
Mobile Media ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
Communication Preferences ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Media Services ◽  
Media Practices

The Internet has been a valuable resource for many indigenous groups as a vehicle for self-representation. In this paper, we describe how the installation of a Wi-Fi signal in a Guaraní community in Greater Buenos Aires—as part of the community leader’s decolonizing media projects—generated issues within the community. While much indigenous media research concerns the politics of cultural representation, we consider the politics of everyday, intracommunity mobile communication practices. Firstly, our findings show how the choice of communication medium can become a political issue. An upsurge in mobile-mediated communication within the community contributed to the decline of face-to-face deliberations, which were the mainstay of communal sharing arrangements and which held a central position in understandings of Guaraní culture. Secondly, our findings show how discrepancies between users’ communication preferences and the readily available mobile media services can generate a use barrier by deterring users from obtaining the skills needed to effectively appropriate or transform mobile media services. Familiarity with a few mainstream social media apps not only reinforced imaginaries of the Internet as a nonindigenous space but also generated set ideas of what the Internet supports in terms of communicative form—social networking—and content type—mainstream media. In the end, the community leader’s decolonizing projects, aimed at using social media for community media dissemination, were not only rejected by community members but also undermined by the dynamics of mobile media practices in the community. We argue that limited mobile technology skills combined with commercially oriented mobile media services can hinder creative and adaptable mobile media practices, and in turn, undermine decolonizing mobile appropriations.

scholarly journals When Facebook Is the Internet

2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-150
Author(s):  
Rosa Cordillera A. Castillo
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Security Risks ◽  
Ethical Concerns ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
Social Media Engagement ◽  
The One

My social media engagement with research interlocutors is shaped by my positionality as a ‘halfie’ anthropologist based abroad who conducts ethnographic research on violence and peacemaking in the Philippines and the diaspora. On the one hand, social media connectivity facilitates certain research processes, networking, activism, and solidarity building. Yet with social media’s security issues and amid shifting political tides, such connectivity poses ethical and security risks, resulting in social media-specific ethical concerns. I demonstrate these points through an account of my engagement with Facebook, a ubiquitous platform for communicating among Filipinos. In the process, I reflect on some of the ways in which social media connectivity between researcher and interlocutors reconfigures the relationality, temporality, hierarchies, and affect of the ethnographic ‘field’.

Media Engineering

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Necati Polat
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Internet Access ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Media Ethics ◽  
Government Control ◽  
Public Resources ◽  
National Media ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
Media Practices

The state of Turkey’s national media under the new regime, curbed in independence far in excess of typical media capture, having allegedly been ‘re-engineered’, with whole media outlets taken over by the government through moot uses of public authority and public resources from 2007, is narrated in this chapter. The chapter describes the hitherto unseen government pressure on the media, with scores of dissident journalists rendered jobless, and those more openly critical incarcerated and put on trial on flimsy charges. The discussion includes a description of some of the pro-government media practices—unprecedented, astounding, and simply incomprehensible by even the lowest standards of media ethics, such as a fabricated interview with Chomsky printed in headline in the pro-government flagship daily in 2013, purportedly communicating Chomsky’s support to Erdogan’s conspiratorial vision of international politics. The discussion also looks into the increasing government control of the Internet access and social media.

4. Popular geopolitics

2019 ◽  
pp. 71-97
Author(s):  
Klaus Dodds
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
New Media ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Film And Television ◽  
Popular Geopolitics ◽  
Media Practices ◽  
Internet And Social Media

‘Popular geopolitics’ considers the interconnection between popular culture and geopolitics. It focuses on the sensorial nature of popular geopolitics—the power and politics of images and sound. Social media in particular reminds us that images and stories can amplify and exaggerate the controversial and emotive qualities of geopolitics. Film and television have been judged to be significant interventions in the making of geopolitical cultures. While established media forms such as newspapers, television, and radio remain highly significant in producing and circulating news worldwide, it is new media forms such as the internet and social media practices, such as blogging and podcasting, which will command increasing attention from those interested in popular geopolitics.

Interacting with Whom?

