Ch08 Media Ethnography

Module Media Ethnography Objectives From working on this module you should learn to understand the nature and importance of media ethnographies in terms of the meaning of media texts as constituted through audience response and participation understand the different ways in which audiences participants in constructing responses to media texts as fans or participants in fan communities understand and apply different ethnography research methods defining topics questions finding a site for analysis chat rooms e-zine production TV video viewing music clubs theme parks etc observing audience practices using field notes observations photography interviews analyzing results in terms of norms codes discourses constituting the meaning of audience response and participation aspects of texts that invite or evoke audience response What are Media Ethnographies Media ethnographies are studies of how audiences assume the active role of constructing the meaning of media texts The meaning of media texts is not in these texts nor is the meaning simply in audiences Rather the meaning of evolves out of the activity of audiences activity of social participation with media texts As Grossberg Wartella and Whitney argue in defense of their model of mediamaking the media are themselves being made while they are simultaneously making something else we must see the media and all of the relationships that the media are involved in as active relationships producing the world at the same time that the world is producing the media This means that the media cannot be studied apart from the active relationships in which they are always involved We cannot study the media apart from the context of their economic political historical and cultural relationships p For Virginia Nightingale the experiences of the private everyday life has become controlled by a media culture in which the private experience are replaced by public performances and consumption in a range of different worlds As a result the ideal unified self of the individual personality is now dispersed across a range of loosely defined transitory alliances As she notes media engagement increasingly transposes everyday life to a public out there Everyday life has become synonymous with what s on television or radio what s in the newspapers or magazines what s on at the cinema or what s in the shops All that is left is the person finding a way to be operating electronically and commercially programmed pathways p Through observation and interviewing audience participation in responding to the media media ethnographers Ang Bird Booker Jermyn Brown Buckingham Davis Harrington Bielby Jenkins Lull McGinley McRobbie Mills Palmer Provenzo Radway Riggs Seiter Borchers Kreutzner Warth Spigel Mann Schwartz Turkle attempt to understand an audience s responses as a social activity for summary analyses of media ethnographies see Ang Crawford Hafsteinsson Moores Nightingale Stevenson Purpose of this Module This module describes strategies for integrating media ethnographies into a media studies class to provide students with an understanding of how the meaning of media texts is constructed through participation in viewing or reading activities By learning about the various techniques involved in conducting media ethnographies you can then have your students conduct their own small-scale media ethnographies of how meaning is constructed through viewer or reader participation in response activity Students may study television viewing Internet chat rooms fan club activities soap opera Star Trek responses to magazine or participation in media events Super Bowl rock concerts Through conducting these studies students move beyond simply analyzing media texts to understand how audiences construct their own meanings of these texts based on shared needs purposes attitudes values or enjoyment Active Audience Response in a Media Culture Audiences have assumed an increasingly active role in the media culture As noted in Module in the discussion of diffused audiences Abercrombie Longhurst audiences have become active performances through participation with the media They engage in fan-club chat exchanges about favorite television programs They burn music CD s and share those CD s with peers They participate in blogging on-line exchanges of opinions They organize viewing events around going to films or viewing at home such as Super Bowl parties They visit theme parks attend concerts or shop in malls experiences that are highly mediated by media Through their participation with the media as participatory spectacle audiences are constructing modes of escape daydreams and alternative identities Abercrombie Longhurst Given their more active interactive participation with media researchers moved beyond the traditional uses or cause effect model of media studies described in Module to study the particular ways in which audiences experience the media in their everyday lives These researchers are particularly interested in fan subcultures in which fans construct their identities and stances consistent with the culture of for example a Star Trek fan club For a summary of fan subculture research http www wsu edu amerstu pop audience html David Morley history of audience research http www museum tv archives etv A htmlA audiencerese audiencerese htm Reception studies of media http www cultsock ndirect co uk MUHome cshtml media reccrit html These participatory uses of the media have become constitutive of everyday life as in the act of listening to the radio while one works Engagments in mediascapes Abercrombie Longhurst Attallah Shade as activities could be characterized by a number of phenomena associated with audience response and stances that could be studied in media ethnographies Audience stances mediated by commercialism in a global economy Because these mediascapes are shaped by commercialism and commercial interests audiences are socialized to adopt values of consumerism as part of globalization driven by conglomerate media corporations Attallah Shade Simulations of different cultural contexts are designed for commercial purposes as opposed to providing actual experience of cultural difference Visitors in shops in Disney World representing different countries of the world unlike visitors to real countries have no interaction with the culture that produced the products sold in these shops The Project on Disney As a result they may perceive the real world as a global marketplace where goods flow freely and are free exchanged p a distorted version of reality in which people must produce products within the constraints of economic forces and barriers As a result of this commercialization markers of class race and gender become less important in defining one s identity than lifestyle or appearing cool through the uses and display of products This focuses audiences attention on self-definition or the project of the self constructed through appearing to be cool based on commodity use In order to learn what is considered to be cool audiences perceive the world as an object of spectacle in which experiences are treated as part of seeing and being seen Abercrombie Longhurst Audiences adopt the stance of a possessive gaze that focuses on surface images and brands associated with coolness For example in the experience of shopping at a mall they perceive products in terms of how those products will enhance their own image That shopping experience is mediated by advertising and brand images throughout stores designed to foster that possessive gaze stance for example with models wearing certain clothes or having shoppers participate in entertainment retail uses of products Advertisers and marketers targeting the adolescent market have increasingly turned to ethnographic methods to study what adolescents perceive to be cool As documented in the PBS program Merchants of Cool entire program on-line http www pbs org wgbh pages frontline shows cool they then use that information to promote products by connecting those projects to images and practices associated with coolness In commercialized virtual worlds reality is often mediated by the producers own ideological versions of history and community often masking complex cultural or political issues Members of The Project on Disney found that history in Epcot exhibits in Disney World was portrayed primarily as a continuous improvement of the world through technology and corporate agents who are also sponsors of the exhibits For example in an exhibit on The Land sponsored by Kraft no relationship to the land other than commercial use by business is posited as possible or event desirable p In an exhibit on Universe of Energy sponsored by Exxon there is no reference to energy shortages oil spills or solar power Representations of American history emphasize unity and equality achieved through global capitalism while masking over references to conflicts associated with gender class or race or cross-cultural differences between societies The future is portrayed as a world populated by intact heterosexual families in Tomorrowland Theater the chorus tells us that Disney World is a wonderland for girls and boys and moms and dads p The prevailing narrative in these historical representations is one of capitalist expansion masquerading as science fiction in which the heroes of the next century are not people but machines with faith placed not in courage but in technology p Participation in virtual worlds Audiences are devoting more time to participating in virtual worlds A survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that on a daily basis children ages - spend and hours watching television and another hours with video games computers music or the VCR In the mediascape there is a blurring of the distinction between fiction and real in which audiences have difficulty knowing what constitutes reality and what constitutes fiction For example in responding to reality television shows they are viewing real people engaged in staged events They may respond to these people as if they are real yet also know that they are viewing what could be a fictional staged drama the accentuates sensationalized conflicts for entertainment purposes These leads to the popularity of fan club experiences in which real fans adopt the fictional roles of characters in programs Star Trek fan club members construct their own identities as Trekkies by using the Star Trek register wearing costumes or display their knowledge of programs or the actors and actresses personal lives Jenkins Soap opera fans display pictures of soap opera actors in their bedrooms write letters to the actors or attend social events to meet the actors Harrington Bielby One conception of the virtual is that it is a Xerox copy or never anything more than a pale imitation of the real a mere simulation Doel Clarke From this perceptive the virtual may never measure up to the complex reality it attempts to imitate This conception of the virtual as false imitation or approximation of reality presupposes a correspondence theory of representation that artistic or technological forms need to bear some relationship to reality a questionable assumption Another conception of the virtual is that it is not a copy of reality but is a more attractive alternative to the everyday hum-drum lived world Doel Clarke From this perspective the virtual is celebrated as an improvement over or even a solution to reality As Doel and Clarke note the virtual is to the real as the perfect is to the imperfect Here it is the real that is figured as partial flawed and lacking while the virtual promises a rectification and final resolution to come sadly reality rarely suffices p For example computer games based on PlayStation are advertised as being more engaging than the reality they are based on This somewhat utopian conception of the virtual is still based on the need to compare the virtual with the real A third conception posits the idea that the virtual is its own hyper-reality Baudrilland divorced from any need to correspond or connect to a lived-world reality the idea that the virtual creates it own form of reality Doel Clarke One problem with this conception is that in attempting to define a possible world of its own it cannot ultimately divorce itself from lived worlds Through participation in on-line chat rooms or collaborative computer games students experience a sense of virtual community Many adolescents are turning away from the represented worlds of much of broadcast media which created a world awash in events but largely devoid of shared experiences Travis to participate in shared communal experiences of interactive media In these virtual worlds they can also experiment with different roles and stances by using alternative forms of language without concern for the constraints of gender class race age or disability markers that inhibit their participation in lived-world face-to-face interaction Participants in virtual worlds may or may not be accountable for any real-world consequences for their actions in virtual worlds They may adopt different identities because they perceive no need in a virtual world to considering the consequences of their actions As Bill Teel who runs a chat monitoring service noted In teen chat rooms all the girls are cheerleaders and all the boys have muscles for the majority of kids this kind of fibbing is healthy allowing kids to pretend to be whatever they think is cool Santo p Based on her extensive study of MUD participants Sherry Turkle found that you are who you pretend to be by experimenting with different identities roles She quotes one participant You can completely redefine yourself if you want You can be the opposite sex You can be more talkative You can be less talkative Whatever You can just be just be who you want really whoever you have the capacity to be You don t have to worry about the slots other people put you in as much It s easier to change the way people perceive you because all they ve got is what you show them They don t look at your body and make assumptions They don t hear your accent and make assumptions All they see is your words p Developing social connections In participating in sharing responses to texts audiences experience social connections to other actual or virtual audiences connections that convey to them they are part of a larger social network For example some research on females responses to teen magazine advice columns and quizzes argued that female readers were being socialized to adopt traditional feminine values and function as consumers of beauty-industry products see Module However ethnographic research by Currie found that not only were the advice columns and quizzes the most frequently read sections of the magazines but also serve to foster sharing of problems with peers creating a sense of community with those peers Currie notes that the sharing of magazines between peers was a popular pastime Currie quotes one of her participants -year-old Alexandra My friend loves doing the little surveys like the Friends survey and stuff She always gets me to fill them out with her or she ll ask me questions and we go through actually lately we ve been going through them like crazy because it s grad So we ve been all going through those magazines you ve listed basically just for style of grad dresses and stuff like that p Audiences as communities In developing social connections through participation with the media audiences construct communities either imagined or real Abercrombie Longhurst whose beliefs and values