The Routledge Companion To Digital Ethnography

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.

The Routledge Companion to Media Anthropology provides a broad overview of the widening and flourishing area of media anthropology, and outlines key themes, debates, and emerging directions. The Routledge Companion to Media Anthropology draws together the work of scholars from across the globe, with rich ethnographic studies that address a wide range of media practices and forms. Comprising 41 chapters by a team of international contributors, the Companion is divided into three parts: Histories Approaches Thematic Considerations. The chapters offer wide-ranging explorations of how forms of mediation influence communication, social relationships, cultural practices, participation, and social change, as well as production and access to information and knowledge. This volume considers new developments, and highlights the ways in which anthropology can contribute to the study of the human condition and the social processes in which media are entangled. This is an indispensable teaching resource for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students and an essential text for scholars working across the areas that media anthropology engages with, including anthropology, sociology, media and cultural studies, internet and communication studies, and science and technology studies.

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.

The Routledge Companion to Digital Journalism Studies offers an unprecedented collection of essays addressing the key issues and debates shaping the field of Digital Journalism Studies today. Across the last decade, journalism has undergone many changes, which have driven scholars to reassess its most fundamental questions, and in the face of digital change, to ask again: ‘Who is a journalist?’ and ‘What is journalism?’. This companion explores a developing scholarly agenda committed to understanding digital journalism and brings together the work of key scholars seeking to address key theoretical concerns and solve unique methodological riddles. Compiled of 58 original essays from distinguished academics across the globe, this Companion draws together the work of those making sense of this fundamental reconceptualization of journalism, and assesses its impacts on journalism’s products, its practices, resources, and its relationship with audiences. It also outlines the challenge presented by studying digital journalism and, more importantly, offers a first set of answers. This collection is the very first of its kind to attempt to distinguish this emerging field as a unique area of academic inquiry. Through identifying its core questions and presenting its fundamental debates, this Companion sets the agenda for years to come in defining this new field of study as Digital Journalism Studies, making it an essential point of reference for students and scholars of journalism.

Ethnography in the digital age presents new methods for research. It encourages scientists to think about how we live and study in a digital, material, and sensory world. Digital ethnography considers the impact of digital media on the methods and processes by which we perform ethnography and how the digital, methodological, practical, and theoretical aspects of ethnographic research are becoming increasingly interwoven. This planet does not exist in a static state; as technology grows and shifts, we must learn how to appropriately analyze these changes. Practices, Challenges, and Prospects of Digital Ethnography as a Multidisciplinary Method examines the pervasiveness of digital media in digital ethnography’s setting and practice. It investigates how digital settings, techniques, and procedures are reshaping ethnographic practice and explores the ethnographic-theoretical interactions through which “old” opinions are influenced by digital ethnography practice, going beyond merely transferring conventional concepts and techniques into digital research settings. Covering topics such as data triangulation, indigenous living systems, and digital technology, this premier reference source is an essential resource for libraries, students, teachers, sociologists, anthropologists, social workers, historians, political scientists, geographers, public health officials, archivists, government officials, researchers, and academicians.

Lecturers, request your electronic inspection copy 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.

The Anthropology of Digital Practices connects for the first time three distinct research areas – digital ethnography, causal ethnography, and media practice theory – to explore how we might track the effects of new media practices in a digital world. It invites media and communication students and scholars to overcome the field’s old aversion to ‘media effects’ and explores the messy, complex, open-ended effects of new media practices in a digital age. Based on long-term ethnographic research and drawing from recent advances in the study of causality and ethnography, this book tells the ‘formation story’ of the anti-woke movement through a series of critical media events. It argues that digital media practices (e.g. podcasting, YouTubing, tweeting, commenting, broadcasting) will have ‘formative’ effects on an emerging social world at different points in time. One important task of the digital ethnographer is precisely to distinguish between the formative and non-formative effects of specific media practices. This book makes three contributions to our understanding of media practices in the digital era, namely a theoretical, methodological, and empirical contribution. Theoretically, it furthers the ‘practice turn’ in media and communication studies by engaging with the latest thinking on causality and ethnography. Methodologically, it serves as a compelling, up-to-date guide to doing digital ethnography, with special reference to the study of digitally mediated practices. Empirically, it is the first book-length study of the anti-woke movement, a major actor in the ‘culture wars’ currently being fought across the Western world. With its accessible language and rich case studies, The Anthropology of Digital Practices will make an ideal supplementary textbook for a range of undergraduate and graduate courses in research methods, digital ethnography/anthropology, and digital activism.

This substantially revised second edition of The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in the Study of Religion remains the only comprehensive survey in English of methods and methodology in the discipline. Designed for non-specialists and upper undergraduate-/graduate-level students, it discusses the range of methods currently available to stimulate interest in unfamiliar methods and enable students and scholars to evaluate methodological issues in research. The Handbook comprises 39 chapters – 21 of which are new, and the rest revised for this edition. A total of 56 contributors from 10 countries cover a broad range of topics divided into three clear parts: • Methodology • Methods • Techniques The first section addresses general methodological issues: including comparison, research design, research ethics, intersectionality, and theorizing/analysis. The second addresses specific methods: including advanced computational methods, autoethnography, computational text analysis, digital ethnography, discourse analysis, experiments, field research, grounded theory, interviewing, reading images, surveys, and videography. The final section addresses specific techniques: including coding, focus groups, photo elicitation, and survey experiments. Each chapter covers practical issues and challenges, theoretical bases, and their use in the study of religion/s, illustrated by case studies. The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in the Study of Religion is essential reading for students and researchers in the study of religion/s, as well as for those in related disciplines.