

Relational Ethnography articulates studying fields rather than places or processes rather than processed people. Most ethnographies take place in specific places where the observer can observe specific instances that relate to the topic involved. Gabriele de Seta's paper "Three Lies of Digital Ethnography" explores some of the methodological questions more central to a specifically ethnographical approach to internet studies, drawing upon Fine's classic text. Digital ethnography comes with its own set of ethical questions, and the Association of Internet Researchers' ethical guidelines are frequently used. A modern example of this technology in application, is the use of captured audio in smart devices, transcribed to issue targeted adverts (often reconciled vs other metadata, or product development data for designers. Modern developments in computing power and AI have enabled higher efficiencies in ethnographic data collection via multimedia and computational analysis using machine learning to corroborate many data sources together to produce a refined output for various purposes. For example, digital ethnographers would use social media platforms such as Twitter or blogs so that people's interactions and behaviors can be studied. Traditional ethnography may use videos or images, but digital ethnography goes more in-depth. Digital ethnography allows for a lot more opportunities to look at different cultures and societies. This type of ethnography is not so typical as ethnography recorded by pen and pencil. See also: Off the verandah Forms Digital ethnography ĭigital ethnography is also seen as virtual ethnography. Herodotus, known as the Father of History, had significant works on the cultures of various peoples beyond the Hellenic realm such as the Scythians, which earned him the title "philobarbarian", and may be said to have produced the first works of ethnography. August Ludwig von Schlözer and Christoph Wilhelm Jacob Gatterer of the University of Göttingen introduced the term into the academic discourse in an attempt to reform the contemporary understanding of world history.

This became known as "ethnography," following the introduction of the Greek neologism ethnographia by Johann Friedrich Schöpperlin and the German variant by A. Whilst involved in the expedition, he differentiated Völker-Beschreibung as a distinct area of study.

Gerhard Friedrich Müller developed the concept of ethnography as a separate discipline whilst participating in the Second Kamchatka Expedition (1733–43) as a professor of history and geography. There is also a considerable amount of 'virtual' or online ethnography, sometimes labelled netnography or cyber-ethnography. While, traditionally, ethnography has relied on the physical presence of the researcher in a setting, there is research using the label that has relied on interviews or documents, sometimes to investigate events in the past such as the NASA Challenger disaster. A wide range of groups and organisations have been studied by this method, including traditional communities, youth gangs, religious cults, and organisations of various kinds. The typical ethnography is a holistic study and so includes a brief history, and an analysis of the terrain, the climate, and the habitat. It had its origin in social and cultural anthropology in the early twentieth century, but spread to other social science disciplines, notably sociology, during the course of that century.Įthnographers mainly use qualitative methods, though they may also employ quantitative data. Īs a form of inquiry, ethnography relies heavily on participant observation-on the researcher participating in the setting or with the people being studied, at least in some marginal role, and seeking to document, in detail, patterns of social interaction and the perspectives of participants, and to understand these in their local contexts.

Ethnography is also a type of social research that involves examining the behaviour of the participants in a given social situation and understanding the group members' own interpretation of such behaviour. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. Ethnography (from Greek ἔθνος ethnos "folk, people, nation" and γράφω grapho "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures.