serve to define their own identities Audiences of an evangelical television program or a conservative talk show identify with the imagined community of other participants who may share certain beliefs and values constituting participation with these programs or shows Or they may be participants in actual real communities for example as members of a fan club chat group In one student study Rick Lybeck examined his own family members responses to a televised baseball game He recorded and took notes on his father s and brothers responses to a series of baseball games He analyzed this data in terms of what aspects of the game the participants focused on their physical behaviors in responding together as a group and any ritual-like patterns of response Lybeck found that his participants all of whom were or had been baseball players responded to the game by vicariously experiencing the actions of the players They used their viewing to fulfill the purposes of a companionship dimension Wenner Gantz p to share time with other family members In some cases the actual physical act of responding of standing up and swinging as if they were a hitter or giving high-fives to each other as if they were on the field was part of a shared drama of mutual engagement in the game Through mimicking the ball players on the field they were vicariously playing out their own enjoyment of the game as a form of male-bonding The participants also frequently adopted the sports-talk lingo of the television commentators to formulate their own descriptions of the game Lybeck notes that this male sports talk serves to define their social identities as avid fans The main feature of the ESPN update was Barry Bonds having hit his th and st home runs earlier that afternoon The significance of this was that Bonds joined an elite group of three other players who have in their careers hit or more home runs and stolen or more bases A trivia question was put who are the other guys There were three generations of ball players present two father-and-son combinations quizzing each other on father-and-son baseball trivia it truly was a question made for them The TV medium as focused on in this informal ethnography was something that was integrated into a male bonding setting but not necessarily central to the bonding TV enabled the males to extend their baseball enjoyment and to affirm their identities as baseball players following in the footsteps of baseball fathers Lybeck p Lybeck s analysis points to the need to understand television sports-viewing activity as central to constructing male relationships Audiences as fans Audiences also assume the roles of being active fans Being an avid fan often involves exerting some influence on people involved with the production Harrington Bielby Jenkins In a study of soap opera fans and fan clubs Harrington Bielby found that producers and actors actresses often lurked on fan clubs bulletin boards or participate in fan club meetings for the purposes of garnering evaluative comments about their program Because the fans were aware of their participation they assumed that their responses might have some influence on the program s production Fan participation is also driven by the need to publicly demonstrate their commitment to being more than simply casual viewers through displaying pictures of soap opera actors actresses in one s home or attending fan club meetings Harrington Bielby In doing so they must also often cope with their peers stereotypes of themselves as fans who are incapable of distinguishing between fiction and reality stereotypes which in some cases created a sense of ambivalence about their own viewing habits Varied levels of uses of the media computers Audience participation with media may vary considerably in terms of their level of active attention engagement depending on their purposes for participation In some cases they may not be directly attending to an experience for example in which the television or radio is simply passive background noise In other cases they may be directly attending to a media text when they have a defined purpose or reason for participation For example a sports fan who is a member of a fantasy sports club may carefully attend to games sports talk shows or information on the Internet in order to acquire relevant information necessary for his participation in the fantasy sports club This suggests the need to examine audiences modes or levels of engagement the extent to which they are actively or passively engaged with or participating with the media texts In playing computer video games they may experience high levels of interactive engagement while in watching television while multi-tasking they may be not be attending to the television content These different modes or levels of engagement may be a function of interest text-design social participation with other audiences or larger purposes for responding Studying these different modes or levels provides researchers with some understanding of various factors shaping variations in these modes or levels Audiences may also vary in terms of their moving through and attending to media related to changing surfing channels or radio stations or clicking on different hypertext options on the Web Audiences may have a particular goal or purpose driving their choices or they may simply exploring what is available Social and cultural uses of the media Audiences are also use the media to fulfill certain social and cultural needs For example they may view television or films in groups as part of the need to build social relationships They may also view certain programs in order to acquire information necessary for participation in conversations with others They may also engaged in ritual participation with media as part of being a member of a culture however virtual For example they may view television news as part of a nightly ritual celebration of virtual link to community constructed by the television news program For example in a study of avid readers reasons for reading the newspaper tabloid The National Inquirer female readers often read the tabloid in order to obtain information about celebrities which they could then share with their friends as a form of gossip Bird Women who could cite the latest celebrity insider story from sources such as The National Inquirer and dramatize its relevance for their peer group assumed status within the peer group Bird Even the relatively passive process of television viewing can become part of an active social interaction around responding to and critiquing television Dan Chandler s Module The Active Viewer extensive bibliography http www aber ac uk media Modules MAinTV actviewa html Understanding the various purposes for participation in virtual worlds may explain the appeal of the worlds One purpose may be to engage in a pleasurable ritual-like experience that connects participants with larger mythic collective dramas Real For example soccer fans viewing World Cup soccer television broadcasts as a social group engage in ritual-like social practices a fanship dimension and the desire to thrill in victory Wenner Gantz p a learning dimension p acquiring information about the teams and players a release dimension the opportunity to let loose or get psyched up p a companionship dimension p sharing time with friends and family and a filler dimension the use of sports viewing to kill time p The appeal of virtual worlds may therefore lie in participants need to transcend the everyday through collective rituals Viewers responses may also be driven by the need for a reassuring ritual-like activity Viewers may enjoy watching a weekly mystery program because of the reassurance of a predictable sense of closure provided by the final resolution of solving the crime Based on her research on elderly viewers responses to mystery programs Karen Riggs argues that the reassuring mystery presents a means to validate the self at a stage of life when one s identity is threatened in many ways by society as a whole p Michael Real argues that these ritual participations in the media culture serve to connect viewers to larger mythic dramas as well as other fans engaged in the same collective rituals Rituals involve viewers in a collective experience that serves to unify their allegiance to a group They engage viewers in the repetition of certain familiar narrative patterns They structure time and space in ways that provide a sense of order and defined roles Real cites the example of the soccer fans active engagement in viewing World Cup television broadcasts of soccer games Real draws a comparison between the rituals of the Balinese cockfight as described by Clifford Geertz and sports fans participation with media sports First both the cockfight and sports provide double meanings and metaphor that reach out to other aspects of social life Second both are elaborately organized with written rules and umpires Third betting plays a major role in each Fourth violence heightens the drama of each Fifth the presence of status hierarchies surpasses money in importance in the event with corporate and political elites assuming central roles Sixth each of the two the cockfight and the media sporting event makes nothing happen neither produces goods or directly affects the welfare of the people p By perceiving viewers responses as part of a larger ritual activity students may understand how viewing is driven by larger cultural purposes For example analysis of television sports viewing found five basic dimensions associated with purposes for viewing Wenner Gantz Five basic dimensions emerged from analysis of the viewers responses A primary motive was a fanship dimension and the desire to thrill in victory p A learning dimension p had to do with acquiring information about the teams and players A release dimension refers to the opportunity to let loose or get psyched up p A companionship dimension p has to do with the use of sports to share time with friends and family And a filler dimension relates to the use of sports viewing to kill time p While these objects or purposes overlap they suggest that understanding different objects and purposes requires an understanding of the activity in which viewers are engaged Defining class gender and racial identities Audiences also use their participation with media to defining class gender and racial identities By adopting certain stances associated with the practices and discourses portrayed in certain texts audiences align themselves with certain class gender and racial identities In his analysis of the television production professional wrestling Jenkins posits that the staging of a melodramatic encounter between the good guy who ultimately seeks revenge on and overcomes the trickery of the underhanded villainous bad guy is a genre tool that is highly appealing to a working-class male audience Vicarious participation in this drama allows males to confront their own feelings of vulnerability their own frustrations at a world which promises them patriarchal authority but which is experienced through relations of economic subordination WWF wrestling offers a utopian alternative to this situation allowing a movement from victimization toward mastery p In her study of female adolescents responses to the popular television program Beverly Hills McGinley found that the females rarely challenged the program s predominate narrative of employing a range of practices associated with being attractive to males Through their talk about the characters appearance and actions they defined their own beliefs about gender identity in ways that were consistent with the program s traditional consumerist values As McGinley noted talk about fictional characters and situations both produces and makes possible certain ways of being in the world and relating to others certain identities and the same talk conceals and closes off other possibilities p They perceived themselves as experts on these topics and gained pleasure and status from sharing their expertise She found that never did they question the media definition of pretty or their own unproblematic equating of appearance and identity p They accepted the show s invitation to foreground appearance then enthusiastically cycled that way of attending to female identity back toward their own lives p The females in the study defined a virtual community through their relationships with the characters As viewers constructed a community with the characters as they drew connections and disjunctions between the characters personalities and their own new meanings accrued to those traits that gave viewers importance new ways to attend to their own lives p The females achieved status through responding in ways that demonstrated their expertise about the social practices of dating as portrayed in the program As McGinley notes They constructed a pleasurable community with which they could be experts and positioned themselves as authors of the female identity they constructed p One new media ethnography project that is starting up as of summer involves an analysis of audience response to online discussions of and the integration of Oxygen within viewers' everyday lives with the new Oxygen media organization material particularly their television broadcasts http www oxygen com The Oxygen Media Research Project http www hydrogenmedia ucsb edu will examine the ways in which audiences respond to the somewhat feminist-oriented content available on Oxygen Penley Parks Everett Audiences may also define their beliefs and attitudes associated with class identities through their responses to media texts Cheryl Reinertsen completed a project in which she analyzed a group of her adolescent daughter s female friends weekly viewing of two television programs Beverly Hills and Melrose Place These programs revolve around male female relationships fidelity marriage sex relationships in the workplace conflict resolution etc Cheryl observed the group discussions of the programs and interviewed various group members about their perceptions of the group meetings Based on her observations and interview transcripts she extracted a number of patterns in the group s responses to these programs She found that members applied their own beliefs and attitudes to judge the characters actions They liked Donna because she is nice and she doesn t do anything wrong Andrea because she doesn t care only about her clothes and appearance Billy because he is true and the most caring ideal and sensitive Jo because she is her own person and she stands up for herself Matt because he is a peacemaker and serves other people p They disliked Amanda because she is anorexic out for herself and ruthless and arrogant and Kimberly because she s a weakling p For Cheryl these judgments consistently reflected what she characterized as middle class assumptions about family work and sexual behavior They believed that the characters are often irresponsible in not being concerned with their education or future career For example in one episode of a female college student becomes engaged to an older man The group shared their displeasure with her decision to become engaged She likes him just because he s rich She should stay in college She s too young and Wait until her parents find out They will really be mad p For Cheryl these comments reflected a cultural model in which college age students should not be engaged because they are too young If they do get engaged they will drop out Education is important love can wait p Cheryl recognized the power of the group in