Accepting Roles Created for Us: The Ethics of Reciprocity  

Grounded in theories of feminist research practices and in two empirical studies we conducted separately, our argument is that seeing reciprocity as a context-based process of definition and re-definition of the relationship between participants and researcher helps us understand how research projects can benefit participants in ways that they desire.

Powell, Katrina M. and Pamela Takayoshi. CCC (2003). Articles>Workplace>Ethnographies>Gender

Diverse Voices and Alternative Rationalities: Imagining Forms of Postcolonial Organizational Communication    

Argues that the subdiscipline or community of organizational communication scholars is also imagined, as much organizational communication scholarship conducted within the global context is performed and interpreted from the dominant Euro-American intellectual tradition, privileging those concepts as well as particular voices and traditions and often ignoring inequality and exploitation within the scholarly community. This forgetting and the imagined scholarly community it creates continue to reify and legitimate a particular form of rationality and, in practice, lead to further colonization, subordination, and oppression of native/indigenous/other forms of understanding and organizing within our disciplinary field.

Broadfoot, Kirsten J. and Debeashish Munshi. Management Communication Quarterly (2007). Articles>Workplace>Organizational Communication>Ethnographies

Review: Ethnography at Work    

Ethnographic methodology is nothing new to the field of rhetoric because the literature in the field is constantly filled with intriguing discoveries from ethnographic studies. These studies, however, usually do not focus on private businesses because of the difficulty of gaining access to these research sites. Moreover, if ethnographic studies are permitted, they usually focus on American nonprofit organizations. Thus, Ethnography at Work, by Brian Moeran, offers a unique research site--an international private business organization--that should spark interest in readers.

Toth, Christopher. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2008). Articles>Reviews>Ethnographies

Making Academic Work Advocacy Work: Technologies of Power in the Public Arena    

Through interviews and courtroom observations in a case study done in collaboration with a community partner in two judicial districts in Minnesota, the authors extend the scholarly conversation about critical, activist research in business and technical communication and make pedagogical suggestions by studying two groups who contribute to the discourse about victim rights: judges who accept plea negotiations and make sentencing decisions and advocates who help victims contribute, through victim impact statements, their reactions as crime victims and their requests for certain punishments and conditions for the crime perpetrators. The authors identify the technologies of power used by each group to assert their disciplinary authority and trace how these assertions play out in the courtroom. They conclude that by capitalizing on the normative structures of impact statements, advocates may actually give victims more power. Such activist research might benefit research participants and enhance research methods.

Propen, Amy and Mary Lay Schuster. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2008). Articles>TC>Legal>Ethnographies

Mobile Essentials: Field Study and Concepting

This paper describes a cross-cultural field study of what people consider to be mobile essentials, how those mobile essentials are carried and problems typically encountered.

Chipchase, Jan, Per Persson, Petri Piippo, et al. uiGarden (2007). Articles>Usability>Ethnographies>Methods

(Re)disciplining Organizational Communication Studies: A Response to Broadfoot and Munshi    

If one of the principal goals of critical organization studies writ large is the increased democratization of organizing processes, and if communication is key to that democratization, how does postcolonial theory enable us to rethink the relationship between communication and democracy?

Mumby, Dennis K. and Cynthia Stohl. Management Communication Quarterly (2007). Articles>Business Communication>Organizational Communication>Ethnographies

Research in Context: Ethnographic Usability  

The only way to judge a product's acceptance in the workplace is through its use. Before release, developers would like to predict its acceptability to the target market. One predictor of acceptability is usability test results. Usability testing takes place outside of the user's natural environment in an artificial environment. This paper suggests ethnographic information might be used to predict a product's acceptability in the market in conjunction with traditional usability testing.

Dorazio, Patti A. and Julia Stovall. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Usability>Ethnographies>Contextual Inquiry

Tech Head Stories

Interested in multimedia? Digital Cinema? Digital Storytelling? Do you want to make these things? How about story structure and digital technology? No matter, there's something here for you.

McLellan, Hilary and Roger Wyatt. McLellan Wyatt Digital (2002). Resources>Software>Ethnographies>Multimedia

Using an Ethnographic Method to Gather Usability Data from the Field  

Observation is a way to gather rich information about how users work with software products that also provides a clearer understanding of the users' work. The method consists of watching users performing their normal work routine where they work. Observers can be usability professionals or trained individuals from the company. The richness and type of data collected can be used to identify design opportunities for the next release, define usability goals for all products, and create realistic customer scenarios.

Carlevato, Denise. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Usability>Ethnographies>Methods

Implications for Design  

Although ethnography has become a common approach in HCI research and design, considerable confusion still attends both ethnographic practice and the metrics by which it should be evaluated in HCI. Often, ethnography is seen as an approach to field investigation that can generate requirements for systems development; by that token, the major evaluative criterion for an ethnographic studies is the implications it can provide for design. Exploring the nature of ethnographic inquiry, this paper suggests that “implications for design” may not be the best metric for evaluation and may, indeed, fail to capture the value of ethnographic investigations.

