Ethnography
Ethnography is defined as “the recording and analysis of a culture or society, usually based on participant-observation and resulting in a written account of a people, place or institution” (Coleman and Simpson n.d.). It is a multifaceted research approach and benefits a wide range of disciplines, projects and industries. As Anderson (2009) discusses in the Harvard Business Review, an ethnographers goal is to view people’s behaviour on their terms. He explains that conducting ethnographic research for companies such as Intel has influenced their strategic decision making.
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In order to further understand ethnography and its benefit to research, it is also important to reflect on self practices. This is known as autoethnography, which is “an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyse personal experience in order to understand cultural experience” (Ellis et al. 2011). I have conducted a variety of autoethnographic reflections and documented them on my personal blog under the 'BCM241 - Media Ethnographies' category. Within media, autoethnography can be undertaken by thinking about past experiences using different types of media. This can then assist in understanding societal impact of media by taking the viewpoint of an active participant.
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For example, an autoethnographic study I undertook was related to the ever changing use of the household television. I reflected on my own TV usage, in addition to speaking to my father about his experiences growing up with TV. It was established that the usage of the household TV has indeed evolved. For me it was something I had always grown up with, while for my father it was seen as a 'family only' activity. Ethnography was used to drive this research as obversing TV usage was the key.
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Following on from the television reflection, the next topic to observe was the networked home. Kennedy and Wellman (2007, p. 646) and Venkatesh et al. (2001, p. 5) state that the concept of the networked home has two main components. The first being the information and communication technology networks within homes, and the second is the idea of personal relationships as elements of a networked home. From an ethnographic research point of view, it is important to observe both components equally. This is because we want to consider the technologies that are present within a networked home, and also how this affects personal relationships, behaviors and societal shifts. For example, the paradigm shift towards a networked society has led to households adopting more and more technologies (Mitew 2017).
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This means that the technology landscape within our homes has changed drastically over the past decade and prior. The evolution of the internet was fundamental in this shift and the interconnectivity of the many household devices are through the internet. This is prevalent in Australia as 86% of households have access to the internet as of 2017 (ABS 2018). Households are now filled with an abundance of devices including smartphones, tablets, computers, laptops and even a range of IoT technologies.
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Ethnography was used extensively to further my understanding of the above topics. Understanding the impacts they had on a changing society was assisted by observing people and their actions in these scenarios, whether it be other people I was speaking to, or my own actions in relation to these topics. An important aspect of ethnography is viewing individuals in their natural environment, without providing limitations that may affect their behaviour. For example, subjects undergoing an interview may alter their answers based on what they think the interviewer might want to hear. The focus of ethnography is to observe everything naturally to gain insights into how people see the world and interact with things in their everyday life (Experience UX 2018).
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Parkes and Faulkner (2017) describe ethnography as a “search for context”, and that understanding the context of people's behaviour is an efficient research practice. They explain that the three key facets of ethnography are participant observation, thick description (describe everything you see) and triangulation, which is the act of synthesising and cross referencing multiple sources of data. Understanding what people do and why by using ethnography may seem limited to areas such as anthropology. However, I believe the world of business, particularly marketing, can benefit greatly from practicing ethnography.
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