Table Of ContentSarah Pink
Heather Horst
John Postill
Larissa Hjorth
Tania Lewis
Jo Tacchi
ISAGE
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Singapore1 WashingtDCo n
ISAGE
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SAGE Publications Ud © Sarah Pink, Heather Horst, John Postill, Larissa Hjorth,
1 Oliver's Yard Tania Lewis and Jo Tacchi 2016
55 City Road
London EC1Y 1SP First published 2016
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Contents
List of Figures vii
Author Biographies ix
Acknowledgements xi
1 Ethnography in a Digital World 1
2 Researching Experiences 19
3 Researching Practices 41
4 Researching Things 59
5 Researching Relationships 79
6 Researching Social Worlds 101
7 Researching Localities 123
8 Researching Events 147
References 167
lndex 197
List of Figures
2.1 The Energy & Digital Living website and its video clips 27
2.2 Pink and Leder Mackley's work is discussed on the Energy &
Digital Living website 28
2.3 Woman talking on her smartphone 31
2.4 The family's understanding of the iPad as a family device included
the cats as users of it 35
2.5 The haptic screen is not only for the human species, as the participants
in Hjorth and Richardson's research found 36
3.1 Digital media in everyday life 47
3.2 Ubiquitous digital media 48
3.3 Fan Fiction genres of participation, Diary Study 2006 51
3.4 Permablitz involving converting lawn into raised beds for
growing vegetables 54
4.1 Using digital video re-enactments: A participant's measure of detergent
and her preferred machine setting 70
4.2 Image of the Haiti-Dominican Republic border 73
4.3 Bronte's portable kit 75
5.1 The mobile located: Helio Kitty entangles the mobile relationship 88
5.2 Girlfriend always present: The screen saver eye 89
5.3 The mobile phone as an intimat e object in Jamaica 91
5.4 Mobile, yet still in China 95
6.1 Postill follows the participants in his research online, and writes
about this on his blog 113
6.2 'Cosplayers' are inspired by various forms of popular culture 115
6.3 Cosplay is also part of an events culture 116
6.4 Attention to detail in cosplay costumes 117
viii digital ethnography
7.1 As a physical locality, Subang Jaya is a residential neighbourhood
near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 133
7.2 Online activity, Subang Jaya, Malaysia 133
7.3 Mapping Corporate Capitalism in Silicon Valley 137
7.4 The sea itself, Northern Spain 141
7.5 The Maritime Heritage Centre, Northern Spain 141
8.1 Watching TV with Sushila's family 154
8.2 Shibuya: Underground Streams 157
8.3 Keitai Mizu (Mobile Water) game 158
8.4 Keitai Mizu players 159
Author Biographies
Sarah Pink is Professor of Design and Media Ethnography, and Director (2015-present)
of the Digital Ethnography Research Centre at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.
Her interdisciplinary work combines design, ethnography and digital media. She is
Visiting Professor in Social Sciences in the School of Design and School of Civil and
Building Engineering at Loughborough University, UK; Visiting Professor in Applied
Social and Cultural Analysis at Halmstad University, Sweden; and Guest Professor
on the Visual and Media Anthropology programme at the Free University, Berlín,
Germany. Her research is funded by a range of research councils and through collabo
ration with industry partners. Her recent books include Situating Everyday Life (2012),
Advances in Visual Methodologies (ed., 2012), Doing Visual Ethnography (3rd edn, 2013)
and Doing Sensory Ethnography (2nd edn, 2015).
Heather Horst is Associate Professor and Director, Research Partnerships in the
College of Design and Social Context and a Founding Director (2012-2015) of the
Digital Ethnography Research Centre at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. She
is interested in how digital media, technology and other forms of material culture
mediate relationships, communication, learning, mobility and our sense of being
human. Her books examining these themes include The Cell Phone (with D. Miller,
2006), Living and Leaming with New Media: Findings from the Digital Youth Project (with
M. Ito et al., 2009), Hanging Out, Messing Around and Geeking Out (with M. Ito et al.,
2010) and Digital Anthropology (co-ed. with D. Miller, 2012). Her current research
explores transformations in the telecommunications industry and the emergence of
new mobile media practices such as mobile money, mobile music and locative media
in the Asia-Pacific region.
John Postill is Vice-Chancellor's Senior Research Fellow at RMIT University, Melbourne,
Australia, and Digital Anthropology Fellow at University College London (UCL). From
2010-11, he was Senior Research Fellow at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute IN3,
x digital ethnography
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC, Open University of Catalonia), Barcelona,
Spain. His publications include Localizing the Internet (2011), Media and Nation Building
(2006), and the co-edited volume Theorising Media and Practice (co-ed. with B. Brauchler,
2010). Currently, he is conducting anthropological research on new forms of digital
activism and civic engagement in Indonesia, Spain and globally.
Larissa Hjorth is Professor and a Founding Director (2012-2013) of the Digital
Ethnography Research Centre at the School of Media and Communication at RMIT
University, Melbourne, Australia. She is an artist and digital ethnographer who studies
the sociocultural dimensions of mobile media and gaming cultures in the Asia-Pacific.
Her books include Mobile Media in the Asia-Pacific (2009), Games & Gaming (2011),
Online@AsiaPacific (with M. Amold, 2013), Understanding Social Media (with S. Hinton,
2013), Gaming in Social, Locative and Mobile Media (with I. Richardson, 2014). She has
co-edited The Routledge Companion to Mobile Media (with G. Goggin, 2014), Gaming
Cultures and Place (with D. Chan, 2009), Mobile Technologies (with G. Goggin, 2009), Art
in Asia-Pacific (co-ed. with N. King and M. Kataoka, 2014) and Studying Mobile Media
(with J. Burgess and I. Richardson, 2012).