shaping individual members responses Through sharing responses valued by their peers group members affirmed their allegiance to the group's shared beliefs related to the middle class values of her own home and community Aspects of racial identities also influence response In a study of African-American females responses to the film versions of The Color Purple Jacqueline Bobo found that despite Spielberg s uses of black stereotypes and criticisms of the film by reviewers particularly male reviewers the females empathized strongly with what they perceived to be the positive aspects of the film related to portrayals of strong female identities consistent with the daily lives of black females and their own history of viewing largely white actresses Bobo cites the example of one participant When I went to the movie I thought here I am I grew up looking at Elvis Presley kissing all these white girls I grew up listening to Tammy Tammy Tammy And it wasn t that I had anything projected before me on the screen to really give me something that I could grow up to be like Or even wanted to be Because I knew I wasn t Goldilocks you know and I had heard those stories all my life So when I go to the movie the first thing I said was God this is good acting And I liked that I felt a lot of pride in my Black brothers and sisters By the end of the movie I was totally emotionally drained The emotional things were all in the book but the movie just took every one of my emotions Toward the end when she looks up and sees her sister Nettie I had gotten some emotionally high at that point when she saw her sister when she started to call her name and to recognize who she was the hairs on my neck started to stick up I had never had a movie do that to me before p - Bobo notes that her participants positive reactions to the film reflects the process of interpellation the way in which the subject is hailed by the text it is the method by which ideological discourses constituted subjects and draw them into the text p Given black females experiences and their own ideological discourses the film evoked positive responses and led them to bracket out what may have been critical responses to some of the stereotyping in the film Media ethnographers are also interested in the relationship between media and audience response in different cultures throughout the world Ginsbury Abu-Lughod Larkin Kraidy Murphy For example when television first became available to Australian Aborigines they were not accustomed to the content of the programs the focus of a major cultural tension between their own and the White commercial cultural content of television Elizabeth Bird argues that media ethnography serves a valuable purpose in providing a complex perspective on audiences media participation and challenge some of the simplistic claims made about the overpowering effects of media on people demonstrations of audience activity can make us feel less helpless and more powerful p It is a mistake to conclude that all people all the time are in the vice-like grip of all media The pervasive talk of media saturation overlooks the more complex reality which is that people s attention is variable and selective it is indeed very difficult for most of use to live without some media but other media we can happily take or leave Similarly ethnographic research paints a more subtle and optimistic picture showing people who engage enthusiastically with some messages while letting much wash over them and spending much of their time loving caring and sparring with each other p Methods for Conducting Media Ethnographies General ethnographic methods In conducting these studies students draw on some of the methods used in qualitative or ethnographic research on methods to study social contexts or sites Glesne and Peshkin s Becoming Qualitative Researchers Longman is a readable introduction appropriate for even high school students Bruhn and Jankowski A Handbook Of Qualitative Methodologies For Mass Communication Research and Lindlof Qualitative Communication Research Methods contains discussions of methods specific to qualitative research on response to media For a glossary of terms used in ethnographic research http www fieldworking com library fieldwords html For a discussion of general methods of different types of ethnography http pages cpsc ucalgary ca saul amy ethnography html For a discussion of methods for studying places or institutions employed in the very useful first year college composition textbook Fieldworking Cheresi-Smith Sunstein http www fieldworking com http www fieldworking com library fieldurls html Street-level Youth Media young people using media to study community issues http streetlevel iit edu The May issue of Language Arts is devoted to articles on techniques for engaging students in ethnographic studies Folklore studies research on local folklore is related to media ethnography in that it examines the ways in which local social practices reflect the culture of a particular place or region American Folklore Society http www afsnet org American Folklife Center http www loc gov folklife American Memory Project http memory loc gov ammem CARTS Cultural Arts Resources for Folk Arts in Education http www carts org Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage http www folklife si edu Wisconsin Folks http arts state wi us Louisiana Voices An Educators Guide to Exploring our Communities and Traditions http www louisianavoices org For further reading on general ethnographic fieldwork methods with students Beach R Finders M Students as ethnographers Guiding alternative research projects English Journal - Campano G Dancing across borders Creating community in a diverse urban classroom http kml carnegiefoundation org users gcampano index html Dunbar-Odom D Speaking back with authority Students as ethnographers in the research writing class In V Balseter M H Kells Eds Attending to the margins Writing researching and teaching on the front lines pp - Portsmouth NH Boynton-Cook Egan-Robertson A Bloome D Eds Students as researchers of culture and language in their own communities Cresskill NJ Hampton Press Pfitzner A Preparing students to become invested members of their community http kml carnegiefoundation org gallery spfitzner Sinor J Huston M The role of ethnography in the post-process writing classroom Teaching English in the Two-Year College - Wolk E Pio Pico student researchers participatory action research From classroom to community Transforming teaching and learning http kml carnegiefoundation org gallery ewolk For further reading on general ethnography methods Emerson R Fretz R Shaw L Writing ethnographic fieldnotes Chicago University of Chicago Press Fetterman D Ethnography Step-by-step Thousand Oaks CA Sage Hammersley M Atkinson P Ethnography Principles in practice New York Routledge Schensul S Schensul J Lecompte M Essential ethnographic methods Observations interviews and questionnaires Lanham MD Rowman Littlefield Schensul J Lecompte M Designing and conducting ethnographic research Lanham MD Rowman Littlefield Silverman D Doing qualitative research Thousand Oaks CA Sage Van Mannen J Tales of the field On writing ethnography Chicago University of Chicago Press For further reading on audience research methods related to media see also Module Abercrombie N Longhurst B Audiences A sociological theory of performance and imagination Thousand Oaks CA Sage Berger A Media and communication research methods Thousand Oaks CA Sage Bird E The audience in everyday life Living in a media world New York Routledge Brooker W Jermyn D Eds The audience studies reader New York Routledge Dickinson R Harindranath R Linne O Eds Approaches to audience A reader New York Oxford University Press Dochartaigh N The Internet research handbook A practical guide for students and researchers in the social sciences Thousand Oaks CA Sage Goldstein J Ed Why we watch The attractions of violent entertainment New York Oxford University Press Gunter B Media research methods Thousand Oaks CA Sage Hay J Grossberg L Wartella E The audience and its landscape Boulder CO Westview Press Hine C Virtual ethnography New York Sage Jensen K B Ed A handbook of media and communication research Qualitative and quantitative methodologies New York Routledge Jones S Ed Doing Internet research Critical issues and methods for examining the Net Thousand Oaks CA Sage Lindlif T R Shatzer M J Media ethnography in virtual space Strategies limits and possibilities Journal of Broadcasting Electronic Media - Mahin D Ethnographic research for media studies London Arnold Mann C Stewart F Internet communication and qualitative research A handbook for researching online Thousand Oaks CA Sage Markham A N Life online Researching real experience in virtual space Walnut Creek CA Altamira Press Means Coleman R R Ed Say it loud African American audiences media and identity New York Routledge Morley D Home Territories Media Mobility and Identity London Routledge Riggs K Mature audiences Television and the elderly New Brunswick NJ Rutgers Univ Press Ruddock A Understanding audiences Theory and method Thousand Oaks CA Sage Seiter E Television and new media audiences New York Oxford Univ Press Tulloch J Watching the TV audience Theory and method in reception studies New York Oxford Univ Press Stokes J How to do media and cultural studies Thousand Oaks CA Sage Wicks R H Understanding audiences Mahwah NJ Erlbaum The following are some types of media texts students could study Computer video games Students participate in a range of different types of computer video games In shooter games such as Quake Doome and others players use various weapons to destroy their opponents Google video games http directory google com Top Games Video Games News and Reviews In other on-line games such as Sim City Populous and Alpha Centauri students are involved in constructing different aspects of community housing transportation shopping business schooling waste disposal day care etc For a description of -released The Sims OnLine http www msnbc com news asp cb - b One player Melissa Maerz in an article in City Pages described her experience playing The Sims Online Released last December the multiplayer game is a chance to play The Sims with hundreds of thousands of other people around the world You construct a virtual you--choose a haircut and an outfit select a hometown find a house to live in and roommates who are just psychotic enough to live with you And then you try to live the best cyberlife you can Keeping your front yard in shape buying a bigger television for the family boosting your popularity by chatting up your neighbors--these are the ways you keep up with the virtual Joneses There is no dragon to kill no world to save no magic mushroom to eat no points to earn no winning the game--just bills to pay toilets to clean and a job to work every day until you die http www citypages com databank article asp In web-based computer games players participate with other players with varied abilities and expertise a characteristic that mirrors the reality of lived worlds Within this social hierarchy players advance as they learn new practices and strategies In studying these games students may examine participants perceptions of differences and similarities between playing the game as a virtual reality and experiences in similar lived-world realities Game Research http www game-research com Game Culture http www game-culture com The Education Arcade http www educationarcade org Game Journals blog about games http www gamejournals com Game Studies research on game participation http www gamestudies org index html WomenGamers http www womengamers com Digital Games Research Association http www digra org For a study of female computer games http culturalpolicy uchicago edu conf papers jenkins html DVD Gamers Clans Mods and a Cultural Revolution documentary on gamers http www thegamingproject com Issue of M-C Media and Culture on games http www media-culture org au archive html game Ahuna C Online Game communities are social in nature http switch sjsu edu v n articles cindy html Assignment conduct an ethnography of a New Media artifact http mdcm arts unsw edu au s - ethnog explained htm Fan members clubs Students could also study various types of fans or fan clubs organized around television programs films rock groups sports teams or memorabilia Being a fan involves active participation and knowledge of a particular media text or event as displayed through logos photos clothes etc For example an avid professional football team fan may attend events prior to the game wear certain costumes associated with the team actively follow information about players and games and perform in certain ways during the game For example during the game fans may engage in a whole series of different ritualistic cheers or chants All of this points to new alternative ways of audience participation with television shows Some shows actually encourage and foster audience participation of web sites linked to shows Brooker and Jermyn cite the example of a British BBC drama series Attachments in which the characters participated in a web site that actually existed and could be accessed by audience members Attachments is a drama series about a fledgling dotcom company run by married couple Mike and Luce and the problems the team has in setting up and maintained a lifestyle and music site called Seethru http www seethru co uk Viewers of the early episodes who typed in the Seethru URL they glimpsed during the show were often surprised to discover that the site actually existed a simulacrum of the on-screen dotcom with no hint that Mike and Luce might be fictional characters Designed to mirror the events of the TV programme Seethru enabled viewers to enter the world of Attachments reader the articles discussed in that week s episodes mail and get response from the show s protagonists watch unseen material from the programme on webcams and follow up MP or internet links recommended by the fictional team p Similarly Brooker and Jermyn note that the various sites associated with audience participation with Dawson s Creek provided viewers with additional information about the program The Summer Diaries feature lets a Dawson s Creek fan read her favorite characters personal journal while Capeside net http www capeside net presents a detailed simulation of the show s fictional setting complete with fake banner ads and college magazine articles written by Dawson and his friends A more recent addition to the site allows visitors to explore a mocked-up version of the characters desktops letting them root through Dawson s deleted mail file and discover secret correspondence that never came to light on the TV show another gives the visitor access to scribbled notes supposedly written by the characters and passed under the table during their college classes The page s slogan reads Think you know everything that s going on in Capeside High Think again p Brooker and Jermyn conducted an analysis of audience s postings and weblog interactions on the Seethru site finding that the participants were engaged in a far more active interactive mode that the typical television audience The went online to Debate its flaws emailed its chracters watched clips that were never shownon TV and wandered off onto other sites following the fictional team s links and recommendations p Web-based fan clubs are organized around highly interactive audience exchanges transparent navigational links and hybridity of texts images sounds links or references Hocks