The future of digital ethnography

The future of digital ethnography © DERC - Digital Ethnography Research Centre 2017 1
 Contents

Acknowledgements 3 Musings on the strangeness of photographic 14

shadows, digital post-processing and authenticity
Foreword 5 Yaron Meron

Contributors 6 Digital rights and digital traces 17

Ekaterina Tokareva
Understanding memory and meaning through metadata 7
in digital objects
Armchair anthropology 19
Sharon Greenfield
Zhang ‘Dino’ Ge

Borrowing beneath broken data 9

Are we witness to a war waged against 23
Allister Hill world-making practices?
Citt Williams
Creative workspaces 12
Tresa LeClerc Who we are 24

The future of digital ethnography © DERC - Digital Ethnography Research Centre 2017 2
 Acknowledgements and credits

Acknowledgements:
The contributors to this short volume would like to thank Sarah Pink
for providing the opportunity for the PhD community to show their vision
for the future, John Postill for providing funding for the project and Bianca
Vallentine for website support for showcasing our e-booklet and video.

Credits:
Book design: Yaron Meron and Natalia Alessi
Editing: Tresa LeClerc
Video production: Citt Williams and Zhang ‘Dino’ Ge
Cover photograph: Yaron Meron

The future of digital ethnography © DERC - Digital Ethnography Research Centre 2017 3
 Foreword
Jolynna Sinanan
Vice Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow
School of Media and Communication
Digital Ethnography Research Centre
It has become a truism to think and to say that the world is becoming more
digital. The number of journal articles, volumes, conferences and symposia
dedicated to trying to understand the digital present and the turn towards
a digital future is growing exponentially in the social sciences. In this short
collection, the future of scholarship in digital ethnography, that is, the students
within the Digital Ethnography Research Centre at RMIT University present
their views on what the future of digital ethnography means to them.
One of the joys of my own PhD student experience (so very long ago, at the
dawn of social and mobile media) was not only working with experts in my
area, but also feeling that I was contributing to the growth of that area itself.
It has been an absolute pleasure continuing an engaging discussion with this
year’s cohort of PhDs, some having only commenced their candidature and
The future of digital ethnography
are awaiting milestones of confirmation and others who are approaching
the end of their long journey.
We have been musing, mulling over and debating the future of digital
ethnography and our place in the growing field. Each month this dedicated
group of PhDs has brought their ideas and insights to our Digital Ethnography
Reading Group and Writing Group and this short volume reflects some of
these conversations. All of the contributors to this collection of thought pieces
and short essays have utilised approaches in and reflected upon doing digital
ethnography. They have selected evocative images that capture an aspect of
what digital ethnography means to them and what the future might hold.
Some of the questions they raise in relation to conducting research are more
important than ever, to engage a world where diverse groups of people have
been brought together in an a unprecedented way.
Our conversations are not easy. The group is truly interdisciplinary. Amongst
the group is a graphic designer who has had a long career before turning
to theorising design practice, a Silicon Valley professional, a filmmaker, an
author, an anthropologist and a professional playbourer. Their continued
debates strive to develop a conceptual vocabulary for a timely, relevant and
empathetic digital ethnographic theory and practice.
We hope you enjoy this short collection and we hope it provokes your own
reflections on The Future of Digital Ethnography. We would love for you to
join our discussion.
Jolynna Sinanan is a Vice Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School
of Media and Communications and the Digital Ethnography Research Centre
at RMIT University. Previously, she was a Research Fellow in Anthropology at
University College London with the European Research Council funded project
Why We Post, which compared uses of social media across 8 countries. She is the
co-author of Visualising Facebook (2017, UCL Press) and Webcam (2014, Polity)
with Daniel Miller and How the World Changed Social Media (2016, UCL Press).
© DERC - Digital Ethnography Research Centre 2017 4

Contributors
Dino Ge Zhang is,
or wishes to be,
an anthropologist.
He is currently
doing ethnographic
research on
livestreaming websites
in China for his PhD
project. In his spare time while not
watching livestreams, he has also
written on game cultures, online
dating and urban renewal.
Sharon Greenfield
is a PhD candidate
and her dissertation
focuses on
young people
as they engage
with digital media
during bereavement. Her
research interests include digital
bereavement and grief studies,
material cultures, place making,
and technology. Prior to pursuing
her PhD, she was a researcher in
the People and Practices Research
Group at Intel Corporation.
Contact: sharon.greenfield@rmit.
edu.au and @SharonG
Tresa LeClerc is
a writer and
PhD candidate.
As part of her Yaron Meron is
a designer and
creative project,
she is writing a photographer
with twenty
ethnographically
Ekaterina Tokareva is years experience,
informed novel, entitled All The
a PhD candidate working
Time Lost, that explores migrancy
and a lecturer internationally.
and the everyday in Melbourne,
with the school As a PhD candidate, his
Australia. Her short story
of Media and research investigates the use
‘American Riviera’, was published
Communications. of dramaturgy, as a generative
as part of the book 9 Slices and
The working title of design methodology for making
her academic writing has appeared
her project is ‘The politics the familiar strange, to explore
in Writing in Practice: The Journal
of Internet governance in Russia’. relationships between designers
of Ethnographic Research.
By applying an ethnographic and stakeholders in professional
approach, the project seeks to design practice. Yaron holds
Allister Hill is Masters degrees in both design,
contribute to an understanding of
an applied and art in public space.
how struggles over the Internet
anthropologist and
governance unfold in Russia,
PhD candidate.
who the actors are and what are Citt Williams is
Allister’s PhD is
the factors that influence those an international
an ethnography
struggles. Ekaterina’s background is documentary
that examines the
in History, Communication and film-maker and
relationship between materiality,
Public Relations. environmental
space and sustainability in what may
be considered a ‘smart’ building’. scientist who has
Allister also has experience in been working closely
indigenous anthropology (Native with Indigenous storytellers
Title and Heritage) and consumer/ for over 15 years. At DERC, Citt
market research. continues her practice-based
research exploring land rights in
the digital era, particularly the
tensions between knowledge,
territory and technology @cittw

