Audiovisual And Digital Ethnography

Audiovisual and Digital Ethnography is a state-of-the-art introduction to this dynamic and growing subject. The authors explain its fundamental aspects in a clear and systematic way. The chapters cover topics including: learning to see and listen in the field and the role of sensory attention the mediation of the senses doing anthropological fieldwork with video observational filmmaking ethnographic drawing multimodal anthropology digital ethnography interactive documentary the ethics and management of audiovisual and digital data. The result is a much-needed, up-to-date and concise guide to both the fundamental skills required for audiovisual and digital ethnographic production and the essential theoretical knowledge relating to this. It will be particularly useful for students and scholars in the fields of Anthropology, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Social Sciences, Media, Design, Art Practice and Sound Studies.

Over the last two decades, the advent of cheap, user-friendly video technologies has contributed to a revolution in representational agency. Videos are now made by production units that are at times composed of families, churches, musical groups, community associations or other institutions. Thus, on-demand videos produced and distributed within local and atypical networks profoundly shape contemporary urban imaginaries. This book explores the intertwined relations among infrastructure, technology, and modernity through an ordinary, yet little studied field of "on-demand" audiovisual production, which involves processes of negotiation and interaction between clients and commissioned video makers. On-demand films are considered as a space of collaboration and self-representation, that allows to reflect on the potential of fiction, artifice, and montage to render material desires, aspirations, and ideas of the future.

Essential reading for anyone wishing to engage with images, technologies and society, Doing Visual Ethnography is a milestone in ethnographic and visual research. The Third Edition of this classic text includes new chapters on web-based practices for visual ethnography and the issues surrounding the representation, interpretation, and authoring of knowledge with the rise of digital media. The book provides a foundation for thinking about visual ethnography and introduces the practical and theoretical issues relating to the visual and digital technologies used in the field. Drawing upon her original research and the experiences of other ethnographers, author Sarah Pink once again challenges our understanding of the world and sets new agendas for visual ethnography by: Helpfully illustrating key concepts within real world contexts Introducing examples from both analogue and digital media Exploring material and electronic texts Setting out the shift towards applied, participatory and public visual scholarship. This book is a must-have for students and researchers across the social sciences who are interested in incorporating audiovisual media into their research practice.

This sharp, innovative book champions the rising significance of ethnographic research on the use of digital resources around the world. It contextualises digital and pre-digital ethnographic research and demonstrates how the methodological, practical and theoretical dimensions are increasingly intertwined. Digital ethnography is central to our understanding of the social world; it can shape methodology and methods, and provides the technological tools needed to research society. The authoritative team of authors clearly set out how to research localities, objects and events as well as providing insights into exploring individuals’ or communities’ lived experiences, practices and relationships. The book: Defines a series of central concepts in this new branch of social and cultural research Challenges existing conceptual and analytical categories Showcases new and innovative methods Theorises the digital world in new ways Encourages us to rethink pre-digital practices, media and environments This is the ideal introduction for anyone intending to conduct ethnographic research in today’s digital society.

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.

Over the last two decades, the advent of cheap, user-friendly video technologies has contributed to a revolution in representational agency. Videos are now made by production units that are at times composed of families, churches, musical groups, community associations or other institutions. Thus, on-demand videos produced and distributed within local and atypical networks profoundly shape contemporary urban imaginaries. This book explores the intertwined relations among infrastructure, technology, and modernity through an ordinary, yet little studied field of "on-demand" audiovisual production, which involves processes of negotiation and interaction between clients and commissioned video makers. On-demand films are considered as a space of collaboration and self-representation, that allows to reflect on the potential of fiction, artifice, and montage to render material desires, aspirations, and ideas of the future. Alex Vailati is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Museology at the Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil. An anthropologist and documentarist, he is the coordinator of the university's Visual Anthropology Laboratory (LAV). He is the author of Migration of Rich Immigrants: Gender, Ethnicity and Class (2016, with Carmel Rial). Gabriela Zamorano Villarreal is a Professor and researcher at the Centro de Estudios Antropológicos in El Colegio de Michoacán, Mexico. She is the author of Indigenous Media and Political Imaginaries in Contemporary Bolivia ( 2017). Her current research includes work on popular photographic and audiovisual archives in Michoacán, Mexico and La Paz, Bolivia.

The field of anthropology took a long time to discover the significance of media in modern culture. In this important new book, Anna Pertierra tells the story of how a field - once firmly associated with the study of esoteric cultures - became a central part of the global study of media and communication. She recounts the rise of anthropological studies of media, the discovery of digital cultures, and the embrace of ethnographic methods by media scholars around the world. Bringing together longstanding debates in sociocultural anthropology with recent innovations in digital cultural research, this book explains how anthropology fits into the story and study of media in the contemporary world. It charts the mutual disinterest and subsequent love affair that has taken place between the fields of anthropology and media studies in order to understand how and why such a transformation has taken place. Moreover, the book shows how the theories and methods of anthropology offer valuable ways to study media from a ground-level perspective and to understand the human experience of media in the digital age. Media Anthropology for the Digital Age will be of interest to students and scholars of media and communication, anthropology, and cultural studies, as well as anyone wanting to understand the use of anthropology across wider cultural debates.

Video Ethnography provides a thought-provoking, guided framework to ethnographic filmmaking. It examines how this kind of filmmaking can be a means of approximating, mediating and evoking lived experience. Functioning as a kind of sensory extension of the videographer, video ethnography arises directly out of lived experience as a process of dynamic encounters, mobile situations, and embodied approaches that include senses and choices of the videographer, and the participants of the ethnography. The book will help describe and develop students‘ sensibility and awareness of this crucial aspect of video ethnography, so they can craft their own video ethnographies with a fully conscious awareness of how certain skilled and attuned approaches to audiovisual techniques can help facilitate the fullest and most dynamic encounters possible. This book is suitable for classes in ethnographic filmmaking, video ethnography and visual anthropology / sociology.