Module 8 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:
o defining topics/questions
o finding a site for analysis (chat rooms, e-zine production, TV/video viewing,
music clubs, theme parks, etc.)
o observing audience practices using field notes, observations, photography,
interviews
o analyzing results in terms of norms, codes, discourses constituting the meaning of
audience response and participation
o 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 (1998) 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. 7).
For Virginia Nightingale (1996), 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. 141).
Through observation and interviewing audience participation in responding to the media, media
ethnographers (Ang, 1985; Bird, 1991; Booker & Jermyn, 2003; Brown, 1990; 1996; Buckingham,
1993; 1996; Davis, 1997; Harrington & Bielby, 1995; Jenkins, 1992; Lull, 1990; McGinley, 1997;
McRobbie, 1990; Mills, 1994; Palmer, 1986; Provenzo, 1991; Radway, 1984; 1988; Riggs, 1998;
Seiter, Borchers, Kreutzner, & Warth, 1989; Spigel & Mann, 1992; Schwartz, 1998; Turkle, 1995)
attempt to understand an audience’s responses as a social activity (for summary analyses of media
ethnographies, see Ang, 1991; Crawford & Hafsteinsson, 1997; Moores, 1993; Nightingale, 1996;
Stevenson, 1995).
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 4 in the discussion of “diffused audiences” (Abercrombie & Longhurst, 1998), 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,
1998).
Given their more active, interactive participation with media researchers moved beyond
the traditional “uses” or “cause/effect” model of media studies described in Module 4 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, 1998; Attallah & Shade, 2002) 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, 2002). 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, 1995). As a result they may perceive the real world as a “global
marketplace…where goods flow freely and are free exchanged” (p. 42), 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,
1998). 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 (1995) 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. 59). 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. 69.) 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. 86).
Participation in virtual worlds. Audiences are devoting more time to participating in virtual
worlds. A survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center (1999) found that, on a daily basis,
children ages 10-17 spend 2 and 1/2 hours watching television, and another 2 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’ (1992). 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, 1995).
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, 1999). 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, 1999).
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. 268). For example,
computer games based on PlayStation2 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, 1994) divorced from any need to correspond or connect to a “livedworld” reality—the idea that the virtual creates it own form of reality (Doel & Clarke, 1999).
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, 1998), 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, 2000, p. 9). Based
on her extensive study of MUD participants, Sherry Turkle (1996) 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. 158).
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 4). However, ethnographic research by Currie (1999) 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
(2003) notes that the sharing of magazines between peers was a popular pastime. Currie quotes
one of her participants, 17-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. 252).
Audiences as communities. In developing social connections through participation with the
media, audiences construct communities—either imagined or real (Abercrombie & Longhurst,
1998), —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 (1996) 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, 1998, p. 237) 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 300th and 301st 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 300 or more home runs and stolen 300 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, 1996, p. 12)
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, 1995;
Jenkins, 1992). In a study of soap opera fans and fan clubs, Harrington & Bielby (1995) 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, 1995). 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, textdesign, 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, 1992). 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, 1992).
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, 1996). 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,
1998, p. 237), a “learning dimension” (p. 237)—acquiring information about the teams and
players, a “release dimension”—the “opportunity to ‘let loose’” or “get psyched up” (p. 237), a
“companionship dimension” (p. 237)—sharing time with friends and family, and a “filler
dimension”—the use of sports viewing to “kill time.” (p. 237). 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 (1998) 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. 17).
Michael Real (1996) 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 (1973) 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. 60).
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, 1998). 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.
237). A “learning dimension” (p. 237) 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.
237). A “companionship dimension” (p. 237) 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. 237). 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 (1997) 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. 560.
In her study of female adolescents’ responses to the popular television program, Beverly Hills,
90210, McGinley (1997) 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. 52). 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. 77). 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. 78).
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. 103). 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.215).
One new media ethnography project that is starting up (as of summer, 2003), 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, 2003).