The future of digital ethnography © DERC - Digital Ethnography Research Centre 2017 5
 Understanding memory and meaning
through metadata in digital objects

by Sharon Greenfield

Digital objects are images, sounds, video and text that are composed
of data and organised by an ontology that is metadata. These digital
objects are becoming a pervasive reality in societies and represent
a cultural shift in humanity.

Digital objects are not just ones
and zeros, they operate beyond
binary code and circuit board
signals. They are imbued with
contexts and they hold meaning
from the contexts from which they
are created. These meanings are
held within the metadata. Metadata
is the descriptive data a computer
uses to understand the structure
or organisation of data such as a
digital object.
For example, in an image of your
grandmother and her yard that
you take with your camera there
is metadata that identifies the
camera make and model, the
time and date that the image was
created, the GPS coordinates
where the image was created, the
white balance of the image and
your grandmother’s distance from
your camera amongst far more
information. All of this metadata
creates context; the GPS shows
location, the date connects to the
weather that day in that particular
place, the white balance metadata
explains that she was outdoors
and the distance shows she was 10
feet from your camera. All of this
metadata through context holds
meaning.
To understand this ubiquitous
digital milieu and the ways in
which meaning and memory are
engaged through digital objects,
we need to understand fully the
metadata. I believe the future of
digital ethnography will lie in the
exploration and understanding of
the metadata of digital objects.
Digital Ethnography is the research
of digital language, customs
and cultures on ‘the slow burn’.
Anthropologists have documented

Understanding Memory and Meaning through Metadata in Digital Objects – by Sharon Greenfield © DERC - Digital Ethnography Research Centre 2017 6
our cultural shifts over the to memory and the future of
centuries and where previously digital ethnography will be in
shifts have occurred as to how capturing this whole new shift
cultures have been affected by into being.
space, architecture and time. Our
next shift will be the ubiquity of For example, take the structure
cameras and imagery. of the arch and the idea of
using mathematics to create the
First architecture became arch. The arch and by extension
ubiquitous, then time became architecture and building presented
ubiquitous, then the digital became a shift in the experience of ‘place.’
ubiquitous and now digital images Architecture was birthed of the
as objects will become ubiquitous. need to express emplaced cultural
The camera will become symbols and meanings, taken in the
integrated into everything as an form of a building.
expression of culture, there will be
so much imagery that metadata During the 20th century, Western
will become a valuable affordance culture had to wrangle and tame
time because of the cultural
adoption of precision due to the
invention of flight travel. Clocks
added a minute hand and time
became standardized in all cities
and hence time became specific
and wristwatches became a
material culture norm.
And from time, came the advent
of the digital. From capturing and
labeling minutes and seconds,
came the exploration of the
binary through the emergence of
digital technology. To express our
cultural symbols and languages we
adopted digital technology which
Understanding Memory and Meaning through Metadata in Digital Objects – by Sharon Greenfield
transmogrified into new digital
cultural symbols and languages
as objects.
We now express our cultural
symbols and languages in imagery
as digital objects and it has become
as normalised as architecture and
concepts of time. The next major
cultural shift lies in the ubiquity
of digital cameras and images as
digital objects.
Pervasive images will become
omnipresent and as integrated
into our society and culture just
as architecture and time have
become omnipresent. With both
the normalisation of digital images
and the influx of the amount
of images, to understand and
remember meanings we will have
to contextualise the meaning
of these digital objects through
metadata. Thus, digital ethnography
research can contribute to how
we understand, remember and
contextualise digital objects.
References
Hui, Y. (2012). What is a Digital Object? Metaphilosophy, 43(4), 380–395.
Miller, D. (1987). Material culture and mass consumption. Oxford, OX, UK ; New York, NY, USA:
B. Blackwell.
© DERC - Digital Ethnography Research Centre 2017 7
 Borrowing beneath broken data
by Allister Hill
The future of digital ethnography is not just as what we see, record
and create in our digital interfaces but, rather, what lies beneath
the surface.
Digital ethnography can take us
beyond the screens we interact
with, on a daily basis, to unearth
the visible and invisible material
infrastructures that make our
digital world possible. Dourish and
Mazmanian (2013) remind us that
the physical world is persistently
felt, despite our information rich
environment. When the conduits
of the digital break down (such as
a cloud service or network failing)
or reach their material capacity
(such as full hard drives or maxed
out RAM and micro-processors),
Borrowing beneath broken data – by Allister Hill
we are obliged to reckon with the
physicality of how this information
is held and accessed. Furthermore,
‘the information that undergirds
the “information society” is
encountered only ever in material
form, whether that is marks on a
page or magnetized regions of a
spinning disk’ (p. 93). Not only does
digital stuff arise in material form,
it is essential to also acknowledge
the assortment of material
properties digital information
takes and their consequences
for how we use, encounter and
transform digital stuff. By focusing
on information as a material object,
conceptualisations of the materiality
of goods become not just about
evaluating a dichotomy of object
and importance, but more about
the consequences of form itself,
and forms of consequence for the
development of information and
everyday practices.
Concentrating on information
infrastructure and the
infrastructures of communication
(and especially those that
underpin the digital and ubiquitous
computing), Star (2002) suggests
that this seemingly ‘boring’ and
© DERC - Digital Ethnography Research Centre 2017
inconsequential element is essential
to be able to ‘read the invisible
layers of control and access, to
understand the changes in the
social orderings that are brought
about by information technology’
(p. 107). Turning the ethnographic
lens to messy and mundane
materials that are often difficult
to unpack, is not to everyone’s
taste. But they form a crucial
backbone as to how practices are
performed and require a reading of
the ‘deeper social structures’ that
are embedded within our digital
landscapes. Arguably, the clashes
one finds with how infrastructures
shape practices, meanings and vice
8