Members of the Felicity Fan Club share experiences with the discontinued program http www sonnybrenda com BFO participate with the show s official web site http www felicitypage com home html Media ethnography studies fan participation on these sites are themselves becoming increasingly hypertextual framing reports of their data through web-based links Mary Hocks cites the example of an online dissertation research report by Christine Boese a study of the fan culture of the television series Xena Warrior Princess http www nutball com dissertation index htm This research report contains narrative constructions of program episodes surveys photos Web sites related to the show data on fan conferences and analysis of fan responses Moreover response of visitors own responses to the site have been added to the site Boese uses this Web-based tool to demonstrate a primary finding how female fans developed a sense of agency and social empowerments through sharing responses to the lesbian feminist themes portrayed on the show and in the chat exchanges These materials are linked together in a highly interactive way so that users themselves experience their own reflective sense of responding in a different mode other than simply reading a print report In what could be described as an infinite expansion of response research the users were adding their own meanings to the site and learning in the process As Hocks notes all of this challenges readers familiar mode of reading by drawing explicit and sometimes playful attention to both the discontinuities and the continuities between older and newer forms of reading writing and viewing information p A key element of the Xena Warrior Princess program are the highly postmodern stances towards mythological and literary texts that serve as the basis for the storylines characters symbols and themes in the program For links to the mythological intertextual links see http www xenite org xor Mythology Web-site links such as the Whoosh fan magazine http whoosh org provide funs with a lot of articles about background information on intertextual links Gwenllian-Jones notes that the journal carries essays on a diverse range of topics Boudicca Alexander the Great battle strategy ancient weaponry ethical and thematic issues hero figures food and drink geography fauna and flora ancient civilizations spiritual beliefs comparison between Zena and a variety of other fictional historical or mythological figures and so on p This demonstrates the ways in Web-based media serve as a useful basis for understanding intertextual links to these texts by fostering a lot of hypertextual connections related to participation with television For other Xena sites http www oxygen com xena http www xena com http www xenite org xor home shtml http www klio net XENA Television or rock band fan clubs are organized around on-line participation in which members assume certain roles for example related to reviewing previous shows sharing information speculating about future shows or even rewriting the texts to create alternative plots Soap opera fans displaying pictures of soap opera actors actresses in their bedrooms wrote letters to the actors actresses or attended conferences to meet the actors actresses practices that served to mark their identities as avid fans Harrington Bielby Star Trek fan club members employed video editing to construct their own versions of Star Trek programs through editing clips from programs Jenkins Participation in these clubs require a high level of active participation in keeping current about the show or band as well as events surrounding the show or band Star Trek fan clubs activities http members aol com treknexus trekcon htm For further reading on Star Trek fans Irwin W Love G Eds The best of the best of Trek From the Magazine for Star Trek Fans New York New American Library Kozinets R V Utopian enterprise Articulating the meanings of Star Trek's culture of consumption Journal of Consumer Research - http www kellogg northwestern edu faculty Kozinets htm papers htm Staffford N Ed Trekkers True stories by fans for fans New York ECW PRESS Tulloch J Science fiction audiences Doctor Who Star Trek and their fans New York Routledge Researchers also examine discussion forums to determine responses to specific films such as an analysis of discussions of much anticipated previews for the Lord of the Rings films Chin B Gray J One ring to rule them all Pre-viewers and pre-texts of the Lord of the Rings films Intensities The Journal of Cult Media http www cult-media com issue Achingray htm or on http www lordoftherings net the lotr and lord OT rings movie lists on Yahoo Groups groups yahoo com and the message board of another website http www tolkien-movies com which moved its forum from Yahoo Groups to Ezboard http www ezboard com For television program fan clubs http www fandom tv Soap opera fan clubs http soaps about com cs fanclubs http www soapcentral com ps fanclubs php Shannon Delaney Dominant Rock Fan Theory and Power in Hard Rock Music http www uwm edu People sdelaney rockmytheoryfan htm Article on a B fan club http www citypages com databank article asp Nicolas Gipe s study of a rock band s fan club http www geocities com gipe peacemakers html Bale J Virtual fandoms Futurescapes of football http www efdeportes com efd jbale htm Pradstaller F Virtual proximity Creating connection in an online fan Community Gnovis Journal of Communication Culture and Technology http gnovis georgetown edu article cfm articleID For further reading on audience research on fans Baym N K Tune in Log on Soaps fandom and online Community Thousand Oaks CA Sage Bury R Stories for boys Ggrls Female fans read The X-Files Popular Communication - Internet chat rooms Students also participate in on-line chat rooms within AOL or other sites as well as MOOs Multi-User Dimension Object Oriented a subgroup of MUDs multi-user interactive fantasy games or Blogging For on-line Cybercultures http www socio demon co uk home html Blogging other links http www corante com bottomline articles - shtml Dissertation research studies Georgetown University Center for Communication Culture Technology http cct georgetown edu thesesSearch cfm In these chat rooms participants employ short-hand acronyms or lingo in order to keep pace with the fast-moving conversation for example AYT Are you there YIAH Yes I am here Pmfji Pardon me for jumping in BRB Be right back PG Parent nearby GTG Got to go CYA See ya POOF Gone left the chat room Ruane In chat-room conversations participants often have no knowledge of others real-world identities defined by gender class race age or disability They may therefore adopt totally different identities males may pose as females and visa versa in order to carry on virtual romantic relationships without any of the consequences or accountability associated with lived-world relationships Turkle Based on analysis language use in a Cybersphere MOO chat space Angela Dudfield http www readingonline org articles art index asp HREF articles dudfield index html noted the following Language use in this text is highly complex and sophisticated It is both physical letters on the screen as it is in books and fleeting and ethereal like speech a strange middle ground between written and oral sensibilities Young Users interact by talking with one another but that talk is talk written down What occurs in this form of communication is an interface between oral and written language with its own unique textual and linguistic features The text genre is also complex It is similar to traditional science fiction and its field one of surviving in a postapocalyptic world is realized by the use of lexical items common to that form Yet unlike traditional print the descriptions of the characters are not explicitly woven into the text -- they are prepared by users in advance and are accessed by individual users and transformed by the character's creator when required or desired This process is also applied to descriptions of clothing locations on Cybersphere and various created objects Successful interaction in this environment requires use of narrative descriptions dialogue performative actions labels lists and abbreviations all within the context of the theme and genre of the MOO and all interwoven in nonlinear fashion Participants are in a constant flux of reading and writing to co-construct the text in imaginative innovative ways Each encounter is unique since the way it takes shape depends on which characters happen to be logged on how often those characters have interacted previously their own individual personalities both in and out of character and the nature of their in-character and out-of-character relationships within the community One positive aspect of the absence of physical markers is that adolescents intimidated by nonverbal markers of appearance or physical behaviors in face-to-face conversation no longer need be concerned about these markers In their study of Sam a -year-old female participant in AOL Instant Message IM interactions Lewis and Fabos found that she experimented with a range of voices in order to build social ties with both her friends and with strangers In talking with her close friend Sam adopted what she described as a softer and sweeter tone while giving shorter more pointed answers to peers with whom she did not want to talk She also mimicked the language of another participant who accidentally got onto her buddy list to maintain the connection Sam This girl she thinks I m somebody else She thinks I m one of her friends and she s like Hey and I m like Hi and I start playing along with her She thinks that I m one of her school friends She doesn t know it s me She wrote to me twice now Bettina So she s this person that you re lying to almost Sam Yeah you just play along It s fun sometimes It s comical Because she ll say something like Oh a boy did this and we re going to the ski house or whatever and I m like Oh God and like and I ll just reply to her I ll use the same exclamations where she uses them and I ll try to talk like they do Lewis and Fabos p Sam and her close friend Karrie both find that they are less socially awkward in IM chat than in face-to-face conversations particularly with boys Sam You get more stuff out of them Yeah They ll tell you a lot more cause they feel stupid in front of you They won t just sit there and Bettina So it s a different medium and they can test themselves a bit more and Sam So they know how we react and they don t feel stupid cause they don t have to think about the next thing to say I can smile using an emoticom a visual icon representing an emotion or I can say something to them Lewis and Fabos p You could therefore study specific aspects of participants conversations in these chat rooms related to their construction of identity varied social roles and relationships Through experimenting with language Sam is developing confidence in employing different language styles which may or may not transfer to her ability to express herself in lived worlds Nick Karl studied the online community of one chat room and emphasized the awareness of language gained by participants we judge each other by the way we act and by the way we express ourselves This is important because it is the basis for social interaction online On-line chat-room exchanges certainly provide you with a ready unobtrusive access to public sharing of responses to a range of media texts On the other hand rather than assume that you are studying seemingly authentic exchanges of responses you need to recognize as Matt Hills warns in citing the transparency fallacy p that these responses are mediated by the Internet technology which is shaping the practices of social exchange The transparency fallacy seduces critics into supposing that the Internet can unproblematically unveil those cultural processes and mechanisms which cultural studies has been positioning for the past two decades It is as if the cyberspace ethnographer s own desire to attain the position of a lurker invisible and supposedly all-seeing overwhelms or displaces any interest in the technological social and historical processes through which this invisibility has itself been constructed as a specific nodal point within mediation p Hills argues that the chat-room technology creates a different form of cultural performance that needs to be recognized as a performance mediated by the conventions and norms operating in chat-room exchanges as well as the commodification of chat rooms associated with the promotion and marketing of the text He describes this technological mediation as the serialization of the fan audience itself p that creates a second-order version of an audience s off-line experiences or stances Another interesting topic has to do with how participants perceive others identities in online chat rooms based primarily on language use and style as well as how do they determine others social agendas and sincerity For research on social perceptions in online sites The MIT Media Lab Social Media Group The Sociable Media Group investigates issues concerning society and identity in the networked world We address such questions as How do we perceive other people on-line What does a virtual crowd look like How do social conventions develop in the networked world Our emphasis is on design we build experimental interfaces and installations that explore new forms of social interaction in the mediated world http smg media mit edu Online interviewing can be difficult so you need to prepare your interview questions carefully and know how to engage participants in answering those questions For a discussion of methods of online interviewing Crichton S Kinash S Virtual ethnography Interactive interviewing online as method Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology http www cjlt ca content vol cjlt - art- html And you need to address the ethical research issue of studying online participants without their permission a violation of research on human subjects rules it is therefore important to request permission of participants in an initial posting Bird Barber A key consideration is whether the site is a public site as opposed to simply your own private e-mails For a discussion of what constitutes public Beau Lebens Ethnographic Ethics http www dentedreality com au media notes net -assignment- pdf Research on Chat-Room Interactions Bibliography on chat communication http www chat-bibliography de Nancy Arnett The electronic mail paradox http www student richmond edu nannett public html projects Ethnography pdf Baird E Ain't gotta do nothin but be brown and die - Introduction to the Internet and an American Indian Chat Room CMC Magazine http www december com cmc mag jul baird html Cerratto T W rn Y Chatting to learn and learning to chat in collaborative virtual environments M C A Journal of Media and Culture http moby curtin edu au ausstud mc learning html Chen L Davies A Elliot R Gender and identity play on the Net Raising men for fun http www ex ac uk sobe Research DiscussionPapersMan Man Man pdf Chenault B Developing interpersonal and emotional relationships via computer-mediated communication CMC Magazine http www december com cmc mag may chenault html de la Harpe R Mackenzie A Chat rooms as an academic teaching technique http citte nu ac za papers id pdf Lieberman J Stovall I Strategies for using chat as a communication tool http as ipfw edu tohe presentations lieberman htm Murphy K Collins M Communication conventions in institutional electronic chats First Monday http