Conducting Digital Ethnography
This training has been organised by the Data, Communication and New Technologies (DCT) Pathway and is open to all ESRC and non-ESRC funded PhD and MA Social Research students within the WRDTP’s seven partner universities. Whilst this workshop is aimed at DCT Pathway students, PGRs from all seven interdisciplinary Pathways are welcome to attend.
In this training session, participants will be introduced to the conduct of digital ethnographic research. We will introduce the principles and practices of ethnography and discuss how these can be applied in researching the social significance of digital technologies. The facilitators of this session will talk through how ‘the digital’ has featured into their own ethnographic projects, and will discuss how it may be approached in ethnographic research as an ‘object of study’, ‘methodological tool’, and/or ‘fieldsite’ – offering provocations for designing digital ethnographic projects. For the second half of this session, participants will be invited to test out and mobilise some of the techniques introduced and to contribute to a pilot digital ethnographic project.
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
- Identify the theoretical underpinnings of ethnographic methodologies
- Evaluate the range of methods that can be used in an ethnographic methodology and how these can be combined
- Apply the principles and practices of ethnography in research on digital technologies
- Assemble a range of research methods to collect data on the social significance of digital technologies.
- Organise ethnographic data to produce findings related to the social significance of digital technologies
Pre-reading
Read Chapter 1 of Pink et al. (2016) Digital Ethnography
Dr James Cummings
LecturerJames Cumming is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of York. He uses ethnographic methods to explore gender, sexuality, intimacy and identity in contexts of everyday life, especially everyday uses of digital technologies.
Dr Kath Bassett
LecturerKath Bassett is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of York. They are an ethnographer whose research explores mundane forms of governance. Presently, their work is focused on social-locative platforms and algorithmic governmentality in the context of cities, cultural-economic development, and tourism.
This training session will be delivered face-to-face at the University of York. This event will not be recorded.