versa, Star suggests is a staple of
ethnographic enquiry allowing the
ethnographer to remain a stranger
and analyse that strangeness.
This not to say all infrastructures
or all people for that matter
find infrastructure to be boring
and mundane. Ethnography can
unearth the ‘deeply affectual’
relationships that people have with
infrastructure in often surprising
ways (Larkin 2013). Ethnographic
methodologies also allow a
dissecting of the revolutionary
fervour that accompanies the
Borrowing beneath broken data – by Allister Hill
ongoing innovation of digital
infrastructures and the material
worlds they underpin. Focusing on
the mundane and taking the time
to observe the actuality of practices
can make both revolutionary and
glacial transformations more visible
(Bowker et al. 2010).
Pink et al. (2016) have recently
explored the concept of ‘broken
data’, where an emphasis on data’s
materiality and acknowledgment of
digital data’s ‘thingness’ reveals that
it often breaks, leaks and is lively. My
work expands on this and explores
broken data in the following ways:
all the data that is collected but
can’t be used; all the data that
could be collected but isn’t able to
be accessed and all the data that is
collected but can’t be made sense
of or is too overwhelming for those
people interacting with it (with
limited skills and tools).
This is what a future of digital
ethnography offers in the face
of the explosion of connected
devices, where collectability
and interoperability are just as
important as all the pie in the
sky promises about what can
be done with that data. These
interests lay the ground for the
digital ethnographer to help put
the brakes on the utopian urgings
and slick marketing (Marr 2015a,
2015b), by exploring in what ways
data breaks, decays or even goes
astray. This would take one outside
of the infrastructural capacities of
the goliaths of the internet who we
willing feed our lives and data to
and whom have the ability and data
centres to trawl, store and mine
our inputs endlessly - in essence
being what many would readily
constitute as Big Data – possessing
the 3Vs (volume, velocity and
variety) and much more (Kitchin
& McArdle 2016). It is the smaller
fish working within the more
confined spheres, that while
they may operate infrastructures
that have the capacity to sense,
generate and collect Big Data, the
sociomaterial realties of those
organisations actually require the
kind of divinations that one would
expect in more volatile urban
and infrastructural environments
(Trovalla & Trovalla 2015). This
is where by focusing on the
practicality of infrastructural
© DERC - Digital Ethnography Research Centre 2017
doings and interactions, the digital
ethnographer can help, to borrow
from Dominic Boyer (see interview
with Ian Lowrie (Lowrie 2014a,
2014b), burrow ‘beneath the
surfaces of institutions’ to better
understand the actualities of digital
materialities.
Organisations and the corporations
that supply and maintain their
digital infrastructures, may salivate
over the nascent ‘disruptive’
potential of data gathered from
their devices - such as where one’s
colleagues are located within the
buildings they occupy - this data is
often inaccessible and unable to be
divined for the purposes that, at
first glance, seem so easy and close
9
at hand. For in some instances,
even attempting to try and gather
that data will overload already
overworked infrastructures.
The digital ethnographer can be at
the forefront of what is good and
bad data, how it breaks and when is
it just not fit for purpose. That’s the
kind of literal disruptions of which I
plan to be at the forefront.

