Second Ethnography Project--one part due in April, one part is due in May
-pick an online community that you are interested in
-more compressed timeline than first ethnography, no field notes or rough drafts
-abstract revision workshop instead in second to last class, last class everyone will put together a multimedia presentation (5 minutes)
***No in class meeting next Friday, use this time to conduct some research for your next ethnography
Today: spending a little bit of time to review some ideas and themes from the ultrasound session
Dick:
-Gammeltolft: ultrasound in Vietnam
-Kusiak: radiology
Seeing inside the body, how non-white, non-european people think about the body
- Demonstration of how technology travels--gets repurposed and used in different ways
Kusiak article: knowledge production, epistemological relativism, colonialism, etc.
- To talk about what science and professionalization looks like outside of the US, knowledge production, power and colonialism
Sierra:
-fetal views, gGermany: idea of “looking”
- ultrasound technology wasn’t inevitable... not necessarily on the pathway of progression
- using ultrasound as a technology is because of how the knowledge of science was constructed: the idea of “looking”
- midwife vs. obgyn knowledge: the transition and what that says about the progression and construction of science
- an entrance of technology signified a switch in power; visualization is constructed as the only way, even though the quality of care isn’t necessarily better
- fetishization of the visible: early use of this technology results in commodification, etc.
-of sonograms and baby prams:
- commodification of the pregnancy process, the fetus commodified
-production: ultrasound as a quality control, doctors as managers, women as workers
- different examples and things you do during pregnancy constructs the experiences and there is an idea of production that parallels this
- not necessarily cynical though: we don’t need to remove the agency of women, we can view them as consumers instead
- the ultrasound gives families to gender their child through the consumption of materials; the power to communicate with the child through the belly--chain reaction of events that gets set off by the ultrasound
- shift from a focus on production to a new focus on consumption
- different frameworks to think about bodily processes really shifts our understanding of how things work
Now: set of readings for this week, focus on to social media and technology and digital media communication (not laboratory cultures anymore)
Shift in technology moves quickly--as exemplified by Gershon’s article seeming dating
Ex. second life: depopulated now
Muhammad:
How quickly perceptions of the internet changes, and how people interact with this new incoherent internet--phenomenon of change and temporality of internet, ephemeral
Responses:
- what divides those who keep up with the internet innovations and those who get stuck; idea of the older generation being behind the younger generation
- do these people feel “left behind?” especially with apps--Dick’s example of yik yak, feeling old
- how different is that from broad technology vs use of technology within a technology (apps)
- the way younger gen uses facebook is completely different than older: differences within technologies
- new iteration of the ipod and ipad produced an entire line at the Apple store--but NOW this excitement is fleeting
- idea of necessity: the group and friends and fields you interact with limits your needs, and this can account for the lag in adopting technology in certain people/groups
- having to adopt a new technology is often effortful
- example of step-mom: different electronic things (itouch, kindle, mac computer) but NOT a smart phone
- nokia phones releasing an old version of their phone: overwhelming, constant connectedness
- when you are constantly available, there is no excuse to not stay connected
-app to block all the “fun” apps
-when everything is all on one device, it’s hard to separate things
-Selena Gomez “social media addiction”
- is this a serious thing that needs treatment?
- stories of internet addiction isn’t necessarily new
- can it be compared to drugs or alcohol? But there is a “constant newness” within these technologies... addiction to social media is driven by this need for newness, which drives out constant connectedness to technology; the idea of needing to be engaged
-if social media doesn’t make you happy EVERY time, that can be a part of what makes you more addicted and keep coming back
- consumption: reach the end of the routine, do you start the cycle over again or do you go on with your day?
- you have to engaged and actively “look for” this new information
- Andrew Sullivan, conservative commentator--attention span becomes focused on article and blogs...its hard to focus on books, in depth exploration becomes absent
- watching movies on triple speed because can’t stare at a screen
- too easy to be distracted
- time as a monetary resource; you have to be wise on how you spend it and what you want to send it on
- question of FOMO: what am I going to miss when I don’t have social media
- the language people use around time is in a capitalist vain
- is language perceiving time and or is time influencing our language
- “headspace” app: guided meditation, ASMR videos--we use technology to escape technology
- movies: escaping communication, not technology
- idea of technology “detox”
- ways in which the designers are structuring their products to alter our lives
- planned obsolescence--idea of temporality is built into the products
- updating becomes a necessity
- entrenched in wanting to buy new things--can we move away from this constant consumption
- newness
-geo-cities (what you see is what you get)
- also a web search engine
- lost its popularity--got deleted now
- "wayback machine" keeps old websites--afterlife of a lot of stuff
- ephemerality is not the best word when it comes to the internet; implies that it goes away, but it doesn’t it’s all archived
- idea of cleaning up your facebook profile: do people pay attention that much? Distinction between your public and private life
- separation between workplace and social settings, how much do people care? Different environments and different faces
- locking down their internet presence: do they have something to hide?
- fear mongering with the potential dangers of the internet
- less than savory information about different people can have different affects--minority versus majority
- your online presence becomes a public face
- you can also curate your social media presence to adopt a certain look; also the idea of a “finsta”
-social media norm breaching experiments
-media ideology: the medium of communication you use inherently structure that form of communication
- medium can be at odds with the message, people often do not say what they mean
- not just the content but how you say it too
- email included as a social media form in the article--for us, it is framed in a professional or academic aspect: is this generational?
-what is social media? How do we define this?
- online/offline dichotomy (real life vs virtual?)
- opposite of virtual is not real life...virtuality is an aspect of our lives that affects our communication, etc.
- ex. Chain letters
- social media as indexing people; massive communication
- subject matter that is discussed often decides what is social media
- scalable sociality--various levels of engagement: degree of privacy, of numbers
- social media allows for an in-between that you can often decide
- “friends on facebook” how many can you have that you recognize?
Gershon: ideology
Different views in the class:
- short-sided, narrow. Doesn’t address where she is getting her info and how that might affect her data
- facilitation of empathy is by providing details--this is narrated because they wanted to give detail to provide an understanding of progression; doesn’t mean that people are obsessed with this ideology
- mode of travel is pertinent to the way the break up ends up playing out
- conflation of formality with appropriate vs. inappropriate
- there needs to be a social norm established for that mode of interaction
- removal of emotional and vulnerable receptive aspect of having to see anyone’s face
- there needs to be some form of subjectivity
- motivations are selfish and self-protective
- differing of ideologies can only be studied by comparing broadly
- reductive in isolation
How will we approach the virtual ethnography compared to the laboratory ethnography? What shifts do we have to make?
- more reflexivity
- how much participant observation you decide to commit in your study
- this fundamentally alters the interaction that go on...there are also questions of how you choose to portray yourself
- connects to the larger idea of how involved one should be in their own ethnography
- fine to not be a part of the website--first stage of becoming a part of the community is lurking
- if you don’t participate at all, is it ethnography or is it journalism or is it historical
- can depend on the depth of the research and the writing
- diversity of methods is important; there isn’t one way to conduct this project
- online community has allowed people to find each other to cultivate a support base
- can be an echo-chamber; peer-reviewed
- plural of anecdotes as data
- diet forums as a mistrust for the scientific community/anti-medicalization
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