Balanced Value Impact Model

Ethnographic research

Ethnographic research is a qualitative research method that is both participatory and observational. Traditionally, it is carried out ‘in the field’. That is, the researcher studies a community by being both a participant in the life of that community and an observer of it. Data collection is often done through participant observation, interviews, questionnaires, etc.

In the past, ethnographic research was more often concerned with remote cultures, but its reach has extended to studying cultural practices closer to home. There is now a considerable body of work by ethnographers and anthropologists on the effects of digital media on culture and society (see Coleman 2010 for a summary of these). There is also a new subject area, digital ethnography, which is the study of online communities and human-technology interactions through the use of qualitative research methods.

Ethnographers study changes brought about by many kinds of interventions and developments in all societies and ethnographic methods can be helpful in assessing change in a community through the introduction of a digital resource. 

See: E. Gabriella Coleman (2010), Ethnographic Approaches to Digital Media. Annual Review of Anthropology, 39, 487–505.

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