Audiences may also define their beliefs and attitudes associated with class identities through
their responses to media texts. Cheryl Reinertsen (1993) completed a project in which she analyzed a
group of her adolescent daughter’s female friends’ weekly viewing of two television programs, “Beverly
Hills 90210” 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. 8). They “‘disliked
Amanda because she is anorexic, out for herself, and ruthless and arrogant and Kimberly because she’s a
weakling’” (p. 9).
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 “90210,” 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.
14). 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. 22).
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 (2003) 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. 311-312).
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. 312). 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, 2002: Kraidy & Murphy,
2003). 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 (2003) 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. 189):
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. 190)
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 (1992) Becoming Qualitative Researchers, Longman, is a readable introduction appropriate
for even high school students. Bruhn and Jankowski (1991) A Handbook Of Qualitative Methodologies
For Mass Communication Research and Lindlof (1995) 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/681/1997/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, 2002).
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, 2004 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 (1998). Students as ethnographers: Guiding alternative research
projects. English Journal, 89(1), 82-90.
Campano, G. (2002). Dancing across borders: Creating community in a diverse urban
classroom. http://kml.carnegiefoundation.org/users/gcampano/index.html
Dunbar-Odom, D. (1999). 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. 7-22). Portsmouth, NH:
Boynton-Cook.
Egan-Robertson, A., & Bloome, D. (Eds.) (1998). Students as researchers of culture and
language in their own communities. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.
Pfitzner, A. (2002). Preparing students to become invested members of their community.
http://kml.carnegiefoundation.org/gallery/spfitzner/#
Sinor, J., & Huston, M. (2004). The role of ethnography in the post-process writing classroom.
Teaching English in the Two-Year College, 31(4), 369-382.
Wolk, E. (2002). 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. (1995). Writing ethnographic fieldnotes. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Fetterman, D. (1997). Ethnography: Step-by-step. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Hammersley, M., & Atkinson, P. (1995). Ethnography: Principles in practice. New York:
Routledge.
Schensul, S., Schensul, J., & Lecompte, M (1999). Essential ethnographic methods:
Observations, interviews, and questionnaires. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Schensul, J., & Lecompte, M (1999). Designing and conducting ethnographic research.
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Silverman, D. (2000). Doing qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Van Mannen, J. (1998). 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 4):
Abercrombie, N., & Longhurst, B. (1998). Audiences: A sociological theory of performance and
imagination. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Berger, A. (2000). Media and communication research methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Bird, E. (2003). The audience in everyday life: Living in a media world. New York: Routledge.
Brooker, W., & Jermyn, D. (Eds.). (2003). The audience studies reader. New York:
Routledge.
Dickinson, R., Harindranath, R., & Linne, O. (Eds.). (1998). Approaches to audience: A
reader. New York: Oxford University Press.
Dochartaigh, N. (2002). The Internet research handbook: A practical guide for students and
researchers in the social sciences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Goldstein, J. (Ed.). (1998). Why we watch: The attractions of violent entertainment. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Gunter, B. (2000). Media research methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Hay, J., Grossberg, L., & Wartella, E. (1996). The audience and its landscape. Boulder, CO:
Westview Press.
Hine, C. (2000). Virtual ethnography. New York: Sage.
Jensen, K. B. (Ed.). (2002). 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. (1998). Media ethnography in virtual space: Strategies, limits, and
possibilities. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 42(2), 170-190.
Mahin, D. (2002). Ethnographic research for media studies. London: Arnold.
Mann, C., & Stewart, F. (2000). Internet communication and qualitative research: A handbook
for researching online. Thousand Oaks, CA:Sage.
Markham, A. N. (1998) . Life online: Researching real experience in virtual space. Walnut
Creek,
CA: Altamira Press.
Means Coleman, R. R. (Ed.). (2001). Say it loud!: African American audiences, media, and
identity. New York: Routledge.
Morley, D. (2000). Home Territories: Media, Mobility and Identity. London: Routledge.
