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Mad Practices and Mobilities Bringing Voices to Digital Ethnography

  • Cherry Baylosis
Published/Copyright: January 12, 2018
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Digital Culture & Society
From the journal Digital Culture & Society Volume 3 Issue 2

Abstract

There is a claim that digital media technologies can give voice to the voiceless (Alper 2017). As Couldry (2008) points out it is now commonplace for people - who have never done so before - to tell, share and exchange stories within, and through digital media. Additionally, the affordances of mobile media technologies allow people to speak, virtually anytime and anywhere, while the new internet based media sees that these processes converge to allow stories, information, ideas and discourses to circulate through communicative spaces, and into the daily lives of people (Sheller/Urry 2006). The purpose of this paper is to discuss a methodological framework that can be used to examine the extent that digital media practices can enable voice. My focus is on people ascribed the status of mental illness - people who have had an enduring history of silencing and oppression (Parr 2008). I propose theories of mobilities, and practice, to critically examine voice in practices related to digital media. In doing this, I advocate for digital ethnographic methods to engage these concepts, and to examine the potential of voice in digital mobile media. Specifically, I outline ethnographic methods involving the use of video (re)enactments of digital practices, and the use of reflective interviews to examine every day routines and movements in and around digital media (Pink 2012). I propose that observing and reflecting on such activities can generate insights into the significance these activities have in giving voice to those who are normally unheard.

Published Online: 2018-01-12
Published in Print: 2017-12-20

© 2018 by transcript Verlag

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Titelei
  2. Content
  3. Introduction Mobile Digital Practices. Situating People, Things, and Data
  4. I. Field Research and Case Studies
  5. The MicroSDs of Solomon Islands An Offline Remittance Economy of Digital Multi-Media
  6. In the Footsteps of Smartphone-Users Traces of a Deferred Community in Ingress and Pokémon Go
  7. Digital Mediation, Soft Cabs, and Spatial Labour
  8. So ‘Hot’ Right Now Reflections on Virality and Sociality from Transnational Digital China
  9. Twitter in Place Examining Seoul’s Gwanghwamun Plaza through Social Media Activism
  10. Screen Screen Tourism
  11. Audiences, Aesthetics and Affordances Analysing Practices of Visual Communication on Social Media
  12. Mobile Mediated Visualities An Empirical Study of Visual Practices on Instagram
  13. ‘Re-appropriating’ Facebook? Web API mashups as Collective Cultural Practice
  14. II. Entering the Field
  15. Situating Hobby Drone Practices
  16. The Inchoate Field of Digital Offline A Reflection on Studying Mobile Media Practices of Digital Subalterns in India
  17. Mad Practices and Mobilities Bringing Voices to Digital Ethnography
  18. An Experimental Autoethnography of Mobile Freelancing
  19. III. In Conversation with …
  20. The Practice of Practice
  21. Biographical Notes
https://doi.org/10.14361/dcs-2017-0214

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Titelei
  2. Content
  3. Introduction Mobile Digital Practices. Situating People, Things, and Data
  4. I. Field Research and Case Studies
  5. The MicroSDs of Solomon Islands An Offline Remittance Economy of Digital Multi-Media
  6. In the Footsteps of Smartphone-Users Traces of a Deferred Community in Ingress and Pokémon Go
  7. Digital Mediation, Soft Cabs, and Spatial Labour
  8. So ‘Hot’ Right Now Reflections on Virality and Sociality from Transnational Digital China
  9. Twitter in Place Examining Seoul’s Gwanghwamun Plaza through Social Media Activism
  10. Screen Screen Tourism
  11. Audiences, Aesthetics and Affordances Analysing Practices of Visual Communication on Social Media
  12. Mobile Mediated Visualities An Empirical Study of Visual Practices on Instagram
  13. ‘Re-appropriating’ Facebook? Web API mashups as Collective Cultural Practice
  14. II. Entering the Field
  15. Situating Hobby Drone Practices
  16. The Inchoate Field of Digital Offline A Reflection on Studying Mobile Media Practices of Digital Subalterns in India
  17. Mad Practices and Mobilities Bringing Voices to Digital Ethnography
  18. An Experimental Autoethnography of Mobile Freelancing
  19. III. In Conversation with …
  20. The Practice of Practice
  21. Biographical Notes
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