www firstmonday dk issues issue murphy Pargman D The fabric of virtual reality - courage rewards and death in an adventure mud M C A Journal of Media and Culture http www api-network com mc mud html Rintel E S Mulholland J Pittnam J First things first Internet relay chat openings Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication http www ascusc org jcmc vol issue rintel html Tyners B Reynolds L Bennett D Race-related Behaviors in Monitored and Unmonitored Chat Rooms http www digital kids net modules php op modload name Downloads file index req getit lid Organizations resource sites focusing on research on audience use of the Internet Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication http www ascusc org jcmc First Monday http www firstmonday dk The Journal of Virtual Environments http www brandeis edu pubs jove Cybersociology http www socio demon co uk magazine magazine html Journal of Online Behavior http www behavior net JOB Association of Internet Researchers http aoir org The Internet Studies Center http www isc umn edu Center for Digital Discourse and Culture http www cddc vt edu index html Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies http www com washington edu rccs Cybergeography Research http www cybergeography org Cyberanthropology org http nt vs netbenefit co uk Cyberculture identity and gender resources http fragment nl resources Net Culture Site http creativehat com public html netculture htm Association of Internet Researchers Listserves on Internet Research http www aoir org list php For further reading on Internet audience research Ayers M McCaughey M Eds Cyberactivism Online activism in theory and practice New York Routledge Bell D Kennedy B Eds The cybercultures reader New York Routledge Chayko M Connecting How we form social bonds and communities in the Internet age Albany NY SUNY Press Flanagan M Booth A Reload Rethinking women cyberculture Cambridge MA MIT Press Hawisher G Selfe C Global literacies and the World-Wide Web New York Routledge Holeton R Composing cyberspace Identity community and knowledge in the electronic age Columbus OH McGraw-Hill Jones S G Ed Cybersociety Revisiting computer-mediated communication and community Thousand Oaks CA Sage Katz J E R E Rice Social consequences of Internet use Access involvement and interaction Cambridge MA The MIT Press Klotz R J The politics of Internet communication Lanham MD Rowman Littlefield Kolko B E Nakamura L Rodman G B Eds Race in cyberspace New York Routledge Lueg C Fisher D Eds From Usenet to cowebs Interacting with social information spaces Readings in Cscw London Springer Verlag McCaughey M Ayers M D Eds Cyberactivism Online activism in theory and practice New York NY Routledge Miller D Slater D The Internet An ethnographic approach Oxford UK Berg http ethnonet gold ac uk Nakamura L Cybertypes Race ethnicity and identity on the Internet New York Routledge Rheingold H The virtual community Homesteading on the electronic frontier Cambridge MA The MIT Press Smith M A Kollock P Eds Communities in cyberspace New York Routledge Sudweeks F McLaughlin M Rafaeli S Eds Network and netplay Virtual groups on the Internet Menlo Park CA AAAI Press Turkle S Life on the screen Identity in the age of the Internet London Weidenfeld Nicholson Wardrip-Fruin N Montfort N Eds The new media reader Cambridge MA The MIT Press http www newmediareader com Werry C Mowbray M Eds Online communities Commerce community action and the virtual university Upper Saddle River NJ Prentice Hall Talk-radio shows Many of call-in morning radio program shows geared for adolescents consist of shock jock talk-radio in which hosts engage listeners in hot-button provocative topics only to subject them to ridicule or challenge as a form of entertainment Or the sports talk-show often consists of callers sharing technical expertise about players rules and stats These radio talk shows serve as a virtual world of conversation in that students could potentially call in and participate in a conversation but unlike lived world conversations they have little or no control over the direction of that conversation Hosts may marginalize trivialize or dismiss guests comments or create an adversarial stance that reflects what Deborah Tannen has described as a culture of argument Tannen Many male hosts of these programs also demean women in an attempt to maintain a male audience Students may contrast the topics conversational modes and roles on these shows again as with chat-room talk comparing it to lived-world talk For links to various radio talk-shows http dir yahoo com News and Media Radio Programs Ruohomaa E Radio as a domestic medium Towards new concepts of the radio medium http www nordicom gu se reviewcontents ncomreview ncomreview radio Ruohomaa pdf For further reading Barnard S Studying radio London Arnold Fitzgerald R Housley W Identity categorisation and sequential organisation the sequential and categorial flow of identity in a radio phone-in Discourse and Society - Hester S Fitzgerald R Category predicate and contrast some organisational features in a radio talk show In P Jalbert Ed Studies in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis No Oxford MD University Press of America Hutchby I Confrontation Talk arguments asymmetries and power on talk radio Mahwah NJ Erlbaum Scannell P Ed Broadcast talk Thousand Oaks CA Sage Thornborrow J Questions control and the organisation of talk in calls to a radio phone-in Discourse Studies Tolson A Ed Television talk shows Discourse performance spectacle Mahwah NJ Erlbaum Teen e-zines Web pages Students are also participate in the context of various teen e-zines or Web pages geared for adolescents for example Blast Online www blastmag com Feed hip hop http www feedstop com gURL http www gURL com Politics teens http www freewebs com politics teens Everytn com http www everytn com Get Help http www geocities com SouthBeach Tidepool Teenink www teenpaper org Grip Magazine www gripvision com Teenmag com www teenmag com Teenreads com The Book Bag information about young adult novels authors and entertainers www teenreads com Yo Youth Outlook issues of concern to adolescents www pacificnews org yo Wave www wavemag com In studying these e-zines or Web pages students may examine how these magazines or Web pages appeal to adolescent audiences and reasons for their interest or engagement One study of three female adolescents Guzzetti B Campbell S Duke C Irving J Understanding Adolescent Literacies A Conversation with Three Zinesters on readingonline org http www readingonline org newliteracies guzzetti Corgan Saundra and Jeanne self-selected pseudonyms as are the last names in the article byline are young women who have created three issues of the zine Burnt Beauty which includes a balanced mix of social justice issues liberal politics humor entertainment and reviews and personal reflections The girls both write and solicit others to write articles and poetry for the zine and they create backgrounds and illustrations for all pieces Saundra has also produced two issues of her own zine focused on music and entertainment During the interview the girls described the content and distribution of their zine their readers' reaction to it the zines they read themselves and the possibility of including zines in school-based literacy instruction Their discussion about the out-of-school literacy practice of zining lends insight into the multiliteracies of adolescents and the literacy practices young people engage in by choice Their remarks also demonstrate how adolescents use and develop literacy skills both to form and to represent their identities Insights gained from these girls' discussion can help teachers facilitate literacy instruction and assignments that are motivating and meaningful to students Another study by Barbara Duncan and Kevin Leander Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Literacy Consumerism and Paradoxes of Position on gURL com also on readingonline org http www readingonline org electronic elec index asp HREF electronic duncan index html examined the writing spaces created by two teenage girls Whispered Secrets and Honesty Web pages that reside within the gURL com online community a popular site for online teens Both Web pages were taken down from the site during the writing of this article While this textual space is an important new domain for young adolescents it contains both the seeds of resistance and a firmly-situated consumerist ideology in its everyday writing of the ordinary In the following we consider the contradictions and ironies of identity and literacy practice in such online spaces These contradictions are analyzed within the spaces created by the girls and also across the network that links gURL com to other consumer-oriented Web sites For collections of zines produced primarily by females Knobel Lankshear http www zinebook com http www zinos com http www sleazefest com sleaze http www meer net johnl e-zine-list http altzines tripod com index t html For further reading on female zines Bayerl K Mags zines and gURLs The exploding world of girls publications Women s Studies Quarterly - - Comstock M Grrrl zine networks Re-composing spaces of authority gender and culture Journal of Advanced Composition - Driscoll C Girls Feminine adolescence in popular culture cultural theory New York Columbia University Press Drive Slowly Appear Quickly Exhibit at Space Gallery in Philadelphia PA http www mobilivre org slides slide html Duncan B J Cyberfeminism zines n Grrls Identity and technology Cyberfeminism in Online Grrl Zines http www students uiuc edu b-duncan zines html Green E Adam A Virtual gender Technology consumption and identity New York Routledge McRobbie A Shut up and dance Youth culture and changing modes of femininity In M Shiach Ed Feminism and cultural studies New York Oxford University Press Riot Grrrl Retrospective EMP collection http www emplive com explore riot grrrl evolution asp Robbins T From girls to Grrrlz A history of women's comics from teens to zines San Francisco Chronicle Books Schilt K I ll resist with every inch and every breath Girls and zine making as a form of resistance Youth Society - Scott K Girls need modems Cyberculture and women s Ezines http www stumptuous com mrp html Stern S R Virtually speaking Girls self-disclosure on the WWW Women s Studies in Communication - Music clubs Audiences also participant in shared community experiences in music clubs and rock concerts through dance singing along or Karaoke singing In an analysis of adolescents clubbing in rock clubs Ben Malbon examines how participation in highly sensuous dancing in the club creates an alternative sense of space Dancing can provide a release from many of the accepted social norms and customs of the civilized space spaces of everyday life such as social distance conformity and reserve or disattention Dancing might be seen as an embodied statement by the clubber that they will not be dragged down by the pressures of work the speed and isolation of the city the chilly interpersonal relations one finds in many of the city s social spaces p Malbon noted that in congregating together in large numbers in the club adolescents created a tribe-like sense of communal ritual participation through their dance and dress In the dark lighting they perceived each other in a different manner And within the continuous pervasive sound of the music they experience a mesmerizing sense of losing it or losing yourself p Sociology of Rock Music http condor depaul edu dweinste rock Assignment Studying Jerry Garcia fans http courses washington edu anthr secondwritingassignment doc For further reading Berger H M Metal rock and jazz Perception and the Phenomenology of Musical Experience Middletown CT Wesleyan University Press Shank B Dissonant identities The rock n roll scene in Austin Texas Middletown CT Wesleyan University Press Thornton S Club cultures Music media and subcultural capital Cambridge UK Polity Press Sports events rock concerts The contemporary sports event rock concert is highly mediated through a range of multi-media stimuli designed to continually entertain audiences through music commercial messages images lights sounds color digital productions video screens reruns games etc Students could study how audiences at football baseball basketball games wrestling shows NASCAR races and rock concerts are continually positioned by the multi-media stimuli and how they react to this positioning To some degree audiences may have simply grown accustomed to continually being entertained throughout a sports event or concert Students could also examine the intertextual links in the promotions of commercial agendas particularly media outlets which use sports events and rock concerts to promote their image for example radio stations sponsoring half-time contests And by observing and interviewing veteran versus novice fans they could examine how fans are actually socialized through various cues prompts and messages to become active experienced fans who participate with the crowd in joint cheers and events Central to understanding fan social practices is the concept of performance interaction with other fans working together in a collaborative manner William Beemman applies performance theory to note how an audience is constructed by a performer which in turn influences the performance of that performer An audience whether it be people or one person sets conditions for the performer to deal with The performance event is in any case always an act of co-creation between performer and audience The situation is complicated in considering ritual where the audience may also be the performers Funny audiences are those whose ensemble work with performers falls outside the predicted bounds p Beemman argues that these performances are learned and executed in a ritual-like manner Richard Schechner describes all performance as twice behaved performative--twice behaved--rehearsed--prepared--done again--with no clear original --behavior In a set performance routine much of the performance routine is boilerplate because it has been done so often and with so many people that the probability of predictable shape in ensemble work with the audience is very great They will provide a predictable range of reactions to elements of the performance p For reading about Richard Schechner s performance theory Schechner R Performance studies An introduction New York Routlege Fans may also gain pleasure from identifying with certain sports stars as well as becoming caught up in for example the drama of revenge at a professional wrestling match associated with their own real-world conflicts In her study of television wrestling fans Barbara Burke notes that Wrestling fans said that real meaning could be found in actions that told about life struggles using understandable tensions which resonated with their everyday experiences and which offered conclusions and relief The shows were offered as displays viewers could use to construct ideas about masculinity and men s lives The wrestling programs contained stories about morality duty loyalty and honor Fair play and hard work were balanced against opportunity and tricks with a logic and value system specific to wrestling fans but nonetheless consistent and recognizable Most importantly the groups of viewers commented once assumptions about evaluating realism could be discarded they were able to identify with characters and find pleasure in wrestling performances p Defining fan identity is also related to adopting discourses of race