References
Bowker, GC, Baker, K, Florence, M & Ribes, D 2010, ‘Toward Information Infrastructure Studies:
Ways of knowing in a networked environment’, in J Hunsinger, M Allen & L Klastrup (eds),
International Handbook of Internet Research, Springer, Dordrecht; Heidelberg; London; New
York, pp. 97-118.
Dourish, P & Mazmanian, M 2013, ‘Media as Material: Information representations as
material foundations for organizational practice’, in PR Carlile, D Nicolini, A Langley & H
Tsoukas (eds), How Matter Matters: Objects, artifacts, and materiality in organization studies,
OUP Premium, Oxford, pp. 92-118, via nlebk (EBSCOhost) <http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/
product/9780199671533.do>.
Kitchin, R & McArdle, G 2016, ‘What makes Big Data, Big Data? Exploring the ontological
characteristics of 26 datasets’, Big Data & Society, vol. 3, no. 1.
---- 2014b, Dominic Boyer on the Anthropology of Infrastructure (Part II), blog.castac.
org, March 07, <http://blog.castac.org/2014/03/dominic-boyer-on-the-anthropology-of-
infrastructure-part-ii/>.
Marr, B (ed.) 2015a, Big Data: Using SMART Big Data, analytics and metrics to make better
decisions and improve performance, Wiley, Chichester, UK, via nlebk (EBSCOhost).
---- 2015b, ‘Why the smart data revolution creates opportunities for firms of every size’, City
A.M., Jan 26, p. 23.
Pink, S, Ruckenstein, M, Willim, R, Ardévol, E, Berg, M, Duque, M, Fors, V, Lanzeni, Db, Lapenta, F
& Lupton, D 2016, Data Ethnographies 5: Broken Data, <https://dataethnographies.com/paper-
v-broken-data/>.

Larkin, B 2013, ‘The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure’, Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. Star, SL 2002, ‘Infrastructure and ethnographic practice: Working on the fringes’, Scandinavian
42, no. 1, pp. 327-43. Journal of Information Systems, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 107-21.

Lowrie, I 2014a, Dominic Boyer on the Anthropology of Infrastructure, blog.castac.org, March Trovalla, E & Trovalla, U 2015, ‘Infrastructure as a divination tool: Whispers from the grids in a
03, <http://blog.castac.org/2014/03/dominic-boyer-on-the-anthropology-of-infrastructure/>. Nigerian city’, City, vol. 19, no. 2-3, pp. 332-43.

Borrowing beneath broken data – by Allister Hill © DERC - Digital Ethnography Research Centre 2017 10
 Creative workspaces

by Tresa LeClerc

Crafts and Sugarcane

Like the rosebuds unfurled by young impatient fingers and

left beheaded on the carpet, Cecilia had brought about this
artificial moment.

On the table, next to the iPhone
is a pile of beads and sugarcane.
“Kandie Carter’s Crafts” YouTube
channel is blinking on the screen,
her cheery voice filling the room.
Cecilia stops it and listens for her
daughter, Lola. ‘She must be playing
in her room,’ she thinks to herself.
She contemplates making Kandie’s
beaded spiral necklace with
matching earrings to sell at the
Sunday market.
Cecilia kneels down and reaches
for the box hidden under the sofa.
It crunches as it runs over the
broken crisps on the carpet. Inside
are bags of small, colourful beads
and fishing line. Needles. Knots. She
throws them on the table next to
the phone. On the screen, Kandie’s
face is frozen, her eyes wide, like
the ones painted on Lola’s dolls.
Cecilia listens again to make sure
Lola is not crying before pressing
the red arrow. Behind Kandie, the
pink lucky cat that had stopped
mid-wave begins its slow repetitive
downward greeting.
Kandie is leaning forward as she
talks. A necklace made of beautiful
unfamiliar stones seems to pull her
down with the weight of them.
Cecilia hears a noise. She looks up.
Her daughter is looking at her with
a bright I-found-you smile. Not you.
It. She does not realize that Lola
has grabbed the phone until it is in
the air, against the wall, on the floor.
Cecilia retrieves the phone. She
brushes the cracked screen with
her jumper, replaces it on the table.
She pulls the timeline back with
her finger, starts again at 00:15.
Can we not go back in time?
Fiction writing and ethnographic
fieldwork accounts have much in
common. In his introduction to
Writing Culture, Clifford (1986)
muses that the boundary between
art and science is blurred. Science
advocates objectivity and reporting
observed facts in writing, while
Art is associated with subjectivity,
metaphor and allegory. This is
taken a step further with digital
ethnography, which explores the

