The ‘Insider’s View’ in Media Studies: A Case Study of the Performance Ethnography of Mobile Media

Abstract

One of emerging issues in media studies is how to develop an integral methodology to describe a digital media phenomenon, whereas conventional methods such as a large-scaled survey and statistical analysis encounter difficulties in their attempts to address multiple contexts of the use of digital devices. This chapter reflects on performance ethnography as a methodological perspective to investigate digital media, looking specifically at the cultural practices of mobile technology in South Korea. After a brief discussion on recent attempts to introduce new approaches in investigating multimodal and highly personalized mobile media, this chapter will present and analyse a workshop titled “Performing typical mobile landscape@Seoul”, conducted by the author in May 2009. The workshop, where several young participants created and performed skits describing typical using scenes of mobile phones in Seoul, was designed in order to explore South Korean youngsters’ mobile media practices in their “natural” settings. From an integrated analysis of the workshop process, its output (skits performed by participants and the researcher’s observation), the chapter will try to describe how South Korean youngsters situate a high-tech mobility in their cultural practices and, how those practices are linked to the representation of mobile technology in communities. Finally, it will suggest an emic framework, that is to say, an “insider’s view” as a possible new perspective in media studies, thus, to clarify potential contribution of performance ethnographic methods to the study of digital media.