class and gender For example James Todd a graduate student at University of California Santa Cruz studied the NASCAR race track fan culture by observing fans social practices particularly in terms of how it reifies their identities as White often working-class Southerners Emmons M June A question of culture UC-Santa Cruz student examines the drive behind NASCAR fans' loyalty San Jose Mercury News http www mercurynews com mld mercurynews sports htm c Example of one fan s observation of the culture of a NASCAR race What I saw being the main difference of culture between the infield and bleachers was the amount of Money spent at the track From the president's suite and all the infield suites the owners RV drivers RV there is a lot of money spent on a race weekend The cost of being in the bleachers is chicken feed to the infield The infield pays for tickets plus their camping costs at the track Just as you would buy tickets to a Baseball game one of the cultural differences is that they do not have camping or motor homes at the Stadium What I mean by that is there are places to camp which there are none at the baseball games and yes I do know there are tailgate parties in the parking lot of the stadiums This event is setup for more than one day of racing It is a weekend of racing culture everyone their to have fun whether it rains or shines The owners and drivers are out to win millions at the races and they hope there sponsors will fund their existence at the track What sponsors get out of it is advertising The sponsors have their Logo on different places like the hood which is usually the main sponsor The logo that is closer to the front of the car is the car manufacture Ford Chevrolet Pontiac and this year now also Dodge Their are banners all over the track and commercials about the different products are abundant when the race is broadcasted on TV The coverage is now even more intense now that FX and Fox have been covering the race broadcast For the sound enthusiast Fox has Crank it up in surround sound which is Fantastic the cars rip past you in your living room All of the cultures that exists in the infield bleacher or even at home can get a good sense of racing No matter where you are going to the track is just an experience you will not forget Field ethnography http hometown aol com macg dvd myhomepage Page html NASCAR http www nascar com index html Family of NASCAR fans fan site http groups msn com FamilyOfNascarFans Wright J Fixin' to git One fan s love affair with NASCAR s Winston Cup Durham NC Duke University Press read update since the publication http www dukeupress edu books fixintogit Joel Miller A Study of the Social Interaction of the Oxy Men s Soccer Team analysis of gender role perceptions http faculty oxy edu tobin anth sp workshop ethnography joel html For further reading Brown A Ed Fanatics Power identity and fandom in football New York Routlege Carney G Ed Fast food stock cars and rock-n-roll place and space in American pop culture Lanham MD Rowman Littlefield Cavicchi D Tramps like us Music and meaning among Springsteen fans New York Oxford University Press DeNora T Music in everyday life New York Cambridge University Press Jenkins H Never trust a snake ' WWF wrestling as masculine melodrama In A Baker and T Boyd Eds Out of bounds Sports media and the politics of identity Bloomington Indiana University Press cited also in Module Maze S Professional wrestling Sport and spectacle Oxford MS Mississippi University Press Queenan J True believers The tragic inner life of sports fans New York Henry Holt Real M Exploring media culture A guide Thousand Oaks CA Sage chapter on Super Bowl fans Vass J Cheering for self An ethnography of the basketball event New York iUniverse com Theme or amusement parks shopping malls Theme or amusement parks such as Disney World Disneyland http disney go com park bases destinations flash index html http disneyworld disney go com waltdisneyworld index bhcp For a video clip of the Education Media Foundation video on Disney http www mediaed org videos CommercialismPoliticsAndMedia MickeyMouseMonopoly The Flags chain http www sixflags com Universal Orlando http themeparks universalstudios com orlando website index html Camp Snoopy http www campsnoopy com These parks attempt to simulate realities but often in highly controlled artificial ways As visitors to Disney World a group of academics The Project on Disney noted that while they were being told that they were entering into a magic set of virtual worlds their experiences were continually being positioned or mediated by a highly controlled environment As one of them noted The erasure of spontaneity is so great that the spontaneity itself has been programmed On the Jungle Cruise khaki-clad tour guides teasingly engage the visitors with their banter whose apparent spontaneity has been carefully scripted and painstakingly rehearsed Nothing is left to the imagination or the unforeseen p As visitors in these parks students could observe various attempts to simulate lived-world realities and their own reactions to any disparities between the simulation and these realities Shopping malls provide entertainment retail entertaining shoppers through participation in and with products in order to encourage them to buy those products The Mall of American contains various entertainment sites designed to attract shoppers to its stores http www mallofamerica com And the stores themselves actively engage shoppers in trying out products For example in sports outlets in the Mall of America shoppers can shoot baskets pucks or try out various products Students could conduct studies of their peers and or their own shopping practices in terms of what gives those practices meaning within the larger context of a consumption culture These practices are often social in that people shop together as a social activity They also construct their identities around not only the goods or brands they purchase but also their ability to employ certain shopping tactics or strategies i e being a saavy consumer or a bargin hunter Given the decline in public spaces for adolescents the mall is one of the few relatively safe sites for adolescents to congregate Students could also examine the larger issue of how adolescents are often monitored or controlled in shopping malls given the assumption that in a controlled environment these adolescents may seek to disrupt social norms by exhibiting deviant behavior They could examine the official and unofficial norms for appropriate practices operating in a mall how and who defines those norms and how they are enforced Course syllabus Susan Seizer Scripps College Malls Movies and Museums The Public Sphere in Modern America http www scrippscol edu dept anthro anth html Webquest Should Teens be Banned from Shopping Malls http coe west asu edu students dschoettlin webquest Webquest A Place to Advertise http www holton k ks us hms library midlib webquest html For further reading Campbell C Falk P The shopping experience Thousand Oaks CA Sage Farrell J One nation under goods Malls and the seductions of American shopping Washington DC Smithsonian Institute Press McDowell L Gender Identity and Place Understanding Feminist Geographies Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press Miller D Ed Shopping place and identity New York Routlege Pahl J Shopping malls and other sacred spaces Putting God in place New York Brazos Underhill P Call of the mall The author of Why We Buy on the geography of shopping New York Simon and Schuster Wrigley N Lowe M Reading retail A geographical perspective on retailing and consumption spaces London Arnold In studying these often homogenized places students could study the ways in which place or space is often mediated by media representations which shapes audiences participation in and responses to these places and spaces shopping malls rural suburban urban areas neighborhoods community centers schools houses tourist destinations etc For example as noted in Module the world of rural America is often represented in a larger negative manner W W Kellogg Foundation Study Perceptions of Rural America in the Media http www wkkf org pubs FoodRur MediaCoverage pdf From an ethnographic perspective the question is how audiences perceptions of place and space are influenced by media representations For example if audiences believe that casinos are places for entertaining fun fantasy experiences do they accept that representation and how does that representation influence their perceptions of gambling Students could also study the ways in which places and nature are represented and construction in films and literature in terms of how characters experiences are shaped by those representations and constructions an approach associated with place-based writing or ecocriticism Part of this interest in the influence of representations of place on people s practices stems from environmental concerns with how people perceive environmental destruction through global warming as portray in for example the science fiction film The Day After Tomorrow http www thedayaftertomorrow com Cross J What is Sense of Place http www western edu headwtrs Archives headwaters papers cross paper html O'Neill E The Dichotomy of Place and Non-Place in You've Got Mail http www brynmawr edu hart oneill g pdf Sacred Space Learning About and Creating Meaningful Public Spaces http www nytimes com learning teachers lessons friday html Perception of Place http www nationalgeographic com xpeditions lessons g place html The Evolution of Cultural Landscape http www nationalgeographic com xpeditions lessons g cultural html Explore the Spatial Patterns of Your Hometown http www nationalgeographic com xpeditions lessons g hometown html Cultural Symbols and the Characteristics of Place http www nationalgeographic com xpeditions lessons g symbols html Spaces and Places younger students http www getty edu artsednet resources Sampler b html Street as Method Teaching documentary and observation techniques http www xcp bfn org streetasmethod html Course on surburbia http www dickinson edu gill images suburbs pdf Lots of links on topics related to suburbia http cscl cla umn edu courses links html Soul of Los Angeles Project http www usc edu dept LAS religion online commonground Betti-Sue Hertz and Lydia Yee Urban Mythologies The Bronx Represented Since the http www brickhaus com amoore magazine bronx html Street-Level Youth Media Chicago youth study their neighborhoods http streetlevel iit edu Geo-literacy Forging New Ground http glef org php article php id Art key Document Durham Neighborhood Projects http cds aas duke edu docprojects durham ek powe html Exploring Your Community grades - http school discovery com lessonplans programs harlemdiary Webquest studying an urban neighborhood http www whitney org jacoblawrence resources webqst neighborhood html For further reading on place space in film literature Couldry N McCarthy A Eds MediaSpace Place scale and culture in a media age New York Routledge Davis M Ecology of Fear Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster New York Vintage Gauntlett D Video Critical Children the Environment and Media Power Urbana University of Illinois Press Hochman J Green Cultural Studies Nature in Film Novel and Theory Boise University of Idaho Press Ingram D Green Screen Environmentalism and Hollywood Cinema Exeter University of Exeter Press Lauter P From Walden Pond to Jurassic Park Activism Culture American Studies Durham Duke University Press Low S M Lawrence-Zuniga D Eds The Anthropology of Space and Place Locating Culture New York Blackwell MacDonald S The Garden in the Machine A Field Guide to Independent Films about Place Berkeley University of California Press Martin D G Constructing place Cultural hegemonies and media images of an inner-city neighborhood Urban Geography - Owens L Mixedblood Messages Literature Film Family Place Norman University of Oklahoma Press Rosembaum J Moving Places A Life at the Movies Berkeley University of California Press Scharff V Ed Seeing Nature through Gender Lawrence U of Kansas P Wilson C Groth P Eds Everyday America Cultural landscape studies after J B Jackson Berkeley University of California Press Zonn L Ed Place Images in the Media A Geographical Appraisal Lanham MD Rowman Littlefield Methods for Conducting Media Ethnography Studies The following are some specific methods you could employ in conducting a media ethnography For the Final Task for this module you will be asked to conduct a small-scale focused analysis of one participant a friend spouse relative engaged with a media text a TV program video computer game magazine radio program a chat room or fan club or a virtual world theme park casino computer simulation game In reading over these methods think about how you might conduct this study using these methods Selecting topics for research and posing questions To select a study topic students discuss their own experiences with responding to different types of texts listing questions about their experiences that intrigue them For example one group of students had a strong interest in responding to radio They recalled their own experiences listening to the radio noting their preferences for certain stations disc jockeys and talk-show hosts They also discussed the situations in which they listen to the radio--driving to school doing their homework exercising etc and purposes for listening--to be informed or entertained to break up the monotony to vicariously participate in a talk show to be a loyal fan and listen to a sports broadcast etc And they noted perceptions of others experiences--the fact that certain of their friends listened to those stations that only play certain kinds of music or that other friends enjoy listening to certain talk-show hosts in order to ridicule or parody these hosts They then posed some questions which programs do what types of groups listen to and why what aspects of the programs are appealing in what types of social contexts do listeners share their responses how do these responses serve to build social bonds and how do their beliefs and attitudes shape their responses All of this helped them formulate questions about these different aspects of the response experience Adopting an outsider perspective Understanding audiences as a micro-culture requires students to adopt an outsider Martian perspective who begins to perceive their familiar world as suddenly strange Students may practice adopting a Martian perspective by going out as teams to different restaurants stores athletic events classrooms ceremonies etc and recording their observations of peoples behavior language and appearance They are then asked to adopt a Martian perspective and interpret of the meaning of these phenomena as if they were alien strangers who had no prior knowledge to explain people s behavior To understand group behavior students discern norms and conventions that constitute appropriate behavior for a group or institution As an outsider they are more likely to be able to define these norms and conventions than an insider In some cases students are members of the group they are studying In assuming this role of a participant observer students need to reflect on how their own relationship towards that group--as an outsider or insider shapes their perceptions of the group As an outsider they may not be familiar with a group s inner-workings and routines They may therefore want to use a cultural broker who helps them gain access to the group On the other hand as an insider they may be