Riggs, K. (1998). Mature audiences: Television and the elderly. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
Univ. Press.
Ruddock, A. (2001). Understanding audiences—Theory and method. Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage.
Seiter, E. (1999). Television and new media audiences. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
Tulloch, J. (2000). Watching the TV audience: Theory and method in reception studies. New
York: Oxford Univ. Press.
Stokes, J. (2003). How to do media and cultural studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Wicks, R. H. (2000). 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 3000, 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 2002-released, The Sims
OnLine
http://www.msnbc.com/news/835533.asp?0cb=-21b5737
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/24/1160/article11076.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 livedworld 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/conf2001/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. (2001). Online Game communities are social in nature
http://switch.sjsu.edu/v7n1/articles/cindy02.html
Assignment: conduct an ethnography of a New Media artifact
http://mdcm.arts.unsw.edu.au/s2-2002/1001/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 (2003) cite the example of a British BBC2 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 MP3 or internet links recommended by the fictional team.
(p. 322)
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. 324).
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. 333).
Web-based fan clubs are organized around highly interactive audience exchanges,
transparent navigational links, and hybridity of texts, images, sounds, links, or references
(Hocks, 2003). 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
(2003) cites the example of an online dissertation research report by Christine Boese (1998), 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, 1,100 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. 643).
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 (2003) 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.
187).
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, 1995). Star Trek fan club members employed video
editing to construct their own versions of Star Trek programs through editing clips from programs
(Jenkins, 1997). 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/trekcon1.htm
For further reading on Star Trek fans;
Irwin, W. & Love, G. (Eds). (1997). The best of the best of Trek: From the Magazine for
Star Trek Fans. New York: New American Library.
Kozinets, R. V. (2001), Utopian enterprise: Articulating the meanings of Star Trek's culture of
consumption. Journal of Consumer Research, 28, 67-88.
http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/Kozinets/htm/papers.htm
Staffford, N. (Ed.). (2001). Trekkers: True stories by fans for fans. New York: ECW PRESS
Tulloch, J. (1995). 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. (2001). “One ring to rule them all”: Pre-viewers and pre-texts of the Lord
of the Rings films. Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media, 2.
http://www.cult-media.com/issue2/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.tolkienmovies.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 B52 fan club
http://www.citypages.com/databank/23/1129/article10590.asp
Nicolas Gipe’s study of a rock band’s fan club
http://www.geocities.com/gipe0001/peacemakers.html
Bale, J., Virtual fandoms; Futurescapes of football.
http://www.efdeportes.com/efd10/jbale.htm
Pradstaller, F. (2003). Virtual proximity: Creating connection in an online fan Community.
Gnovis: Journal of Communication, Culture, and Technology.
http://gnovis.georgetown.edu/article.cfm?articleID=13
For further reading on audience research on fans:
Baym, N. K. (2000). Tune in, Log on: Soaps, fandom, and online Community. Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage.
Bury, R. (2003). Stories for [boys] Ggrls: Female fans read The X-Files.
Popular Communication, 1, 217-242
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/20020621-875.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.”), PG11 (“Parent
nearby.”), GTG (“Got to go.”), CYA (“See ya.”), POOF (Gone, left the chat room) (Ruane,
2000).
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 “livedworld” relationships (Turkle, 1996).
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, 1994). 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 13-year-old female participant
in AOL Instant Message (IM) interactions, Lewis and Fabos (1999) 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, 1999, p. 7)
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, 1999, p. 8).
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. 175) 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. 175).
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. 177) 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. (2003). Virtual ethnography: Interactive interviewing online as
method. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, 29(2).
http://www.cjlt.ca/content/vol29.2/cjlt29-2_art-5.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, 2002). A
key consideration is whether the site is a public site as opposed to simply your own private emails.