Dourish, Paul. University of California Irvine (2002). Articles>Research>Human Computer Interaction>Ethnographies

Coming of Age in Ethnography

I first heard of ethnography in Sociology 101. In his sonorous voice, our professor regaled us with tales of intrepid anthropologists immersing themselves in little-known cultures in exotic settings. We discussed Margaret Mead's seminal work, Coming of Age in Samoa. We examined the rigors of fieldwork, the tension between observation and participation and the challenge of analysis. It was a great class and I even opted for Soc 102. And that was that. Ethnography faded into the recesses of my mind until reawakened with a start a few years ago when I began hearing it applied to Web design. And it scared me spitless.

Rogers, David J. GotoMedia (2006). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design>Ethnographies

Ethnographic Research in Business and Technical Writing    

Two widely disseminated approaches impose reductive boundaries on ethnographic research by privileging one context of meaning over other essential contexts. The first, emphasizing statistical validity, privileges the research community by recommending that the ethnographer's data analysis via coding agree with that of other raters from the research community. The second asserts that the ethnographer who comes closest to validity comes closest to presenting only the subject's point of view. Ethnography, however, comprises four essential, overlapping contexts: the phenomenal context (that which is observed/recorded), the site's cultural context (the subjects' outlook), the research community context, and the researcher's interior context, shaped by experience and education. Each of the four vantages has dominating tendencies, but if one does dominate to the exclusion of others, the reductive result is data-centered, thin description; subjects-centered groupthink; research community-centered groupthink; or researcher-centered solipsism. Although all contexts of meaning are important, none should fully eclipse the others.

Cross, Geoffrey A. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (1994). Articles>Business Communication>Research>Ethnographies

Collective Form: An Exploration of Large-Group Writing 1998 (Outstanding Researcher Lecture)    

Whether a collective mind forms in large-group writing in the workplace is the focus of this article originally given as the 1998 ABC Outstanding Researcher Lec ture. This article is based on a five-year ethnographic study that describes and analyzes a three-month group writing process that created a computer service-level agreement, involving a 20-person cross-functional core more than 100 other collab orators at a major corporation. The article discusses "collective form" in two senses: First, a document's evolving form or superstructure produced a collective schema that allowed the group through a process of equilibration (Piaget, 1981) to adapt outsider boilerplate into a more situated general model and then into a sit uated document. Second, architectural forms motivated and molded group activity in several ways. To combat group apathy, the leaders appropriated an in-demand meeting room for the project, positioning the project as high-status in the center of the workflow. Group leaders prominently displayed a task completion check-off chart that, in a downsizing environment, helped both to coordinate group activity and to encourage completion.

Cross, Geoffrey A. JBC (2000). Articles>Collaboration>Ethnographies>Cognitive Psychology

Finding Usability in Workplace Culture    

The authors give a detailed account of their assignment to create a content management system (CMS) for a large office and how paying close attention to workplace culture and behavior affected their design of an effective CMS.

McCarthy, Jacob E. and William Hart-Davidson. Intercom. Articles>Content Management>Usability>Ethnographies

Breaking the Chain of Command: Making Sense of Employee Circumvention    

This study explores how employees accounted for their engagement in circumvention (i.e., dissenting by going around or above one's supervisor). Employees completed a survey instrument in which they provided a dissent account detailing a time when they chose to practice circumvention. Results indicated that employees accounted for circumvention through supervisor inaction, supervisor performance, and supervisor indiscretion. In addition, findings revealed how employees framed circumvention in ways that enhanced the severity and principled nature of the issues about which they chose to dissent.

Kassing, Jeffrey W. JBC (2009). Articles>Management>Workplace>Ethnographies

Positioned by Reading and Writing: Literacy Practices, Roles, and Genres in Common Occupations    

In the research project Literacy Practices in Working Life, the role played by reading and writing in common nonacademic occupations in Sweden was investigated. The results highlight not only some typical ways of using writing to frame units of work but also differences reflecting the main focus of work (“people” or “things”) and overall organizing principles. This article deals with patterns in the use of writing, which may be related to modern ways of organizing work (efficiency and flexibility, personal responsibility, identification with the company, etc.). Case studies show a range of literacy practices—running from extensive and rather complicated uses of writing connected with individual responsibility to very restricted and dependent uses of reading and writing governed by a top-down organization. Examples illustrate how emerging ways of governing work through written discourse, related to the new, knowledge-based work order, create very different roles for workers.

