WHEN starting to conduct research in media audience and their usage, one might ask:
“What are the purposes of exploring those patterns?”
“Do they have any meanings in our lives as media consumers and researchers?”
Researching is just another grandiloquent expression of getting to know, to understand people, objects,… As said in (Mytton, Diem & van Dam, 2016, p.6), researching media resembles asking each other when we first meet or our actions to change styles when the audience is not interested in our speech. We examine our viewers and listeners to find a way to communicate better, furthermore to give people a better experience with the media.
That process requires researchers to find a right direction to collect comprehensive results. Collaborative ethnography might be one of them, which we were fortunate to examine when looking at our peers’ blog posts about television in memories of the past generations.
It was fascinating to hear about what TV used to look like when it came to the world through the eyes of people experiencing it. The majority of my peers chose their parents/grandparents to interview. Looking at works of people having a chat with their grandparents like this mate, I explored the picture inside Aussie’s house in the 50s, 60s, where television was always placed in the lounge room, with sofas and coaches. Another thing was the excitement when sharing about the changes in their routines to fit with TV’s fixed timetable. Which truly impressed me was the delight of author when exploring things that used to be legends at that time but no longer exist such as the cellophane to make television coloured or the “clunk” sound when switching the channels. Others decided to look at their parents’ memory, which was merged with a more modern era of coloured television. Particularly, I came across a memoir of an immigrant from Viet Nam, which somewhat resembles my own and gave me a brief comparison between when television came to the East and the West .
Let’s get to know what collaborative ethnography first to understand why I said it was important and how it worked in the examples above:
Ethnography, as defined by cultural ethnographer Brian A.Hoey, is an approach looking at people and cultures in other communities to provide a detailed, in-depth description of everyday life and practices (2014, p.1). Researchers usually adopt two main directions:
- Reciprocal ethnography: conducting research based on an exchange relationship between investigators and local communities (Lassiter, 2005). That means if you want to get information from your participants, you have to do something in returns.
- Collaborative ethnography: mutual engagement between both sides. Researchers participate in the activities they are studying to observe the behaviours of the communities in real time and understand them in real context (Mytton, Diem & van Dam, 2016, p.178).
Source: imgur.com
What is distinctive here is the level of real interaction. While in reciprocation, researchers decide what to be questioned based on their research from second sources such as books, articles,… to get the information RESEARCHERS NEED, collaborative ethnographers try to explore what PARTICIPANTS NEED by partaking in their group, then decide what to conduct research on. We cannot operate our study engaging with people’s rituals and cultures as a community without getting interacted with the context where they are expressed. Researchers have to establish a long-term, inclusive association (which in turns, unfortunately, takes a significant amount of time and effort), at the same time become a participant to experience the similar setting with them and maintain an observer/documenter’s role. Some useful practices for a qualitative research according to Mytton, Diem & van Dam are in-depth interview, discussion, participant observation (2016).
“Typically ethnographers spend many months or even years in the places where they conduct research forming lasting bonds with people.”
Brian A’Hoey
Now back to what I’ve got from the blog posts example:
Studying watching habits in domestic/private space resembles studying new cultures. It is easy to notice that most of us chose parents/grandparents as the interviewees because family members would be open for a dialogue and willing to give out information. As the conversation between researcher and participant flows effortlessly in natural state instead of a sheer Q&A session, the results contain not only honest information but also real details on contextual and psychological progress.
Where have we gone wrong?
Below is the slogan of one of the world’s leading customer analysis enterprises:
“Our audience measurement data and advanced solutions provide a comprehensive picture of the times, places and methods your consumers are using to connect with content and advertising. With this insight, you can create programming that viewers love, which will make you a hit with advertisers.”
Nielsen Australia
Commercial enterprises conduct their research on large scale, often with the promise or vision of better products for customers. However, since there is no real interaction with the participants and no observation to test the reliability of data collected, participants can manipulate the statistics as they are all aware of the unrealistic, artificial nature of the commercial research. In other words, commercial research doesn’t allow in-depth result because researchers see media users as influenced by mere ideological effects of media text, and “overlooked the sociological dimension of how people made media rituals in their lives.” (Couldry, 2004).
Source: Youtube.com
“In day-to-day commerce, … people are the merchandise, not the shows. The shows are merely the bait.”
Les Brown
To sum up, qualitative and quantitative research, one focus on the comprehensiveness and realness of information of lives, while another aims at the overall data on a large number of users. However, we – academic learners – should adopt the former method. The reason is that corporate research operates on commercial basis, of which target is a concise and general picture of the public, thus omitting the individual and sociological aspects of the issues. There is no point for us in dealing with those kinds of number and data, because in institutional environment, we are studying, not making money of our participants.
Reference:
Brown L, n.d, Television Quotes – Page 2 at BrainyQuote, BrainyQuote, viewed 14 August 2016, <http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/television_2.html>.
Couldry, N 2004, Theorising media as practice, Social semiotics, vol.14, no.2, pp.115-132.
Hoey B, 2014, A Simple Introduction to the Practice of Ethnography and Guide to Ethnographic Fieldnotes, Marshall University Digital Scholar, viewed 14 August 2016, <http://works.bepress.com/brian_hoey/12>.
Lassiter, LE 2005, The Chicago guide to collaborative ethnography, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Moran, K 2015, Ethnography in Software Design - An Anthropologist’s Point of View, ACE! Conference, Krakow Poland, 19 March, viewed 14 August 2016, <http://www.slideshare.net/KellyMoran/ethnography-in-software-design-31615>.
Mytton G, Diem, P and van Dam, PH, 2016, Media Audience Research: A Guide for Professionals, SAGE Publications, India.
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