(For a discussion of what constitutes “public”: Beau Lebens, Ethnographic Ethics):
http://www.dentedreality.com.au/media/notes/net26-assignment-4.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/2000/nannett/public_html/projects/Ethnography.pdf
Baird, E. (1998). "Ain't gotta do nothin but be brown and die " - Introduction to the Internet and
an American Indian Chat Room. CMC Magazine 5 (7).
http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1998/jul/baird.html
Cerratto, T. & Wærn, Y. (2000). Chatting to learn and learning to chat in collaborative virtual
environments. M/C. A Journal of Media and Culture,3(4).
http://moby.curtin.edu.au/~ausstud/mc/0008/learning1.html
Chen, L, Davies, A., & Elliot, R. (2001). Gender and identity play on the Net: Raising men
for fun?
http://www.ex.ac.uk/sobe/Research/DiscussionPapersMan/Man2001/Man0108.pdf
Chenault, B. (1998). Developing interpersonal and emotional relationships via computermediated communication. CMC Magazine
http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1998/may/chenault.html
de la Harpe, R. & Mackenzie, A. (2002). Chat rooms as an academic teaching technique.
http://citte.nu.ac.za/papers/id2.pdf
Lieberman, J. & Stovall, I. (1999). Strategies for using chat as a communication tool.
http://as1.ipfw.edu/99tohe/presentations/lieberman2.htm
Murphy, K, & Collins, M. (1999). Communication conventions in institutional electronic chats.
First Monday, 2(11). http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue2_11/murphy/
Pargman, D. (2000). The fabric of virtual reality - courage, rewards and death in an adventure
mud. M/C – A Journal of Media and Culture http://www.apinetwork.com/mc/0010/mud.html
Rintel, E.S., Mulholland, J., & Pittnam, J. (2001). First things first: Internet relay chat openings.
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 6(3).
http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol6/issue3/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=19
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/index2.html
Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies
http://www.com.washington.edu/rccs/
Cybergeography Research
http://www.cybergeography.org/
Cyberanthropology.org
http://nt2348.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.). (2003). Cyberactivism: Online activism in theory and
practice. New York: Routledge.
Bell, D., & Kennedy, B. (Eds.). (2000). The cybercultures reader. New York: Routledge.
Chayko, M. (2002). Connecting: How we form social bonds and communities in the Internet
age. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Flanagan, M., & Booth, A. (2002). Reload: Rethinking women + cyberculture. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press.
Hawisher, G., & Selfe, C. (2000). Global literacies and the World-Wide Web. New York:
Routledge.
Holeton, R. (1998). Composing cyberspace: Identity, community, and knowledge in the
electronic age. Columbus, OH: McGraw-Hill
Jones, S. G., (Ed.). (1998). Cybersociety 2.0: Revisiting computer-mediated communication and
community. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Katz, J.E., & R.E. Rice. (2002). Social consequences of Internet use: Access, involvement and
interaction. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Klotz, R. J. (2004). The politics of Internet communication. Lanham, MD: Rowman &
Littlefield.
Kolko, B. E., Nakamura, L., & Rodman, G. B. (Eds.). (2000). Race in cyberspace. New York:
Routledge.
Lueg, C, & Fisher, D. (Eds.). (2003). From Usenet to cowebs: Interacting with social
information spaces, Readings in Cscw. London: Springer Verlag
McCaughey, M, & Ayers, M. D. (Eds.). (2003). Cyberactivism: Online activism in theory and
practice. New York, NY: Routledge.
Miller, D., & Slater, D. (2000). The Internet: An ethnographic approach. Oxford, UK: Berg.
http://ethnonet.gold.ac.uk/
Nakamura, L. (2002). Cybertypes: Race, ethnicity, and identity on the Internet. New York:
Routledge.
Rheingold, H. (2000). The virtual community: Homesteading on the electronic frontier.
Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Smith, M. A., & Kollock, P. (Eds). (1999). Communities in cyberspace. New York: Routledge.
Sudweeks, F., McLaughlin, M., & Rafaeli, S. (Eds.). (1998) . Network and netplay: Virtual
groups on the Internet. Menlo Park, CA: AAAI Press.