Tania Lewis is an Associate Professor at the School of Media and Communication
at RMIT University, Melboume, Australia. She has published across a wide range of
areas, including lifestyle media and consumption, and grassroots green movements.
Her books indude Telemodemities (co-authored with F. Martin and W. Sun, forthcoming
2016), Green Asia (ed., forthcoming 2016), Lifestyle Media in Asia (co-ed. with F. Martin,
forthcoming 2016), Smart Living (2008), Ethical Consumption (co-ed. with E. Potter,
2011) and TV Transformations (ed., 2009).
Jo Tacchi is Professor and Director of Research and Innovation and Deputy to the
President of RMIT Europe in Barcelona. She is trained as a social anthropologist and
studies media, communication, development and social change, the senses and emotions,
and everyday digital life. She has leda number of multi-country projects with partners
such as United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO),
United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), Intel and KPMG. She has conducted
research mostly in South Asia. Her most recent book is Evaluating Communication for
Development (with J. Lennie, 2013).
Acknowledgements
This book has been a collaborative work, and we are grateful to our co-authors for the
work and ideas that they have contributed towards its making. However, the biggest
thanks of all is to the people who made this book possible -that is, to the people from
across the world who participated in the various different research projects that we
and our co-authors discuss in this book, from Asia, Europe, the USA and Australia.
Their generosity in giving their time and knowledge to the projects we discuss here is
of immeasurable value. Sorne participants in research wish to have their real names
given and others to be anonymous. Real names are used where this was agreed with
the participants.
Second, we thank all the co-researchers and co-authors who have collaborated in
the projects and publications discussed in this book. We have cited their published
work and acknowledged their contributions where relevant in the text of this book
and give details below.
We would also like to thank the School of Media and Communication and the
College of Design and Social Context at RMIT University for the support of this pro
ject and the Digital Ethnography Research Centre, the intellectual space that has
been core to the development of the book. Spearheaded by Jo Tacchi who was Deputy
Dean of Research and Innovation in the School of Media and Communication at
the time, RMIT actively began recruiting for a concentration in media and digital
ethnography in 2011. This led to the founding of the Digital Ethnography Research
Centre (DERC) by Larissa Hjorth and Heather Horst in December 2012; Tania Lewis,
Sarah Pink and John Postill joined DERC shortly afterwards. Since this time, we have
researched, written and worked together in various configurations. The motivation
for this book carne from our desire to think through what we as a collective might say
about digital ethnography, given our different research tapies, sites, and trajectories
as well as different disciplinary influences. At the same time, it is also a positioning
statement for DERC and an exploration of this new field.
xii digital ethnography
Finally, we thank all Sage's editors who have supported and encouraged this project
from the outset - in particular, Chris Rojek and Jai Seaman. During the development
of our ideas for this book, we received important feedback and advice from Tom
Boellstorff, Graeme Turner, Scott McQuire and Supriya Singh¡ their insights fundamen
tally shaped our approach to the book and our contribution to the field. We have also
benefitted enormously from the support of Erin Taylor and Luke Gaspard who worked
with us in its final stages of preparation. In particular, we are grateful for Erin's insight
ful comments, pointing out to us things that we could no longer see ourselves, and her
encouraging presence at the end of the journey of writing, made a pivota! difference.
The research discussed in this book was funded through a variety of sources: Heather
Horst's research was funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
under the 'Kids' Informal Learning with Digital Media: An Ethnographic Investigation
of Innovative Knowledge Cultures' project, the Institute for Money, Technology and
Financia! Inclusion, Irvine, the Department for International Development (UK) and
a Vice-Chancellor's Senior Research Fellowship at RMIT University. Institutional sup
port for her research has also come from the Annenberg Center for Communication
at the University of Southern California, the Institute for the Study of Social Change
at University of California Berkeley, the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub at
the University of California, Berkeley and the School of Media and Communication
at RMIT University.
Tania Lewis's research into lifestyle television, 'The role of lifestyle television in
transforming culture, citizenship and selfhood: China, Taiwan, Singapore and India',
was funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Project grant (2010-14),
working with Research Associate Kiran Mullenhalli.
Sarah Pink's research into energy and digital media was part of the Low Effort
Energy Demand Reduction (LEEDR) project at Loughborough University, UK. LEEDR
was jointly funded by the UK Research Councils' Digital Economy and Energy pro
grammes through the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (grant number
EP/1000267/1) for 2010-14, and undertaken with Kerstin Leder Mackley and Roxana
Morosanu. Her research into standby mode in Australian households was undertaken
with Yolande Strengers and funded by the Design Research Institute, RMIT University.
Pink's 'Slow food and Cittaslow UK: changing local lives?' was funded by the Nuffield
Foundation, UK (2005-07), and supported by her stay at the Internet Interdisciplinary
Institute, UOC, Barcelona in 2010-11 and RMIT University in 2012-13.
Larissa Hjorth would like to acknowledge the Australian Research Council dis
covery (with l. Richardson) Games of Being Mobile: Mobile Gaming in Everyday Life
(DP140104295), the Australian Research Council Linkage Grant (with H. Horst and
S. Pink) Locating the Mobile with lntel (LP130100848) and Australian Research Council
Linkage Grant Spatial Dialogues: Public Art and Climate Change (LP100200088 with
Grocon and Fairfax).
