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'ethnography' Tag
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Helvetica: A Documentary, A History, An Anthropology
March 10, 2011I recently saw Helvetica, a documentary directed by Gary Hustwit about the typeface of the same name — it is available streaming and on DVD from Netflix, for those of you who have a subscription. As someone who studies ubiquitous socio-technological infrastructures (and Helvetica is certainly one), I know how hard it is to seriously [...]
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Trace Ethnography: Following Coordination through Documentary Practices
January 7, 2011This is a paper I co-authored with David Ribes and recently presented at HICSS, the Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences. It’s a qualitative methodology based on analyzing logging data that we developed through my research on Wikipedia, but has some pretty broad applications for studying highly-distributed groups. It’s an inversion of the previous paper [...]
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Capital ‘I’ for Internet?
December 3, 2009Do you capitalize “Internet?” Some scholars from the emerging field of ‘Internet studies’ say no. I say yes.
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The Work of Sustaining Order in Wikipedia: The Banning of a Vandal
October 28, 2009With the help of my advisor, Dr. David Ribes, I recently got a chapter of my master’s thesis accepted to the ACM conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, to be held in February 2010 in Savannah, Georgia. It is titled “The Work of Sustaining Order in Wikipedia: The Banning of a Vandal” and focuses on [...]
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Review: Talking About Machines by Julian Orr
November 8, 2008This is a review of Julian Orr’s Talking About Machines, an ethnography of Xerox photocopier technicians. Blurring the line between ethnomethodology, organizational communication, infrastructure studies, human-computer/machine interaction, business administration, and traditional ethnography of work, his study reveals more than just the daily practices of what may initially seem like a boring job.
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Conceptions and Misconceptions Academics Hold About Wikipedia
July 18, 2008As an ethnographer, I enter into communities, learn their customs, beliefs, and practices, then report back to the academy to share what I have discovered. In this presentation, I wish to do the opposite, presenting to the Wikipedian community an ethnography of academics as they relate to Wikipedia.
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A Communicative Ethnography of Argumentative Strategies in a Wikipedian Content Dispute
March 28, 2008This presentation was adapted from a chapter in my Senior thesis on Wikipedia’s legal system that focused on a dispute over the inclusion of images of the Islamic prophet Muhammad in an article about him, using a methodology of communicative ethnography. Most who opposed the image were not familiar with Wikipedia’s unique method of content [...]
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There Is No Cabal: An Investigation into Wikipedia’s Legal Subculture
May 31, 2007An investigation into the community formed by small number of Wikipedia contributors who care enough to decide how, at some level, Wikipedia is run. The work discusses identity, communication, and organizational hierarchy in this subculture.