Turkle, S. (1996). Life on the screen: Identity in the age of the Internet. London: Weidenfeld &
Nicholson.
Wardrip-Fruin, N., & Montfort, N. (Eds.). (2003). The new media reader. Cambridge, MA: The
MIT Press. http://www.newmediareader.com
Werry, C., & Mowbray, M. (Eds.). (2001). 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, 1998). 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. (2002). 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. (2000). Studying radio. London: Arnold.
Fitzgerald, R., & Housley, W. (2002). Identity, categorisation and sequential organisation: the
sequential and categorial flow of identity in a radio phone-in’, Discourse and Society 13:
579-602.
Hester, S. & Fitzgerald, R. (1999). Category, predicate and contrast: some organisational
features in a radio talk show. In P. Jalbert (Ed.). Studies in ethnomethodology and
conversation analysis No 5. Oxford, MD: University Press of America.
Hutchby, I. (1996) Confrontation Talk: arguments, asymmetries and power on talk radio.
Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Scannell, P. (Ed.). (1991). Broadcast talk. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Thornborrow, J. (2001). Questions, control and the organisation of talk in calls to a radio phonein. Discourse Studies 3 (1).
Tolson, A. (Ed.). (2001). 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/
Politics4teens
http://www.freewebs.com/politics4teens/
Everytn.com
http://www.everytn.com/
Get Help
http://www.geocities.com/SouthBeach/Tidepool/3223/
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. (2003),
Understanding Adolescent Literacies: A Conversation with Three Zinesters, on
readingonline.org: http://www.readingonline.org/newliteracies/guzzetti3/):
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 (2002), “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, 2002):
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. (2000). Mags, zines, and gURLs. The exploding world of girls’ publications.
Women’s Studies Quarterly, 29 (3-4), 287-292.
Comstock, M. (2001). Grrrl zine networks: Re-composing spaces of authority, gender, and
culture. Journal of Advanced Composition, 21(2), 383-409.
Driscoll, C. (2002). Girls: Feminine adolescence in popular culture & cultural theory. New
York: Columbia University Press, 2002.
Drive Slowly, Appear Quickly. (2001). Exhibit at Space 1026 Gallery in Philadelphia, PA.
http://www.mobilivre.org/slides/slide11.html
Duncan, B. J. (2001). 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. (2001). Virtual gender: Technology, consumption and identity.
New York: Routledge.
McRobbie, A. (1999). 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. (1999). From girls to Grrrlz. A history of women's comics from teens to zines. San
Francisco: Chronicle Books.
Schilt, K. (2003). “I’ll resist with every inch and every breath”: Girls and zine making as a form
of resistance. Youth & Society, 35(1), 71-97.
Scott, K. (1998). “Girls need modems!” Cyberculture and women’s Ezines.
http://www.stumptuous.com/mrp.html
Stern, S. R. (2002). Virtually speaking: Girls’ self-disclosure on the WWW. Women’s Studies
in Communication, 25(2), 223-253.
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 (1998) 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.
271).
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. 274).
Sociology of Rock Music
http://condor.depaul.edu/~dweinste/rock/
Assignment: Studying Jerry Garcia fans
http://courses.washington.edu/anthr100/secondwritingassignment.doc
For further reading:
Berger, H. M. (1999). Metal, rock, and jazz: Perception and the
Phenomenology of Musical Experience. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University
Press.
Shank, B. (1994). Dissonant identities: The rock’n’roll scene in Austin, Texas.
Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Thornton, S. (1995). 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 (1997) 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 25,000 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. 13).
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. 13).
For reading about Richard Schechner’s performance theory:
Schechner, R. (2003). 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 (2001) 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. 17).
