Abstract
The permeation of digital technologies into social practices, including journalism has posed significant challenges to our understanding of what really counts as ‘ethnographic’. However, there is consensus among researchers that ethnography inscribes a particular relationship between the researcher, the researched, and the context of research. Specifically, it brings a variety of techniques of inquiry into play, attempting always to observe things that happen, to listen to what people say and to question people in the setting under investigation. Drawing on my ethnographic exploration of how Zimbabwean print journalists use the internet (and its associated digital technologies) in newsmaking, this study suggests the continued relevance of traditional ethnographic methods (observation; informal conversations and in-depth interviews) in studying internetbased phenomena in the context of journalism practice. While advancing the argument that ethnography is a negotiated self-reflexive ‘lived experience’, I also emphasize the importance of sustained intuitive and creative inclinations throughout the research process.
Highlights
While initial anxieties about just how far ‘tried and tested ethnographic methods are appropriate for technologically mediated interactions’ (Hine, 2005a: 1) are slowly fizzling away as researchers experiment and innovate with new opportunities offered by digital technologies, the emerging corpus of ethnographic solutions continues to be tinged with concerns
Arguments abound on the extent to which conventional ethnography ignores certain aspects of cultural practices mediated by digital technologies (Hine, 2000), I submit that ethnographers may benefit from the important but often unacknowledged pragmatic elements of qualitative research – intuition and creativity (Janesick, 2001)
The unpredictability and ‘transient’ nature of digital platforms, combined with the recurrently multi-sited nature of journalism practice require adaptive lenses such that the researcher is persistently alert to intuitive moments that call for creativity in unpredictable situations
Summary
While initial anxieties about just how far ‘tried and tested ethnographic methods are appropriate for technologically mediated interactions’ (Hine, 2005a: 1) are slowly fizzling away as researchers experiment and innovate with new opportunities offered by digital technologies, the emerging corpus of ethnographic solutions continues to be tinged with concerns. The nature of the study required a methodological approach that would enable me to capture the multifaceted aspects of journalists’ uses of new digital technologies, including the contexts of appropriation.
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