a fish in water and may have difficulty standing back and assuming the Martian stance required to perceive the group as a micro culture They may therefore want to share their perceptions with someone who was not familiar with the group Ideally students should embrace both of these perspectives by experiencing what it is like to be a group member and by standing back to assume a spectator stance Observing groups Students then select certain groups for observation They may observe previously formed groups such as classes computer newsgroups or book clubs Or they may create their own groups asking students to share their responses with each other One consideration is easy access to groups Given the usual practice of a group of students renting a video students may ask their friends to share their responses to the video Or students may want to study their younger siblings response to television because they can observe and interview their siblings in their own home for examples of ethnographic studies on children s responses to television see Buckingham and Palmer In either case students should ask group members for permission to study them explaining the purpose of the study describing the methods employed giving them the right to withdraw from the study and guaranteeing them that their confidentiality will be protected in written reports In using written field notes and tape-recordings of group discussions instead of vague evaluative comments such as friendly outgoing talkative emotional etc or abstract summaries students need to use concrete descriptions of behaviors-- Daryl the smallest boy in the group began to talk very quickly and excitedly when he described his feelings about the story ending They record in the margins the time of day and the beginning and end of certain activities--the fact that people move from one activity to the next In reviewing back over their notes they look for recurring patterns or frequencies of behavior treating their perceptions as a jigsaw puzzle in which certain pieces fall together in certain ways In writing notes students focus on a number of aspects setting--sensory aspects of the setting or context Students map which types of persons sit next to whom for example in a classroom certain students may sit in the back of the room while others sit in the front people--the particulars of persons behaviors dress hair style gestures and mannerisms as well as identifying them according to their gender class race talk conversation--recording aspects of the talk conversations noting certain words or phrases that are repeated who talks the most versus least and certain turn-taking patterns You also need to be careful in studying children s talk about media texts such as their television viewing http www aber ac uk media Modules TF intview html documents photos writings--documents photos or writings from the people they are observing For example members of a fan group may have written letters to a their idol or collected magazine articles about that person - Art work hypermedia Audiences may also express their responses through images graphics cut-out figures or hypermedia computer productions as tools for rewriting texts parodying texts or creating new versions of texts Students also construct hypermedia responses to texts using images photos video clips or songs to construct Web-based hypertext responses to stories about love family and peer relationships see examples at http www ed psu edu k- teenissues Beach Myers Myers Beach Analysis of seventh graders hypermedia responses to poetry found that students used images clips songs or other texts as iconic signs to simply illustrate the poem s meaning by for example selecting an image that illustrated the poem McKillop Myers Myers Hammett McKillop In other cases they selected texts which when juxtaposed with the poem created a new third meaning that served to extend or interrogate the poem s meaning - social uses of media--how group members are using the media for certain social purposes-- developing relationships impressing each other defining status etc For example male adults may attempt to dictate television program selection for a family in some cases by not letting others have the remote control Morley Other studies find that parental authority may be challenged by children s or adolescent s own selection of music programs or Internet sites as a way of defining their own sense of independence Moores Retelling rewriting or creating different versions Another technique involves having participants retell rewrite or create their own version of a particular television show genre or film script or narrative These alternative versions may then reflect participants attitudes and discourses through their choices of certain types of character actions story development types of conflicts or resolution of conflicts For example Elizabeth Bird asked groups of adults living in the Duluth Minnesota area to construct a fictional television series of any genre and in any setting in which they had to select a cast of characters develop history of those characters a detailed story for the first episode and describe some of the events for later episodes The only restriction that she gave the groups was that at least one character should be White one Native American and one a female The groups who worked on this project varied in terms of their membership related to gender and race Native American versus White She then analyzed their material in terms of the groups representations of Native Americans and Whites Bird found that the White participants created stories that reflected their own mainstream cultural experiences their White characters were similar to their own experiences while they had difficulty developing complex Native American characters or placing those characters into the storylines Even though the Whites living in Duluth are near a large reservation they rarely interact with Native Americans In contrast the Native American participants created quite different versions that reflected their attitudes and experiences Their versions highlighted the experience of being an outsider as well as portraying Native American characters in heroic roles contrary to popular media stereotypes Their Native American characters often angrily rejected media stereotypes of Native Americans These contrasting versions suggested to Bird that these participates brought a particular cultural perspective and tool kit that reflected their own limited experiences in their often insular worlds For most White Americans to live in a media world is to live with a smorgasbord of images that reflect back themselves and offer pleasurable tools for identity formation American Indians like many other minorities do not see themselves except as expressed through a cultural script they do not recognize and which they reject with both humor and anger p For further reading Cornis-Pope M Woodlief A The rereading rewriting process Theory and collaborative on-line pedagogy In M Hebmers Ed Intertexts Reading Pedagogy in College Writing Classrooms Mahwah NJ Lawrence Erlbaum http www vcu edu engweb ReReadingTheorychapter htm Harris K Divergence in retelling a soap episode http www aber ac uk media Students kjh html Photography as a research tool Photography has become an important tool for use in capturing audience participation For further information on using images photography as part of research see Pink As part of her study of the production of Super Bowl XXVI held in Minneapolis Dona Schwartz examined the uses of photography as a tool within the activity of constructing the Super Bowl as a corporate and media extravaganza both for the actual participants and for television viewers On the one hand both still and television photography was being used by the Super Bowl promoters and publicists as a public relations tools to glamorize the Super Bowl as a significant event in American society On the other hand within the context of her own study Schwartz worked with a team of photographers to capture a more realistic behind-the-scenes portrayal of the less glamorous ironic side of this media event Her study report therefore used photos of department store mannequins wearing football helmets or a group of Native Americans protesting the Washington Redskins logo to represent the behind-the-scenes political issues associated with this media event For photos from her study http sjmc cla umn edu faculty schwartz contents Contesting the Super Bowl contesting the super bowl html Bonnie Nardi and Brian Reilly Apple Research Laboratories Interactive Ethnography Digital Photography at Lincoln High School http www acm org sigs sigchi chi proceedings demo ban htm Donna Schwartz also has a very interesting site described as Picture Stories a site designed to illustrate the uses of digital photography in conducting ethnographic research http www picturestories umn edu intro htm On this site you will find photos and interviews from studies of animal rights demonstrations Twin Cities strip bars and a fiddle concert In her analysis of Disney World Karen Klugman a professional photographer observed that most visitors were carrying cameras and that they were constantly taking pictures The Project on Disney She was intrigued by the fact that people were taking pictures of what was an artificial environment She explained this as reflecting a need to preserve the magic the notion that what is represented in their pictures is reality itself and not some fiction framed by technology p Klugman s own photos in the book portray bored tired visitors or of the artificiality of Disney World An ethnography of camera clubs http sjmc cla umn edu faculty schwartz contents Camera clubs camera clubs html Mothers http www mothers umn edu Using Still Photography in ethnographic research http www people virginia edu ds s Visual Ethnography use of photography to conduct ethnography http courses ed asu edu margolis va html Females use of photography to explore their lives in school http www ualberta ca iiqm QIPress books bach html Projects created by the Street Level Youth Media project in Chicago portrayals of their own lives http streetlevel iit edu youthprojects youthprojects html Use of digital photography in a high school ethnography http www acm org sigchi chi proceedings demo ban htm PowerPoint media ethnography completed by elementary school students http www ltl appstate edu student ethnography s katieandtonya htm http www ltl appstate edu student ethnography s bethel htm http www ltl appstate edu student ethnography s ThePerceptionoColor htm Interviewing One important phase of a study involves interviewing group members about their responses Interviews provide an understanding of individual group members own personal perceptions of the influence of the group on their own responses For example a group member may have said very little about a text in a group discussion but talked extensively about the same text in an interview The following are some interview questions that were used in a study of seventh graders responses to stories in an on-line computer chat exchange using the program Aspects Beach Lundell One advantage of having students use a chat program is that it produces a print-out transcript that can serve as the basis for follow-up interview questions In this study students were asked to read through their group s transcript and to think-aloud their reactions to the transcript They were also asked to respond to the following interview questions regarding their group participation How you feel about participating in these conversations Do you feel comfortable participating How does receiving a lot of comments that are not in order affect you Recalling the first time you ve participated how have you changed Does your participation seem more or less like engaging in an oral discussion When you re receiving a lot of different messages about different things how do you decide on what to respond to How did you feel like when no one responded to you When you don t get a reaction what are you thinking How do you interact face to face in an oral discussion group How does this different from your participation in the computer group What social roles do you usually play in the classroom or in your peer group What role do you see yourself playing in these computer groups It is also important to recognize the limitations of interview questions which can direct or limit responses in particular directions see Oatey for a discussion of these limitations For further reading Fontana A Frey J H The interview From structured questions to negotiated text In N Denzin Y Lincoln Eds Handbook of qualitative research pp - Thousands Oaks CA Sage Spradley J The ethnographic interview New York Thomson Focus groups You can also gain useful information by using focus group responses in which several participants share their perspectives and experiences in a discussion facilitated by you One advantage of focus group responses is that individual members talk often triggers others similar responses And if participants agree or disagree on their perceptions you gain some sense of a shared consensus of opinion as opposed to a lack of consensus Suter E Focus groups in ethnography of communication Expanding topics of inquiry beyond participant observation The Qualitative Report http www nova edu ssss QR QR - suter html Analyzing the results Once they have collected observations recordings and information about a group and its members students then analyze the meaning of these results - Norms conventions A central focus of the analysis is to discern certain norms or conventions constituting appropriate practices involved in responding to a media text For example learning to play a computer game or learning to navigate through a hypertext novel involves learning to attend to cues implying rules or conventions operating in that game or novel Chat room participants also adhere to rules of netiquette constituting appropriate topics modes of decorum and civility Hamilton found that the Nancy drew chat room formulated explicit rules discouraging users from providing full names or using bad words Chat rooms may also follow certain implicit rules regarding appropriate topics Judy Ward studied computer newsgroup participants responses to the television program X-Files She found that there were certain unspoken rules regarding inappropriate posting such as included making irrelevant off-topic statements bashing or spreading false rumors about the two celebrity stars of the show positing sexually explicitly or violent messages or misusing the newsgroup When a participant began spreading false rumors about the female star of the show she was immediately castigated and told either get with it and get some netiquette or please keep your computer turned off p Members gained status in the group by making frequent postings by being affiliated with the program by meeting one of the stars by selling magazines scripts autographs or t-shirts or by sharing videos of programs They also gained status by making intertextual links between the program and other television programs The practices reflect the value group members place on assisting each other as group members They also seek out verification of their feelings asking each other if someone feels this way or am I the only one who feels bad Based on her analysis of the group members adherence to certain norms and conventions Judy inferred that alt tv x-files is a micro culture with its own genre of literature myths and mores embedded in larger