Karlsson, Anna-Malin. Written Communication (2009). Articles>Business Communication>Ethnographies>Scandinavia

Commentary: Reflections on Field Research and Professional Practice    

Borrowing from the ethnographic genre that Van Maanen (1988) called the confessional tale, this commentary reflects on the political, ethical, and professional concerns that arise when critical intellectuals work in a government installation that maintains the nation’s nuclear stockpile. The authors suggest that the future is, as Haraway (1997) argued, ineluctably technological and that the best way to engage this cultural formation is from within, eschewing the easy politics of the science wars and articulating critical projects with the hard work of science. The modernist ideal of unconflicted ideological positions and research—stories of good guys and bad guys—is a disabling illusion. Practicing rhetoricians face a kind of "worldliness" that Hall (1989) described as a necessary counterpart to the "clean air" of theory. The authors invite their colleagues to join them in grappling with political and ethical analyses in a world of impure identity in which knowledge and power circulate promiscuously.

Herndl, Carl G. and Greg Wilson. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2007). Articles>Technology>Ethnographies

Cultural Ethnography: A Brief Report

There is a lot of curiosity about ethnography in design among designers, especially the academicians. Context study or field study are the other similar activities discussed in the domain of usability. I happened to have carried out an ethnographic assignment almost a decade ago. I thought, sharing that experience (good or bad) will be useful to many.

Katre, Dinesh S. Journal of HCI Vistas (2007). Articles>Usability>Ethnographies>Case Studies

A Phenomenographic Study of English Faculty's Conceptions of Information Literacy    

The purpose of this research is to identify UK English academics' conceptions of information literacy and compare those conceptions with current information literacy standards and frameworks.

Boon, Stuart, Bill Johnston and Sheila Webber. Journal of Documentation (2007). Academic>Technology>Ethnographies>United Kingdom

Consulting By Business College Academics: Lessons for Business Communication Courses    

This article briefly reports on my very preliminary attempt to explore consulting by business academics. I began with a simple question: What lessons might BC instructors draw from the consulting practices of business academics? I interviewed three professors at the business college of a large Midwestern university who also consult on the side: Erin Dawson (a pseudonym), an associate professor of marketing; Thomas Chacko, a professor of management; and Sri Nilakanta, an associate professor of management information systems (MIS). Additionally, I leafed through the marketing plan Erin had written for her client, a local boat manufacturer. Below, I briefly discuss my main preliminary findings.

Dave, Anish M. Business Communication Quarterly (2009). Careers>Consulting>Industry and Academy>Ethnographies

The Labour of User Co-Creators: Emergent Social Network Markets?    

Co-creative relations among professional media producers and consumers indicate a profound shift in which our frameworks and categories of analysis (such as the traditional labour theory of value) that worked well in the context of an industrial media economy are perhaps less helpful than before. Can this phenomenon just be explained as the exploitative extraction of surplus value from the work of users, or is something else, potentially more profound and challenging, playing out here? Does consumer co-creation contribute to the precarious conditions of professional creative workers? This article draws from ethnographic research undertaken from 2000 to 2005 with Auran games (a game development company based in Brisbane, Australia) to engage with debates about the status of user co-creation as labour. The article argues that as a hybrid and emergent social network market these relationships introduce a form of creative destruction to labour relations in the context of the creative industries.

Banks, John and Sal Humphreys. Convergence (2008). Articles>Web Design>Social Networking>Ethnographies

Beyond Microblogging: Conversation and Collaboration via Twitter  

The microblogging service Twitter is in the process of being appropriated for conversational interaction and is starting to be used for collaboration, as well. In order to determine how well Twitter supports user-to- user exchanges, what people are using Twitter for, and what usage or design modifications would make it (more) usable as a tool for collaboration, this study analyzes a corpus of naturally-occurring public Twit- ter messages (tweets), focusing on the functions and uses of the @ sign and the coherence of exchanges. The findings reveal a surprising degree of conversa- tionality, facilitated especially by the use of @ as a marker of addressivity, and shed light on the limita- tions of Twitter's current design for collaborative use.

Honeycutt, Courtenay and Susan C. Herring. Semantic WebProceedings of the Forty-Second Hawai’i International Conference on System Sciences (2009). Articles>Collaboration>Social Networking>Ethnographies

How Not to Write Fiction

I have never fabricated or fictionalized research data. Besides being completely unethical, that would have missed the point. It would have taken all the fun out of it! How easy and how boring that would have been.

Spinuzzi, Clay. Blogspot (2009). Articles>Writing>Research>Ethnographies

Getting Started with Contextual Inquiries

The Process and Power team hadn’t conducted contextual inquires before. Since the group was originally launched as a start-up within a larger organization, the Product Design team often found itself in an ad-hoc rapid process with Software Development (SWD) – working frantically to develop the right amount of specificity to keep the SWD machine cranking and the goal of first release clearly in sights.

Sherman, Melissa. Designing the User Experience at Autodesk (2009). Articles>User Centered Design>Ethnographies>Contextual Inquiry