Mike Wesch's Bookmarks tagged ethnography →  View Popular

summary of the points they raise may be
in order:





• The data the anthropologist used in his or her analysis and conclusion can
  be made available to others, resulting in greater scholarly communication
  and increased empirical transparency (Barkin & Stone 2000: 126, 129-130;
  Brown 2003; Houtman & Zeitlyn 1996; Stone 1998: 7-8; Zeitlyn 1998)


• Some feel hypertext is leading to "the incipient erosion in the standards
  of quality of scholarship" (Barkin & Stone 2000: 130)


• The Internet is a cost-effective means of publication with fewer space constraints
  which can be used to supplement printed materials as well as stand on its
  own; (Barkin & Stone 2000: 126; Brown 2003; Stanlaw & Peterson 2003)
  however, it is not free and costs may vary over time (Stanlaw & Peterson
  2003), and the use of high-quality pictures, sounds, and video may deter Internet
  users with slow connections (Brown 2003)


• New materials can be cited and/or reviewed much quicker than would be possible
  for print publication (Stanlaw & Peterson 2003)


• Hypertext publications have the potential to be seen by a much wider audience
  (Stanlaw & Peterson 2003)


• Libraries are decreasing their stock of printed materials (Stanlaw &
  Peterson 2003; Stone 1998: 4), so Internet publications give the anthropologist
  control over the availability of the availability of the (hyper)text (Stanlaw
  & Peterson 2003)


• Printed materials tend to be taken more seriously than hypertext materials
  (Stanlaw & Peterson 2003)


• Some feel that printed materials offer "covenience and aesthetics"
  that cannot be duplicated by looking at the screen or printing out the web
  page (Stanlaw & Peterson 2003), while others claim that "The printed
  Web page has all the advantages of an offprint" (Stone 1998: 9) and that
  the process of transferring the hypertext document to a printed document merely
  loses the dynamic nature of hypertext (p. 9)


• Hypertext offers the possibility of color graphics, which is a rarity in
  social science journals (Barkin & Stone 2000: 128-9; Stone 1998: 7)


• Hypertext offers the possibility of using sounds (Barkin & Stone 2000:
  129; Stone 1998: 7)


• Hypertext offers the potential to see video of the informants, and in some
  cases, "to reduce...vibrant microcosms of motion to the status of static
  photographs in a book seemed nothing less than sacrilegious" (Farnell
  & Huntley 1995: 7)


• Some have expressed concern that hypertext documents "may allow sound
  and image to overcome scholarly substance" (Barkin & Stone 2000:
  130)


• The user is empowered to decide between multiple paths in hypertext, rather
  than being contrained to a unilinear path like in traditional ethnographic
  monographs (Barkin & Stone 2000: 129; Farnell & Huntley 1995: 8; Scwimmer
  1997; Stone 1998: 6-7; Trias i Valls 2002: 44-5;)


• As a result of the user being given multiple paths to choose from, the hypertext
  ethnography can be custom-tailored to fit multiple audiences (Farnell &
  Huntley 1995: 8; Stanlaw & Peterson 2003; Schwimmer 1997)


• When a hypertext ethnography is done as an adjunct to a traditional monograph,
  problems with the publisher may result, including CD ROMs with unreasonable
  price tags (Farnell & Huntley 1995: 8) or concerns that the hypertext
  ethnography may adversely effect the sales of the monograph (Brown 2003)


• Websites, depending on their design, can require time-consuming construction
  and maintenance (Brown 2003; Stone 1998: 9); otherwise, they will fail to
  take advantage of the capabilities that hypertext offers (Stone 1998: 9) and
  offer outdated information (e.g. discussing Napoleon Chagnon without mentioning
  the "Darkness in El Dorado" controversy) (Panagakos 2003)


• The intellectual property issues involved with using other people's materials
  can be unclear (Brown 2003; Jacobson 1999)


• Hypertext materials have the potential for more active participation with
  the materials, resulting in greater engagement with them. (Fagan 2000)


• Hypertext materials in the classroom can preserve engagement with the materials
  at a time when increased class sizes are making this more difficult (Ardevol
  2002; Fagan 2000; Trias i Valls 2002; Zeitlyn 1998)


• Hypertext materials, because of their dynamic nature, can raise doubts about
  the author originally said after subsequent modifications (Stone 1998: 8)
  (Note that Stone seems unaware of the Internet
  WayBack Machine, which largely addresses his concerns. However, it does
  not completely address them becau

Douglas Harper wrote:

...the electronic revolution is a great deal more than the ability to alter
photographic or video images... As is common knowledge today, the Web is organized
so that viewers can create their own paths through text, images, and even
film or video clips. The most successful current example is Peter Biella,
Napoleon Chagnon, and Gary Seaman's (1997) interactive CD-ROM of the anthropological
film The Axe Fight, by Timothy Asch, and additional hyperlinked materials.
The interactive CD allows a viewer to view the actual film in any of several
possible ways (in real time, backward as well as forward, frame by frame,
in slow motion, or keyed to significant moments as identified by the anthropologists).
The viewer can also link to scene-by-scene descriptions of the film, or can
link to any individual shown in the filmto get information on that person's
age, sex, spouses, death, place in the kin systems (presented in kin charts),
and other anthropological details. The CD contains complete footage and edited
versions of the film, hundreds of photographs, and several full-length essays.
The viewer can access any part of the film and digress to any of several analyses.
[Harper 2000:720]