Methods for Media Ethnography – Practical Research/ Research Practice in Media Anthropology and Ethnographic Writing (Ethnographic Methods in a Selected Research Field)
Instructor: Dr. Markus Schleiter
Students of this course develop their skills of designing and conducting an own empirical research project. Individually or in small teams, students work on the topic of audio-visual media on/from South Asia. Thus, the subject of the research project is open to a variety of topics, e.g. exploring family series watching in South Asian diasporas, Bollywood fan culture and dances, film practices among teens/youth in relation to websites like Tic Toc or YouTube, everyday discussions on TV news, professional film productions or .... Students will develop their empirical research project from the first steps onward: forming a research question, using methods in the ‘field’ and ultimately producing an ethnographic essay, which will be peer-evaluated in class.
In preparation of their research project, students will evaluate anthropological research methods. Additionally, they learn about methods of doing remote ethnography during the current pandemic situation as well as about the limits of such methods. Films are at the research focus, but may also be used as research tools, for example in elicitation interviews or research-oriented ethnographic film production. Furthermore, qualitative methods to analyse the narratives, content, or stylistic features of films will be acquired.
The empirical focus of media anthropology explores what people – as consumers and producers – do with media. Studying audio-visual media enables to address questions, such as how film is part of society and everyday life; rather than focusing exclusively on film content. Media anthropologists investigate on how media becomes meaningful to people, and in which ways the audience as well as film producers reflect and articulate ideas of culture with reference to media.
The practical projects will be accompanied by reading exemplary South Asian media ethnographies, and of key texts on anthropological research methods, methods of media anthropology, and ethnographic writing. Students have the chance to produce audio-visual media as part of their projects.
Workload:
- Original empirical research project (individually or in groups)
- Zoom presentation of a research question (10 min.) and the results of the research conducted (15 min.) (individually or in groups)
- Ethnographic essay presenting the research results (4 pages) or audio-visual production and self-reflective essay (2 pages) (individually or in groups)
- Submission of six e-learning assignment (for example answering question on the readings, research notes, response essays, interview questions / varies from ½ page to two pages each)
- Participation in weekly zoom sessions (offline participation may be possible if compliant with official COVID-19 regulations, please contact the lecturer on this)
- Close reading of the key text each week
Recommended Literature:
Agar, Michael H. 2008. The Professional Stranger: An Informal Introduction to Ethnography: Second Edition. Bingley, UK: Emerald.
Altheide, David L., Schneider, Christopher J. 2013. Qualitative Media Analysis. Delhi: Sage.
Askew, Kelly and Richard R. Wilk (ed.) 2002. The Anthropology of Media: A Reader. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.
de Maaker, Erik 2000. Integrating Ethnographic Research and Filmmaking: Video Elicitation for a Performance Oriented Analysis of the Teyyam Ritual. Visual Anthropology 13 (2): 185-197.
Ginsburg, Faye D.; Lila Abu-Lughod and Brian Larkin (ed.) 2002. Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Marcus, George E. 1995. Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography. Annual Review of Anthropology 24: 95-117.
Pandian, Anand and Stuart McLean (ed.) 2017. Crumpled Paper Boat: Experiments in Ethnographic Writing. Durham & London: Duke University Press.
Pink, Sarah 2007. Doing Visual Ethnography: Images, Media and Representation in Research. London: Sage Publication.
Schleiter; Markus 2014. VideoCD Crossovers: Cultural Practice, Ideas of Belonging and Santali Popular Films. Asian Ethnology 73 (1-2): 181-200.
Van Maanen, John 2011. Tales of the field: On Writing Ethnography: Second Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Lehrende/r: Souleymane Diallo
- Lehrende/r: Markus Schleiter
- Lehrende/r: Souleymane Diallo
Audio-Visual Research Methods and Short Film Production Workshop
Link to this course at Learnweb:
https://www.uni-muenster.de/LearnWeb/learnweb2/course/view.php?id=48671
Please sign in and check the Learnweb for readings to prepare the first block classes!
! Please note! The originally proposed schedule changes. Please look for updates at the WWU Learnweb. The class will be taught online, while some block classes will be combined with regular bi-weekly sessions. We stick to the originally scheduled first block classes, however, we reduce the length of the teaching days to four hours a day.
First session: November 07. / 08. 2020:
Saturday 07.11.2020 10:00-12:30, lunch break & Saturday 07.11.2020, 13:00-15:00
Sunday 08.11.2020 10:00-12:30, lunch break & Sunday 08.11.2020, 13:00-15:00
Find further dates below!
Course Outline:
This class is informed by ‘visual anthropology’
theories, methods & debates. It teaches students in two very related
fields: A: We look closer at methods and theories of how to use audio-visual
media for fieldwork and apply that in practice. B: The class trains the
participants in producing a short anthropologically informed documentary video
to represent ethnographic fieldwork experience and the related research
interest. Students have to develop a research project and accompany their qualitative
research with audio-visual media to gather data, but also to finally edit a
presentable short film. In spite of remote videoconference teaching there are
convenient ways to train the participants in audio-visual video and image
production and editing. Students might work in small groups or individually.
!! First assignment: Brainstorm and think of a research & film project. Please don’t team up yet everybody each needs to develop a project in the first place! Research some literature related to that topic. For instance, if ‘gender’, ‘migration’, ‘emotion’, or ‘ritual’ plays a role in your research interest, look into related literature. Present your project briefly in class at our first meeting.
Some further details outlined: We deal with film and photography in qualitative social research and look at recent theories, methods and case studies related to that undertaking. Students will be encouraged to try out participatory methods, too, such as photo/video elicitation. That means that we work with photo/video materials (or even archives such as social media archives amongst others) shot by our very social actors themselves, for example video-diaries, home movies, Instagram archives, or photos/videos they might shot for you to share insights into their social reality and subjectivity. Thereby, audio-visual media will be explored as an ethnographic research tool to gather empirical data. Students will use cameras while doing fieldwork to document their fieldwork on the one hand, but to produce on the other hand a properly produced short film too. Finally we will do a presentation of your works in April 2021, hopefully in public!
- Students will be invited to join the excursion to the Freiburger Film Forum – Festival for Transcultural Cinema, which will take place in May 2021.
Further dates (Mondays bi-weekly)
- Note that this change of the schedule happened spontaneous, since it does not seam very likely that the pandemic situation favours offline teaching for WS 20/21. In case we’ll find out that this Monday session is not convenient for too many of you we’ll set up a doodle to find out the most convenient date for most of you, or we might get back to schedule another block date. However, regarding zoom interaction, shorter sessions are more likely successful leaning experiences than long zoom block weekends.
Schedule:
Saturday 07.11.2020 10:00-12:30, lunch break & Saturday 07.11.2020, 13:00-15:00
Sunday 08.11.2020 10:00-12:30, lunch break & Sunday 08.11.2020, 13:00-15:00
Monday 23.11.2020 10:00-12:00
Monday 07.12.2020 10:00-12:00
Monday 21.12.2020 10:00-12:00
Monday 11.01.2021 10:00-12:00
Monday 25.01.2021 10:00-12:00
Monday 08.02.2021 10:00-12:00
Monday 22.02.2021 10:00-12:00
Monday 15.03.2021 10:00-12:00
Monday 29.03.2021 10:00-12:00
- Lehrende/r: Thomas John