Creative Workspaces – by Tresa LeClerc © DERC - Digital Ethnography Research Centre 2017 11
ways in which culture and society
can be researched through digital
media (Pink et al 2016).
My interests lie in how the digital
enables us to create. In the ‘90s,
I wrote stories in typing class on
an old green-cursored Apple
computer in the hot plastic-
smelling laboratory of my middle
school. We carried with us
lined pieces of paper containing
our writing. That is what we
wrote, what had been written.
The computer itself, a writing
implement.
Creative Workspaces – by Tresa LeClerc
Now it connects us to the digital,
with new programs, languages
and spaces. To Bakhtin (1981,
p.7), the novel represented ‘the
tendencies of the new world still in
the making.’ This ‘actively polyglot’
world contained the new cultural
and creative consciousness. This
is the space where languages
and digital culture intersect. The
language of code, the emoticon,
Google translate, the gif, meme,
the YouTube Vlog, arguably exist
simultaneously in the digital space.
The ‘making’ is constant, transient,
decontextualised.
How then, can it be captured?
In the above photographs are
creative workspaces. The first is
the materials to make beaded
jewelry. What is notably absent
is the iPhone playing a YouTube
video, which taught the artist
to make beaded pendants. The
second is the desk of a PhD
creative practice candidate at RMIT
University. The third is the non/
fiction Lab’s Urban Writing House,
a space ‘used to host writers, poets,
meetings, artists and makers in
residence’ (nonfictionlab 2016).
Projected onto the wall is Hannah
Brasier’s interactive documentary.
In these spaces, the digital meets
the creative. In my opinion, it is
the image, the metaphor, the art
that plays on meaning, constantly
combining and recombining,
adjusting to the new contexts, that
embodies the ‘making’ of our future.
References
Bakhtin, MM 1981, ‘Discourse in the novel,’ The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, Austin:
University of Texas Press.
Clifford, J 1986, ‘Introduction,’ Writing culture: the poetics and politics of ethnography: a School
of American Research advanced seminar, J Clifford & GE Marcus (eds.), Berkeley: University of
California Press.
nonfictionlab 2016, ‘Urban Writing House,’ non/fictionLab, http://nonfictionlab.net.au/2016/03/
urban-writing-house/
Pink, S, Horst, H, Postill, J, Lewis, T, & Tacchi, J 2016, Digital Ethnography: Principles and Practice,
Los Angeles, United States: Sage Publications Limited.
© DERC - Digital Ethnography Research Centre 2017 12
 Musings on the strangeness
of photographic shadows, digital
post-processing and authenticity

by Yaron Meron
John Berger is quoted and hashtagged enthusiastically in a variety of
online domains as having said “what makes photography a strange
invention – with unforeseeable consequences – is that its primary
raw materials are light and time.” (Berger 1982, p85).
1930s, and earlier, Brassai and he described as automatisation
others were staging and doctoring or ‘habitual recognition’
This is most often attributed as a creative process for making apparent documentary images (Shklovsky 1965).
as a response to Sontag’s ‘On the familiar strange. (McNatt 1999), is enough to
Photography’ (Behrmann 2013), render the discussion moot, long Within the context of this paper,
although this is debatable. Sources Debates around notions of the photographic form, as well
before we get anywhere near the
which credit the phrase “art is photographic authenticity and as the photographic process, are
invention of Photoshop. However
not what you see, but what you truthfulness are even more tedious, going to be considered strange
we frame it (pun intended),
make others see” to Edgar Degas unhelpful and endless. Whether it is phenomenological manifestations.
to create or even reflect upon
are even murkier. What matters about documentary photography, John Berger’s dictum, of
photographic imagery is to make
for the sake of this piece, is less such as Robert Capa’s ‘Falling photography being inherently
strange.
the contextual interpretations Soldier’ (Capa 1936), or more strange, allows us to position the
or authenticity of these quotes, recent debates about digitally Making strange is a concept language and form of photography
than their elevation as statements edited news photographs (Meron attributed to Victor Shklovsky, as products of process, as well
of authority with regards to the 2014), the discourse appears who used poetry to manipulate as practice. Specifically, the
generative nature of using imagery cyclical. That as far back as the language to overcome what photograph itself (even in isolation

Musings on the strangeness of photographic shadows, digital post-processing and authenticity – by Yaron Meron © DERC - Digital Ethnography Research Centre 2017 13
from the photographic process) image (right, fig 2), only the shadow
becomes strange. Embracing is viewable.
photography’s inherent strangeness,
the photographic examples on Leaving aside the processes
this page are so removed from involved in capturing the
their original subject (the bicycle) photographs, both images have
that this original becomes removed obviously been post-processed
from its familiarity, rendering (is it possible not to post-process
it strange. an image?). However, the second
photograph (fig 2) has been
In the first bicycle image (fig 1), subjected to several more levels
one can predominantly see the of post-processing (or digitally
shadow of the ‘original’. However, generated strangeness) than the fig 2
a cropped fragment of the ‘original’ first photograph. The shadow was
remains in the frame. In the second photographed on a pavement,

but has been manipulated so that
the bicycle shape appears upright.
Ironically, despite this distortion,
the manipulated shadow assumes
a more familiar visual form of an
actual bicycle, as we are used to
engaging with it, than the more
empirically authentic portrayal of
the bicycle in the first photograph.
In this second photograph (fig 2),
the bicycle’s apparent uprightness
is more comforting and familiar.
Its wheels are barely distorted
and the seat is prominent and
fig 1 welcoming. One could almost
imagine sitting astride the seat of
the shadow of this metaphorical
bicycle and riding it away.
This is more than can be said for
the first image. In that photograph,
one is drawn to the subject
merely as a shadow, rather than
as a bicycle itself. Perhaps this is
because of its distorted handlebars,
which assume a kind of gothic
swanlike posture. In addition, the
wheels are splayed at disturbed
angles to each other and, even
though we are able to see the
original form of the ‘physical’

