Murphy et al. (2021) describe two challenges to ethnography. The first challenge concerns the ubiquitous presence of new technologies, such as smartphones and social media platforms. These technologies have opened new ways of data recording and collection, and they have raised new questions about data protection and privacy.
Reanalysis, collaboration, data transparency and sharing, and online communities
a second reckoningThe authors discuss four aspects of ethnographic data around which new methodological and ethical questions have been prompted by techno-social advances. Ideally, the authors demand disciplinary standards that are flexible enough to not punish ethnographers whose projects cannot embrace the push for greater transparancy. An emphasis is placed on making analytical decisions, if not data, more transparant.
shifting meta-data to the textSome of the authors suggestions seem to be pushing ethnographers to pull meta-data and other ingrained analytical tools into the audience's purview. For example, the authors promote using different quotation marks (single or double) to differentiate within text the source (e.g. a recorded quote versus a recalled quote) of an example.
What concepts, ideas and examples from this text contribute to the theory and practice of archive ethnography?In particular this article is speaking to the tensions that have arisen between the practice of ethnography and the availability of new technologies and the call for more transparency and data sharing. The tension exists between traditional ethnography in which data is de-identified before being shared and now more contemporary practices (facilitated by technology) that create fewer degrees of separation between researchers, their subjects, and audiences.
What is the main argument, narrative, or e/affect?Ethnography is experiencing growing pains and that the research method and researchers are in a period of reflection while trying to understand how to practice ethnography in a digital world where technological advances are great tools but come with their own limitations and considerations. Ethnographers are undergoing methodological developments as the demand for data sharing and transparency increases, along with the rise of technology (meaning tools to record/store data and the platforms and ability to share it).
Recording and collecting data: The authors urge ethnographers to be transparent about how they collect data, given the difference in accuracy between different methods (e.g. memory versus recorded interviews). They offer examples of ethnographers only using specific demarcations for speech that was audio recorded, and no demarcations for speech recounted from field notes.
Murphy et al.
(1) Data habits/practices as reflexivity and an ethnographic good: The move to locate this text's call for ethnographers to pay attention to their data practices (storing, preserving/destroying, sharing, analysis) as an extension or a recall to the "first reckoning" that called for ethnographers to pay attention to their emplacement, offers an important reason for transparency beyond calls by funders to open data.
