Digital Ethnography: New Ways of Knowing Ourselves and Our Culture

Online advertisers and web analysts are awash in a sea of data: pageviews, CPMs sold, subscriptions, sentiment, friends, fans, click-through rates, comments, posts, re-tweets… These metrics are great at identifying the “Who?” and “What?” of online behavior but they often leave out the “How?”, “Where?”, and “Why?”.

Unlike traditional market research, ethnography uses observation to focus on what people do, not on what they say they do. Ethnography communicates a social story, pulling the audience into the daily lives of the respondents. Despite the introduction of new technologies like social media, humans are still telling the same, vivid stories, just in different ways.

This session will take a page from Digital Anthropologist Michael Wesch’s syllabus and explore:

What are the languages, social rules, and values of the various online “tribes” that cluster around individual forums, blogs, or social networking sites?

What do people say about themselves by what they choose to consume and how they talk about brands?

What do users say about themselves by what they choose to create and how they share with others?