Musings on the strangeness of photographic shadows, digital post-processing and authenticity – by Yaron Meron © DERC - Digital Ethnography Research Centre 2017 14
bicycle as a reference within the authenticity and originality are
photographic frame, the subject increasingly meaningless, whilst
is more identifiable as just a at the same time, likely to be
shadow. A metaphoric reflection increasingly ongoing. However,
of the original. now that monkeys have become
photographers (Associated Press
2016), the paradigms and formats
with which we engage with these
So, what does all this mean?
debates will continue to shift.
It means that theorising
By accepting, as a strength, that
photographic imagery, particularly
photography is a generative
in an age of increasing vernacular
process for making the familiar
digital reproduction, is more
strange, rather than a limitation
complex and continually evolving
of the practice – and by not letting
than ever before. Debates about
Musings on the strangeness of photographic shadows, digital post-processing and authenticity – by Yaron Meron
ourselves be distracted by third
party debates around authenticity
– it allows creative practitioners to
more comfortably engage critically
with wider discourses around the
use of photographic images.
References
Behrmann, K. (2013). “Ways Of Seeing.” Retrieved 17/10/2016, 2016, from http://
artofcreativephotography.com/essay/ways-of-seeing-john-berger/.
Berger, J. (1982). Appearances. Another Way of Telling. J. Berger and J. Mohr. New York,
Pantheon Books.
Capa, R. (1936). “The Falling Soldier.” Retrieved 17/10/2016, 2016, from http://www.
metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/283315.
McNatt, G. (1999). “Brassai revealed true Paris via artifice.” Retrieved 17/10/2016, 2016, from
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paris-by-night.
Meron, Y. (2014). “Photography, truth, reality, objectivity and other chestnuts.” Retrieved 7
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Shklovsky, V. (1965). Art as Technique. Russian Formalist Criticism Four Essays. L. T. Lemon and
M. J. Reis: 3-25.
© DERC - Digital Ethnography Research Centre 2017 15
 Digital rights and digital traces
Ekaterina Tokareva
The future of Digital Ethnography will be shaped by the struggle for
digital rights. How will people interact in the digital world? What kind
of digital traces will they leave?
The answers to these questions
will depend on who has ownership
of and access to users’ data, and
who controls digital technologies.
Users’ data is becoming an
important commodity for private
companies and we are currently
witnessing data as becoming a
source not only for decision-
making, but also for regulation for
governments.
The first photo is a snapshot of
Google’s Transparency Report. It
Digital rights and digital traces – by Ekaterina Tokareva
surveillance program public. This
represents the kind of result that
can be achieved when the use
of encrypted communication is
combined with the freedom of
information ethos.
The contest between privacy and
surveillance might take a new
is indicative of situations where
governments and companies apply
increasing pressure to get as much
access to users’ data as possible.
movements succeeds, we might
By blocking and removing content,
see a different digital environment,
users’ contributions to digital
which will, to use Julian Assange’s
spaces is limited or restricted.
words, enable ‘privacy for the weak,
Growing digital rights movements, transparency for the powerful’.
networks and groups seek
The second photo is a screenshot
to problematise restrictions
of Glenn Greenwald’s public key.
of movement and create an
Collaboration between Greenwald
environment in which users have
and Edward Snowden made
much more control over their
information about the NSA’s
data. If one of these digital rights
© DERC - Digital Ethnography Research Centre 2017 16
turn with the advent of quantum
computing. As the headline from
the third picture indicates, the
quantum computer is predicted to
be able to break RSA encryption
– the type of encryption most
popular among private users.
The further quantum computing
develops, the higher the chance
that it will be able to break any
currently existing encryption, thus
shifting the balance of power
between users, governments and
companies once again, although
it is hard to say at the moment in
whose favour.
The role of digital ethnography
is to capture these shifting
relationships between people, data
and technology. Among the main
challenges will be the question of
ethics: how to get access to data,
what data is okay to use, how to
navigate between the boundaries
of public and private.

Photo URLs
1. https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/
2. https://firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2015/02/GlennGreenwaldPGP.asc
3. http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/hardware/encryptionbusting-quantum-computer-practices-factoring-in-scalable-fiveatom-experiment

Digital rights and digital traces – by Ekaterina Tokareva © DERC - Digital Ethnography Research Centre 2017 17
 Armchair anthropology

by Zhang ‘Dino’ Ge

The double crisis of digital ethnography encompasses the following:

firstly the digital has lost its initial novelty and is constantly under the
threat of the emerging regime of the postdigital and secondly: the
removal of ethnography from anthropology has greatly encouraged
its application in interdisciplinary contexts, which also gradually leads
to a certain degree of exhaustion.