cultures of paranoia and distrust of big government and a general fan culture which becomes deeply connected to entertainment icons - Codes Viewers or readers accept resist or negotiate these codes based on their object or purpose for viewing or reading object or purposes related to their ideological stances or discourses In a study of responses to the annual Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue Laurel Davis found that readers differed in their reactions due their stances relative to the codes of gender and sexuality associated with the portrayal of female models in swimsuits She found that the producers perceived the issue as primarily serving to provide a non-sexual portrayal of current swimsuit fashions Some readers responded by accepted this invited stance stating that they read the issue simply to acquire information about swimsuits what Hall defines as taking up or accepting the codes endorsed by the producers However most male readers responded in terms of the sexual appeal of the models These males frequently referred to the influence of male peer pressure in social contexts to adopt the stance that being attracted to sexual representation of females is a marker of male heterosexuality This male peer pressure in turn influenced their public endorsement of and positive response to the swimsuit issue Davis quotes one male participant description of this peer pressure A lot of young male athletes kind of go with the flow you know peer pressure Cause like their friend ll open up the magazine and show them a girl and they ll say You don t like this girl Oh man what s wrong with you You should like this girl and that kind of thing And the kid might not even like girls you know So it s like peer pressure all around p In other cases females responded critically given their resistance to the sexist portrayals of women an opposing or resistant stance Hall Davis cites a female who objected to the larger codes of beautification she perceived operating in the issue that shows how American society views women as to how they should be and how they should look and they should act and what they should wear I mean they re supposed to look glamorous and sexy And I m not I don t like to be portrayed that way at all When I look at those magazines it s like I m supposed to be this way And this image is so popularized slim figure not a stomach long legs and you know the rest p This study suggests that both males and females adopt a range of different positions associated with their particular needs or purposes for reading the swimsuit issue Rather than adopting the essentialist perspective that males and females respond differently students therefore need to examine the range of different subjectivities associated with gender portrayals in the media Media ethnographers are interested in how the discourses operating within an activity or social context shape viewers or readers responses to a media text Beach As Rose and Friedman posit while the discourses of film and television construct preferred positions for the spectator each viewer is always simultaneously interpolated by a number of discourses cultural institutional personal which define him as a subject and have an impact on his reading of any text p In a study of viewers responses to the evening soap opera program Dallas Katz and Liebes found that viewers in American Russia Israel and Saudi Arabia generated quite different responses to the same programs differences reflecting different discourses or ideological perspectives The Americans and the Israelis interpreted the characters actions in terms of various psychological needs and themes The Russians interpreted the characters actions in terms of thematic beliefs The Saudi Arabians interpreted the characters in terms of moral issues associated with family values These different groups of viewers therefore constructed meanings of Dallas consistent with their own ideological orientation Viewers may prefer to view programs consistent with their own ideological predispositions A study of twenty-five elderly females representing a range of different socio-economic groups who were fans of the program Murder She Wrote found that the women responded positively to the familiar predictable storyline whose values were consistent with their own Riggs At the same time there was some variation in their responses due to differences in class background The upper-middle class women identified strongly with the Angela Lansbury character whom their valued for her independence These women also enjoyed participating in the problem-solving processes inherent in the plot development A group of African-American women responded more to the program s portrayal of anxieties about youth and crime in their own urban setting Thus despite the similar ritual-like participation with the program there were distinct differences in their responses that represented differences their own purposes for viewing In contrast to these therapeutic discourses the largely male sports talk-show is constituted by a discourse of masculine gender identity that values sharing of technical expertise about players rules and stats Sabo Jansen Participants also celebrate the value of competitiveness and hard work and generally avoid topics related to emotional interpersonal matters associated with the feminine or adopt certain identities In their analysis of the discourses constituting television sports Rose and Friedman found that male viewers often experienced a distracted identificatory and dialogic spectatorship which may be understood as a masculine counterpart to soap opera s maternal gaze p Another discourse shaping viewers and readers activity is that of socio-economic class In her study of the television viewing practices of retired persons living in an upscale retirement home Karen Riggs found that the largely upper-middle class residents of this home selectively watched certain programs in order to be able to share their responses with other residents Riggs describes their viewing practices A man watches PBS s concert with the world s most famous tenors not because he particularly enjoys it but because he knows his dinner companions the next day will consider it worthy of discussion A women switches on Larry King Live in the evening because her neighbor mentions that she has read somewhere that attorney general nominee Zoe Baird will take phone calls from the public p The residents preferred programs such as documentaries on PBS that provided them with a larger global perspective on social and political issues They perceived themselves as concerned informed citizens who wanted to maintain an active involvement in both the retirement community and in national political affairs They treated their viewing as an active investment of their time in acquiring useful information as opposed to passive consumption of television Programs that appealed to these viewers could be characterized by an aesthetic element of class that attracts the Woodglen residents The urbane people on these programs use language well display critical thinking skill approach events and issues with a degree of emotional distance and otherwise signify affluence p Drawing on Herbert Gans notion of a taste public Riggs perceived the residents as a taste public that exercises certain values with regard to cultural forms such as music art literature drama criticism news and the media that appeals to an overlapping high and upper-middle-class taste culture occupied by Woodglenners that privileges the elite forms of television such as Masterpiece Theater as well as what Woodglenners take to be serious nonfiction content pp - Analysis of text features In conducting media ethnographies students may also describe the particular aspects of texts that evoke or invite certain responses As part of his study included in the Appendix of college females responses to Christian romance novels Timothy Rohde analyzed the plot development of mail-order evangelical novels He found that these novels contained few references to sexuality a marked contrast to recent Harlequin and Silhouette romance novels For evangelical Christians who objected to the trend towards steamier romance novels these Christian romance novels published by the Heartsong Press provided a more pure alternative In contrast to the typical romance novel plot development Christian-Smith Radway the Heartsong romance novel heroine initially expresses doubt in her faith She then meets a good man whom she believes is not a Christian She then experiences a conversion removing her doubt in her faith The heroine is then rescued from peril by the man and she learns of his true nature as a Christian It is only after they marry that they have sex While the romance novel is designed to celebrate women s role as a nurturer who transforms a more impersonal hero into a more caring person Radway the Heartsong novels are designed to be more didactic and morally uplifting serving to reify readers allegiances to evangelical Christian beliefs A group of women whom Rohde interviewed responded positively to these novels pure subject matter and plot development These readers believed that they did not have to be concerned about being on guard when reading these novels Some preferred the historical Heartsong novels because they were set in a past perceived to be less corrupt than the current period They also responded positively to the novels didactic messages noting that reading these books helped them to grow in their faith as they learned the same spiritual lesson the heroine did Rhode s analysis of these novels characteristics helped him explain his participants responses This suggests that students in conducting their media ethnographies may benefit from linking descriptions of specific aspects of texts to their participants responses Final reports In writing up results students could present those results in a multi-media format using PowerPoint Hyperstudio or a Web-based format that allows them to present texts images sounds quotes and analyses in a hypertext interactive format In doing so students can capture and portray their own experiences of a media texts for other audiences Students could also reflect on what they learned about their own identities and attitudes as both participant and researcher in conducting a study particularly about their presuppositions and whether those presuppositions were validated in doing their study References Ang I Watching Dallas Soap opera and the melodramatic imagination London Metheun Ang I Desperately seeking the audience New York Routledge Attallah P Shade L Mediascapes New patterns in Canadian communication Toronto Nelson Press Ayim M Knowledge through the grapevine Gossip as inquiry In R Goodman A Ben-Ze'ev Eds Good Gossip pp - Lawrence University of Kansas Press Beach R Constructing cultural models through response to literature English Journal - Beach R Critical discourse theory and reader response How discourses constitute reader stances and social contexts Reader - Beach R Lundell D Early adolescents use of computer-mediated communication in writing and reading In D Reinking L Labbo M McKenna R Kieffer Eds Transforming readers and writers Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum Beeman W O Performance theory in an anthropology program Online Available http www brown edu Departments Anthropology publications PerformanceTheory htm Bird E For enquiring minds A cultural study of supermarket tabloids Knoxville University of Tennessee Press Bird E The audience in everyday life Living in a media world New York Routledge Bird E Barber J Constructing a virtual ethnography In M Angrosino Ed Doing cultural anthropology Projects for ethnographic data collection Prospect Heights IL Waveland Bobo J The Color Purple Black women as cultural readers In W Booker D Jermyn Eds The audience studies reader pp - New York Routledge Boese C The ballad of the Internet nutball Chaining rhetorical visions from the margins to the mainstream in the Xenaverse Dissertation Rensselear Polytechnic University Online http www nutball com dissertation index htm Booker W Jermyn D Eds The audience studies reader New York Routledge Brown M Ed Television and Women's Culture The Politics of the Popular London Sage Bruhn K Jankowski N A handbook of qualitative methodologies for mass communication research New York Routledge Buckingham D Boys talk Television and the policing of masculinity In D Buckingham Ed Reading Audiences Young People and the Media pp - New York Manchester University Press Buckingham D Moving images Understanding children s responses to television New York Manchester University Press Buckingham D The EastEnders audience Online Available http www aber ac uk media Modules TF bucking html Burke B Wrestling audiences An ethnographic study of television viewers North Dakota Journal of Speech Theatre Online Available http www sendit nodak edu ndsta burke htm Chiseri-Strater E Sunstein B Fieldworking Reading and writing research Upper Saddle River NJ Blair Press Crawford C Hafsteinsson S B The construction of the viewer Media ethnography and the anthropology of audiences Hojbjerg Denmark Intervention Press Currie D Girl talk Adolescent magazines and their readers Toronto University of Toronto Press Currie D Girl talk Adolescent magazines and their readers In W Booker D Jermyn Eds The audience studies reader pp - New York Routledge Davis L The swimsuit issue and sport Hegemonic masculinity in Sports Illustrated Albany NY SUNY Press Dayan D Katz E Media events The live broadcasting of history Cambridge Harvard University Press Ginsburg F Abu-Lughod L Larkin B Media worlds Anthropology on new terrain Berkeley CA University of California Press Glesne C Peshkin A Becoming qualitative researchers New York Longman Grodin D The interpreting audience The therapeutics of self-help book reading Critical Studies in Mass Communication - Grossberg L Wartella E Whitney D C MediaMaking Mass media in a popular culture Thousand Oaks CA Sage Gwenllian-Jones S Histories fictions and Xena Warrior Princess In W Booker D Jermyn Eds The audience studies reader pp - New York Routledge Harrington C L Bielby D Soap fans Pursuing pleasure and making meaning in everyday life Philadelphia Temple University Press Hills M Fan cultures London Routledge Hocks M E Understanding visual rhetoric in digital writing environments College Composition and Communication - Jenkins H Textual poachers Television fans and participatory culture New York Routledge Jenkins H Never trust a snake WWF wrestling as masculine melodrama In A Baker T Boyd Eds Out of bounds Sports media and the politics of identity pp - Bloomington IN Indiana University Press Joyrich L Re-viewing reception Television gender and postmodern culture Bloomington IN Indiana University Press Knobel M Lankshear C Cut past publish In D Alvermann Ed Adolescents and literacies in a digital world pp - New York Peter Lang Kaidy M M Murphy P Eds Global Media Studies Ethnographic Perspectives Thousand Oaks CA Sage Lindlof T Qualitative Communication Research Methods Thousand Oaks CA Sage Lull J Inside Family Viewing Ethnographic Research on Television s Audiences New York Routledge Lybeck R Family members responses to television news and sports Unpublished paper University of Minnesota McKinley E G Beverly Hills Television gender and identity McRobbie A Feminism and youth culture New York Macmillan Mills S Ed Gendering the reader New York Harvester Wheatsheaf Moores S Interpreting audiences The ethnography of media consumption Thousands