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. (2002, June 23). 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/3528673.htm?1c
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/macg3dvd/myhomepage/Page2.html
NASCAR
http://www.nascar.com/index.html
Family of NASCAR fans (fan site)
http://groups.msn.com/FamilyOfNascarFans
Wright, J. (1999). Fixin' to git: One fan’s love affair with NASCAR’s Winston Cup. Durham,
NC: Duke University Press (read update since the 1999 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/anth370_sp01/workshop/ethnography/joel.html
For further reading:
Brown, A. (Ed.). (1998). Fanatics!: Power, identity and fandom in football. New York:
Routlege.
Carney, G. (Ed.) (1995). Fast food, stock cars, and rock-n-roll: place and space in American
pop culture. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Cavicchi, D. (1998). Tramps like us: Music and meaning among Springsteen fans. New York:
Oxford University Press.
DeNora, T. (2001). Music in everyday life. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Jenkins, H. (1997). “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 4).
Maze, S. (2001). Professional wrestling: Sport and spectacle. Oxford, MS: Mississippi
University Press.
Queenan, J. (2003). True believers: The tragic inner life of sports fans. New York: Henry Holt.
Real, M. (1996). Exploring media culture: A guide. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage (chapter
on Super Bowl fans).
Vass, J. (2003). 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=1
For a video clip of the Education Media Foundation video on Disney
http://www.mediaed.org/videos/CommercialismPoliticsAndMedia/MickeyMouseMonopoly
The 6 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, 1995) 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. 184).
As visitors in these parks, students could observe various attempts to simulate “livedworld” 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/anth36.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.k12.ks.us/hms/library/midlib/webquest.html
For further reading:
Campbell, C., & Falk, P. (1997). The shopping experience. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Farrell, J. (2003). One nation under goods: Malls and the seductions of American shopping.
Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute Press.
McDowell, L. (1999). Gender, Identity, and Place: Understanding Feminist
Geographies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Miller, D. (Ed.). (1998). Shopping, place and identity. New York: Routlege.
Pahl, J. (2003). Shopping malls and other sacred spaces: Putting God in place. New York:
Brazos.
Underhill, P. (2004). Call of the mall: The author of Why We Buy on the geography of
shopping. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Wrigley, N., & Lowe, M. (2002).
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 5, 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_00253_03795.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. (2001). What is "Sense of Place"?
http://www.western.edu/headwtrs/Archives/headwaters12_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/299/g_1.pdf
Sacred Space: Learning About and Creating Meaningful Public Spaces
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/lessons/20030207friday.html
Perception of Place
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/lessons/04/g912/place.html
The Evolution of Cultural Landscape
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/lessons/06/g912/cultural.html
Explore the Spatial Patterns of Your Hometown
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/lessons/03/g68/hometown.html
Cultural Symbols and the Characteristics of Place
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/lessons/06/g68/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/streetasmethod1.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/5256/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 1960
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_1042&key=037
Document Durham: Neighborhood Projects
http://cds.aas.duke.edu/docprojects/durham/ek_powe.html
Exploring Your Community (grades 6-8).
http://school.discovery.com/lessonplans/programs/harlemdiary/
Webquest: studying an urban neighborhood
http://www.whitney.org/jacoblawrence/resources/webqst_neighborhood_6.html
For further reading on place/space in film/literature
Couldry, N. & McCarthy, A. (Eds.) (2003). MediaSpace: Place, scale and culture in a media
age. New York: Routledge.
Davis, M. (1999). Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster. New York:
Vintage.
Gauntlett, D. (1997). Video Critical: Children, the Environment and Media Power. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press.
Hochman, J. (1998). Green Cultural Studies: Nature in Film, Novel, and Theory. Boise:
University of Idaho Press.
Ingram, D. (2000). Green Screen: Environmentalism and Hollywood Cinema. Exeter:
University of Exeter Press.
Lauter, P. (2001). From Walden Pond to Jurassic Park: Activism, Culture, & American
Studies. Durham: Duke University Press.
Low, S. M., & Lawrence-Zuniga, D. (Eds.). (2003). The Anthropology of Space and Place:
Locating Culture. New York: Blackwell.
