Through my eyes

The challenge for ethnographers choosing to present their work on the computer screen is that their choice of modes and media is always going to contribute to the making of meaning. Different modes afford meaning in different kinds of ways, even though those differences may not be easily and straightforwardly specified. If every screen-design choice that the ethnographer makes is redolent with meaning, then those choices become burdened with a significance that is as yet largely uncharted.

-Bella Dicks, Qualitative Research and Hypermedia : Ethnography for the Digital Age, 2005, pp. 166-167

Sunday, November 14, 2010

I am not a participant observer.  I have the same things at risk as anyone else in the class.  I am required to participate and complete readings, and at the end of the day, the work that I do for the class will be evaluated just like every other student and I will receive credit for taking the course. When I speak with the other students in the class, our conversations happen because I am a peer, not because I am an ethnographer.

Quote from the first draft of my paper on this experience.

I am invisible in most of this work.  My observations are very much outwardly focussed but, they are all seen through my eyes, even if I do not call attention to that fact.  I do not deny my biases.  As a member of the class, I have done my best to give an accurate representation of Future Class and our activities around the Drumbeat festival.  While this is a full view, it is in no way a complete view, as it is mine.  I hope the other members of the class feel that is is representative of them as well.