However, I do not want to and away from China, staring at my

neither am I able to construct
a new theoretical paradigm to
defend the discipline, if it’s even
necessary in the first place.
In desperation, I resort to an
introspective reflection on my
own fieldwork of watching
Chinese livestreams.
Apart from several months of
travel in China, the majority of my
fieldwork involves sitting in my
armchair at my home, 8000km
screens, typing, talking into the
microphone and staying still for
hours. For an ordinary viewer
of a livestream, ‘being there’
constitutes both the witness of
the event unfolding in front of
the livestreamer’s camera and
active participation in the chat
room. For the ethnographer, it
is roughly the same because I
share a digital space with others,
however remotely. As many digital

Armchair Anthropology – by Zhang ‘Dino’ Ge © DERC - Digital Ethnography Research Centre 2017 18
anthropologists have argued, virtual
worlds constitute legitimate field
sites, the dichotomy between
virtual and real runs obsolete
and even multiple spatial scales
can operate simultaneously in a
digital event. I can temporarily
suspend the consideration of other
spectating bodies in front of their
screens and resist the thought
of contesting the boundaries
of the field site by attending
to matters at hand: monitoring
the livestream video, the chat
messages and typing notes. But I
cannot ignore my own physical
presence sitting in my armchair in
front of my screens. So this is not
a theoretical move on field sites
but a consideration of practicality.
To begin with, this includes a few
technical matters: a difference of
time zone (attuning myself to peak
hour in China means staying up
very late or waking up very early),
connection issues to Chinese
servers (paying for an expensive
fibre connection and enduring the
constant reloading and refreshing
on a daily basis due to both the
notorious speed throttling of the
Australian ISPs and the infamous
Great Firewall of China), and
Armchair Anthropology – by Zhang ‘Dino’ Ge
finally the necessity of a cozy
armchair. Occupational hazards
of the livestream ethnographer:
hemorrhoids, bloodshot eyes,
stiff neck.
Fieldwork is not ‘supposed’ to
be deskwork but desk-field-
work has become mundane for
anthropologists today. Maybe it’s
time to rectify the much denigrated
armchair anthropology. The 19th
century armchair anthropologist
was ridiculed by 20th century
anthropology for only synthesising
the materials by other travellers
instead of actually going through
the ordeal of fieldwork, which is
the disciplinary and personal rite of
passage. The 21st century armchair
observer seems to be situated
in the right temporality given the
ubiquity of visual ethnography,
virtual ethnography, netnography
and digital ethnography today –
presupposing both an ethnographic
study of the digital and an
ethnographer utilising digital tools.
Digital tools, in my case of armchair
participant observation, are not just
recording technologies such as Go
Pros and webcams but software.
There is no standard ethnographic
recording or coding software
available for me. My initiation
into the publics of livestream
spectators includes learning and
understanding their indigenous
software spontaneously with
my informants so as to extract
metadata, chat logs, and catalogue
them. It begins with crawling on
Github and obscure internet
forums for various useful java or
python programs; it works for a
while until the website releases a
new update; repeat the process
or make some programmer
friends and get a free meal. The
digital offers great promises of
accuracy and preservation but in
practice it is another story. The
practice of archiving livestreams
and screenshots is especially
time-sensitive and requires
consistent efforts and gradual
accumulation. Online databases
(such as platforms like YouTube
and Tumblr) of Chinese livestreams
are the most precarious since
they are still guerrilla archives and
never institutionalised. It is thus
instrumental to develop offline (or
private server based) tactics
of storage and organising a
research database.
© DERC - Digital Ethnography Research Centre 2017
Lastly, the ethnographer’s eye is a
crucial component of the toolset.
Do we still say simply watching a
livestream is not participation but
observation? Perhaps televisual
seriality did not become extinct
in the age of internet videos and
distraction is still a necessity. The
point is, for most viewers, if they
don’t like a channel, they can
switch after staying for 30 seconds.
Participation is a matter of choice.
As an ethnographer of livestreams
(and unpopular channels mainly
so I can document the process
of growth or decline of individual
channels), I have the obligation of
not switching. Eyewitness is the
key to ethnography. This particular
kind of eyewitness involves a
lot of waiting because although
excitements do occur they only
do so unexpectedly. This is why
short clips like stream highlights
can never grasp the totality of
the experience. The quintessence
of the contemporary armchair
anthropology is not necessarily
passivity or alienation from the
‘field’, but the endurance of the
distributed ‘field’, the reliance
on various digital tools and not
forgetting about sensory faculties
we are already equipped with.
19
 Are we witness to a war waged against
world-making practices?

Citt Williams

Divergence
[Image: Bana Yarralji Bubu? the land of the Nyungkalwarra? Our richly inhabited field as aesthetically
[metadata keywords: climate change, indigenous, political ecology, creative rendered by transnational firm, Google. Source: Google Maps, 2017]
practice research, divergence]
“Technology as a masonry of political world-making” (Ezrahi, 2012)
Here in Far North Queensland, Chakrabarty, (2000) and Gajjala,
demanding Yalanji responsibilities (2013) have argued that a plurality
Andean-based anthropologist Ranciere contends ‘perception and to the oldest tropical rainforest of alternate worlds (and world-
Marisol de la Cadena argues meaning dictates what will count in the world reveal there are making practices) are rendered
so. After much reflection on as commonly sensible and what is, ethical ethnographic processes voiceless, invisible and positioned
Indigenous cosmopolitics, she otherwise, mere noise, babble or that need to be enacted. For us, a subordinate ‘other’ in a variety of
writes that ‘the separation of insensible. Such division between this involves world-making through social contexts.
entities into nature and culture’ the sensible and the insensible is a slowly negotiated collaborative
documentary. Within environmental world-
is an antagonistic world-making the locus of political struggle [that] making practices online, certain
practice that politically forces the manifests when groups, individuals The Anthropo-not-seen, sensibilities are being forced into
presence of many worlds into one or collectivities whose modes of Cadena argues is the name a common sensory deprivation.
(Cadena, 2010, 2015). perception are deemed illegitimate for the latest wave of Euro- For example, everyday online,
(i.e. insensible) by a governing centric reterritorialization that is I may read/hear a diversity of
Cadena links this destructive partition of the sensible demand
charge to Rancière’s partage du destroying what resists being made cultural world representations, but
to be taken into account’ (Panagia, in its image. Similarly, post-colonial rendered sensible from the noise
sensible (2004). Translated as 2014, p. 97).
the distribution of the sensible, theorists like Spivak, (1988), and babble is what Rancière would