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jakob Svensson ◽  
Anders Olof Larsson
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Political Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Political Network ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Voter Groups ◽  
Media Practices

This article explores Swedish Parliamentarians' Twitter practices during the 2014 general elections. For individual candidates, the political party is important for positions within the party and on the ballot, especially in a party-centered democracy. A previous qualitative (n)ethnographic research project during the previous elections in 2010, in which one campaigning politician was studied in-depth, found that her social media practices to a large extent were inward-facing, focusing on the own party network. But does this result resonate among all Swedish Parliamentarians? Specifically, the authors ask: is Twitter primarily used interactively, for intra-party communication, to interact with strategic voter groups or voters in general? By analyzing all Parliamentarians tweets two weeks up to the elections the authors conclude that retweeting was done within a party political network while @messaging was directed towards political opponents. Mass media journalists and editorial writers were important in Parliamentarians' Twitter practices, while so-called ordinary voters were more absent.

scholarly journals When Facebook Is the Internet

2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-150
Author(s):  
Rosa Cordillera A. Castillo
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Security Risks ◽  
Ethical Concerns ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
Social Media Engagement ◽  
The One

Abstract My social media engagement with research interlocutors is shaped by my positionality as a ‘halfie’ anthropologist based abroad who conducts ethnographic research on violence and peacemaking in the Philippines and the diaspora. On the one hand, social media connectivity facilitates certain research processes, networking, activism, and solidarity building. Yet with social media's security issues and amid shifting political tides, such connectivity poses ethical and security risks, resulting in social media-specific ethical concerns. I demonstrate these points through an account of my engagement with Facebook, a ubiquitous platform for communicating among Filipinos. In the process, I reflect on some of the ways in which social media connectivity between researcher and interlocutors reconfigures the relationality, temporality, hierarchies, and affect of the ethnographic ‘field’.

Careful families and care as ‘kinwork’: an intergenerational study of families and digital media use in Melbourne, Australia

2018 ◽  
pp. 181-200
Author(s):  
Jolynna Sinanan ◽  
Larissa Hjorth
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Boundary Work ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Life Course Perspective ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Intergenerational Study ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Media Practices

This chapter examines how digital media practices, relating to care and intimacy (the ‘intimate surveillance’), are being played out in the daily lives of intergenerational and cross-cultural families in Melbourne, Australia. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Melbourne with thirteen households in 2015–2016, it considers how ‘doing family’ practices — the ways that family members maintain co-presence through routines and everyday tasks — are interwoven with intergenerational and cross-cultural relationships, revealing textures of intimacy and boundary work that intersect with the mundane to create new types of social surveillance and disappearance. The chapter also introduces the framework of ‘digital kinship’, which provides a life course perspective to take into account the differing roles, positions, meanings and contexts over a person's lifespan, and concludes with a discussion of how friendly surveillance, staying in touch and caring at a distance are made possible through social media platforms.

Interacting with Whom?

2020 ◽  
pp. 460-476
Author(s):  
Jakob Svensson ◽  
Anders Olof Larsson
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Political Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Political Network ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Voter Groups ◽  
Media Practices

This article explores Swedish Parliamentarians' Twitter practices during the 2014 general elections. For individual candidates, the political party is important for positions within the party and on the ballot, especially in a party-centered democracy. A previous qualitative (n)ethnographic research project during the previous elections in 2010, in which one campaigning politician was studied in-depth, found that her social media practices to a large extent were inward-facing, focusing on the own party network. But does this result resonate among all Swedish Parliamentarians? Specifically, the authors ask: is Twitter primarily used interactively, for intra-party communication, to interact with strategic voter groups or voters in general? By analyzing all Parliamentarians tweets two weeks up to the elections the authors conclude that retweeting was done within a party political network while @messaging was directed towards political opponents. Mass media journalists and editorial writers were important in Parliamentarians' Twitter practices, while so-called ordinary voters were more absent.

Leveraging Social Media Practices among Adolescent Cannabis Users to Develop a Mobile Health Intervention (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Hodgdon ◽  
Eraka Bath ◽  
Janelle Eberhard ◽  
Kara Bagot
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Mobile Technology ◽  
Mobile Health ◽  
Technology Use ◽  
Intervention Development ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Retention Rates ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Media Applications ◽  
Media Practices

BACKGROUND Despite the universal adoption of mobile technology, adolescents generally do not use mobile health (mHealth) platforms. Those who do download mHealth applications have low retention rates. OBJECTIVE This study aims to characterize patterns of Internet, smartphone and social media use among adolescent cannabis users to leverage youth behavioral patterns for future mHealth substance use intervention development. METHODS Four self-report questionnaires measuring illicit substance and mobile technology use were administered to cannabis-using adolescents aged 14-18. RESULTS Participants spent, on average, 4-6 hours per day using the Internet, including 1-3 hours spent on social media sites. Nearly every participant used multiple social media applications, most commonly, YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook. The primary reasons given for engaging with social media were boredom and staying connected with friends. CONCLUSIONS Adolescents are frequently engaging with their smartphones, primarily using social media as means to communicate and occupy time. Further examination of cannabis-using adolescents’ technological preferences may be valuable to promote adoption and retention of mHealth interventions.

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