MacDonald, S. (2001). The Garden in the Machine: A Field Guide to Independent Films about
Place. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Martin, D. G. (2000). Constructing place: Cultural hegemonies and media images of an innercity neighborhood. Urban Geography 21(5), 380-405.
Owens, L. (1997). Mixedblood Messages: Literature, Film, Family, Place. Norman: University
of Oklahoma Press.
Rosembaum, J. (1995). Moving Places: A Life at the Movies. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Scharff, V. (Ed.). (2003). Seeing Nature through Gender. Lawrence: U of Kansas P.
Wilson, C., & Groth, P. (Eds.). (2003). Everyday America: Cultural landscape studies after J.
B.
Jackson. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Zonn, L. (Ed). (2000). 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, 1996, and Palmer, 1986).
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/TF33120/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-12/teenissues
(Beach & Myers, 2001; Myers & Beach, 2001). 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, 2000; Myers, Hammett, & McKillop, 2000).
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, 1986). 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, 1993).
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 (2003) 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. 117).
For further reading:
Cornis-Pope, M., & Woodlief, A. (2002). 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. (2002). Divergence in retelling a soap episode.
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/kjh0002.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, 2001). As part of her study of the production of Super Bowl XXVI held in
Minneapolis, Dona Schwartz (1998) 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_b
owl.html
Bonnie Nardi and Brian Reilly, Apple Research Laboratories, Interactive Ethnography: Digital
Photography at Lincoln High School
http://www.acm.org/sigs/sigchi/chi97/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, 1995). 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. 24).
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/~ds8s/
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/chi97/proceedings/demo/ban.htm
PowerPoint: media ethnography completed by elementary school students:
http://www.ltl.appstate.edu/436/student/ethnography/s02/katieandtonya.htm
http://www.ltl.appstate.edu/436/student/ethnography/s02/bethel.htm
http://www.ltl.appstate.edu/436/student/ethnography/s02/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,
1997). 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, 1999 for a discussion of these limitations).
For further reading:
Fontana, A. & Frey, J. H. (2000). The interview: From structured questions to negotiated text.
In N. Denzin, & Y. Lincoln (Eds.). Handbook of qualitative research(pp. 645-672).
Thousands Oaks, CA: Sage.
Spradley, J. (1997). 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. (2000). Focus groups in ethnography of communication: Expanding topics of inquiry
beyond participant observation. The Qualitative Report, 5 (1 & 2)
http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR5-1/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 (1999)
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 (1996) studied 35 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. 8).
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 (1997) 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 (1980) 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 (1997) 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. 52).
In other cases, females responded critically given their resistance to the sexist portrayals of
women, an opposing or resistant stance (Hall, 1980). 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. 82).
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, 1997). As Rose and Friedman
(1997) 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. 12). In a
study of viewers’ responses to the evening soap opera program, Dallas, Katz and Liebes (1987) 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, 1998). 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, 1998). 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 (1997) 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. 4).
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 (1998) 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. 95)
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. 64). 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. 64-65).
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 (1996) analyzed the plot
development of 110 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, 1993; Radway, 1984), 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, 1984), 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. (1985). Watching “Dallas:” Soap opera and the melodramatic imagination. London:
Metheun.
Ang, I. (1991). Desperately seeking the audience. New York: Routledge.
Attallah, P., & Shade, L. (2002). Mediascapes: New patterns in Canadian communication. Toronto:
Nelson Press.
Ayim, M. (1994). Knowledge through the grapevine: Gossip as inquiry." In R. Goodman & A.
Ben-Ze'ev (Eds.), Good Gossip (pp. 85-99). Lawrence: University of Kansas Press.
Beach, R. (1995). Constructing cultural models through response to literature. English Journal, 84,
87-94.
Beach, R. (1997). Critical discourse theory and reader response: How discourses constitute reader
stances and social contexts. Reader, 37,1-26.
Beach, R., & Lundell, D. (1997). 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.
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