Are we witness to a war waged against world-making practices? – by Citt Williams © DERC - Digital Ethnography Research Centre 2017 20
consider a ‘division of proprietary purposes of human existence are entities are making serious political institutes to also be response-able
and a division of the sense’ deleted (Foucault, 1980; Scott, headway (Vidal, 2011; Whanganui and nurture ethical know-how in
(Panagia, 2014, p. 97). Technology 1998) (in Jasanoff, 2010, p. 239). Iwi and The Crown, 2011), and research fellows, ethical approval
design, Escobar (2013) asserts, has rattling the underpinnings of processes and emerging teaching
a certain world-systems organizing This discursive ‘statistical gaze’ democratic processes that struggle curriculums. As a practitioner
affect that Leach & Wilson (2014) is described as an aesthetic to cohere these political forces with a view from the inside, digital
argue flattens difference (of combination of remote-sensing (Smith, 2016). Andean ‘earth- researchers with an ethical toolkit
being) in assumptive euro-centric satellite images and data-driven beings’ (De la Cadena, 2015), are better attuned, grounded
ways (see the work of da Costa climate models that are detached, ‘earth-others’ (Plumwood, 2002, and intra-active as ecologies
Marques, 2014; Verran & Christie, pixilated and mechanically p. 137) and examples culturally morph. Importantly, as emplaced
2014; Dourish, 2016). replicable (Edwards, 2010; Howes, emplaced in Maori, Saami, sensibilities begin to diverge
2003). Considered a modernist Inuipiat and Australian Aboriginal then the powerful ‘poetics of
In a similar way, by the privileging aesthetic, remoteness is connected sensibilities (amongst many more) an open work’ (Eco, 1962) can
of data-driven climate science, to cognitive mastery, reason threaten to tear the governmental respectfully begin...
governance institutions continue and knowledge (Foster, 2010). fabric and the excesses of our
to judge divergent climate knowing Further, Kallinikos (2005) argues neoliberal thought.
practices subject to scientific the functional simplification of
endorsement (Cruikshank, computational modeling utilises Emplaced, our project is currently
2005; Krupnik & Carleton-Ray, discrete logics and percentile slowly working through how we
2007). Jasanoff (2010) argues, by uncertainties that irresponsibly as learners and teachers enact
rendering experience obsolete statistically smooth over the knowledge-making encounters in
science creates facts by detaching everyday textures and disruptive regards to relational commitment,
knowledge from meaning, forces of existence. respect & responsibility and the
whereas ‘meanings are emergent maintenance work of performative 1. H
 ere (Instone, 2015, p. 136) provides the
from embedded experience’ As divergent forms of life, plants, world-making. example of a human and dog walking.
(p. 233, 237). animals, minerals, mountains,
Walking with a canine companion can
rivers, humanimals , cyborgs and “The specificity of intra-actions [a
It is not hard to see... an eloquent emerging intra-acting forms (both rearing of a relational form] speaks stretch ‘perceptions to smell-scapes,
critique of modern bio-politics, known and undisclosed) all share to the particularities of the power different styles of directionality, as well as
with its dispassionate statistical a common insensibility to euro- imbalances of the complexity of a an enhanced sociality’.
gaze and its tendency to simplify centric modernity (Stengers, field of forces” (Barad, 2012).
2. F or examples of divergence see Barad,
in order to aggregate, to a point 2011). Yet environmentally, political
where the essential meanings and allegiances to agential non-human Woven into this socio-ecological 2012; Haraway, 1992 and 2008; Johnson,
fabric, we urge digital research 2010; Rautio, 2017; Reinert, 2016)

Are we witness to a war waged against world-making practices? – by Citt Williams © DERC - Digital Ethnography Research Centre 2017 21
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© DERC - Digital Ethnography Research Centre 2017 22
 Who we are

The Digital Ethnography Research Centre (DERC) focuses on understanding

a contemporary world where digital and mobile technologies are increasingly
inextricable from the environments and relationships in which everyday life
plays out. DERC excels in both academic scholarship and in our applied work
with external partners from industry and other sectors.
digital-ethnography.com

The future of digital ethnography © DERC - Digital Ethnography Research Centre 2017 23