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- Convenors:
-
Andrea Scholz
(Ethnological Museum Berlin)
Wolfgang Kraus (University of Vienna)
Sabine Imeri (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Matthias Harbeck (UB der Humboldt-Universität)
Elisabeth Huber (University of Bremen)
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- Formats:
- Panels
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 22 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
This panel addresses the debate about challenges and implications of digitisation and datafication in ethnographic research, by taking into account digital tools and services for social and cultural anthropologists that are currently under way.
Long Abstract:
The "Digital Age" has an impact on ethnographic research: methods and tools, fields of research, publishing and access to literature have all been notably transformed over the last twenty years. Digitisation projects and open access initiatives in libraries and museums offer literature and digitised collections - ideally without barriers, yet often with restrictions -, also allowing computational processing, e.g. text and data mining. Collaboration, co-curating, and co-publishing over vast distances is now manageable via online databases and virtual labs or research environments, not only between colleagues in the academic field, but also with (former) research participants, thus offering new possibilities for collaborative research. Fieldwork is supported by smartphones, computers, and other digital equipment as well as social media applications.
The discussion on these radical transformations is just beginning in anthropology. An overview on resources and developments, possibilities and challenges is missing so far. The debate on digital humanities is still mostly disconnected from anthropology. The panel aims at provoking a broad debate on the current state of 'digital anthropology', its difficulties and possible futures by (1) discussing digital tools and platforms explicitly developed for research in social and cultural anthropology, by (2) presenting services for archiving and sharing research data, and by (3) considering legal and ethical aspects of long-term preservation, creating access to, and governing the re-use of research data.
We invite contributions on digital solutions for research infrastructures and important digital resources for anthropology, as well as critical reflections on the use of digital data and tools and their methodological, epistemological, ethical and legal implications.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 22 July, 2020, -Matthias Harbeck (UB der Humboldt-Universität)
Paper short abstract:
The Specialised Information Service Social and Cultural Anthropology (FID SKA) offers services for German ethnographic researchers. The paper wants to present these services and fathom new perspectives on international cooperations and services still to be developed.
Paper long abstract:
The Specialised Information Service Social and Cultural Anthropology (FID SKA) is part of a German research infrastructure partly funded by the German DFG and local institutions. Its main goal is to provide national researchers with the means of finding, accessing or archiving/publishing information, especially digital resources. The FID SKA tries do develop services in order to facilitate ethnographic research. Part of that infrastructure is the portal EVIFA (www.evifa.com) where researches find bibliographic information, a news calendar, access to licensed resources and digitised collections. In cooperation with the data service center Qualiservice questions of research data archiving and access have been debated within the national ethnographic research community. The paper wants to outline the present state of work, new ideas and upcoming projects, and possibilities for international researchers to profit from these services. Furthermore it shall collect and discuss ideas for international cooperations and an expansion of services requested by researchers.
Elena Nogaeva (University Of Eastern Finland)
Paper short abstract:
Social media platforms allow for wide dissemination of discourse on a variety of topics. I will discuss how indigenous rights in Russia’s Arctic are represented in the social media and what challenges I have encountered while collecting and analysing such outputs.
Paper long abstract:
This study will demonstrate how Russia’s geopolitical pursuit in the Arctic relates to the indigenous visualization of the North. It will explore whether the two potentially different views on these geopolitical pursuits can lead to conflict with the state or if it will trigger an internal conflict within the group that has a potential to affect the social and cultural stability of that group. I intend to demonstrate how social media tools can assist indigenous groups in cross-border cooperation and raise awareness abroad and domestically towards their issues in the Russian North. I will discuss preliminary findings primarily from Twitter and potential ethical challenges of collecting data from VKontakte. The two social media domains are dissimilar and are intended for different types of interactions, yet have the ability to disseminate either political or group-related discourse. I will present an analytical tool for qualitative analysis that I have used in my study. The following will be raised for discussion: what are the ethical challenges that can be present when analysing social media platforms that allow for discussion to occur? Also, what are the tools that are available to appropriately analyse and retain social media discourse output? Social media is a powerful tool when it comes to raising awareness as well as disseminating politically motivated discourse on addressing domestic conflicts.
Gertraud Seiser (University of Vienna)
Paper short abstract:
An increasing number of funding bodies are demanding that the research data collected be made available to the public. I will discuss some of the challenges that arise in this context on the basis of my experiences from the perspective of the field researcher.
Paper long abstract:
Many anthropologists have a very reserved attitude towards the digital long-term archiving of ethnographic data. They fear that field diaries and interviews could be taken out of context and misinterpreted by others. In addition, a lot of information is confidential and can be used to the detriment of the research subjects. The generation of the necessary metadata is also extremely time-consuming.
I argue in favour of digital long-term archiving because it makes long-term projects aimed at social and cultural change researchable in a new way. I am currently in the process of preparing data from two projects for long-term archiving. In the first case, the field research was carried out without addressing the question of subsequent long-term archiving, in the second case this option was increasingly integrated into the research process. All research was conducted in cooperation with colleagues and students. The materials include handwritten field diaries, drawings, sound recordings, photos, and videos on various data carriers.
Based on the experiences made in the process, I would like to present the following topics for discussion:
- Data protection and informed consent of the participants;
- selection of material suitable for archiving;
- obtaining the necessary metadata;
- data organization and documentation.
Finally, I argue that situation-specific solutions are best found in close cooperation between field researchers and professional archivists. In my experience, the quality of archived data depends significantly on a consideration of appropriate long-term archiving strategies even before the actual ethnographic research begins.
Maja Dolinar (University of Ljubljana)
Paper short abstract:
The purpose of the article is to present guidelines of the Slovenian Social Science Data Archives (ADP) for the acquisition and archiving and recommendations for editing of ethnographic that take into consideration widely accepted best practices, international standards, recommendations and tools.
Paper long abstract:
One of the main problems related to the use of digitisation and datafication in social and cultural anthropology concerns the representation of data for input, processing, and output. Ethnographic data is often rich and complex, non-standardised in format, without common or consistent metadata and ontologies. It also can be subject to complex rights issues. Consensus and best practice regarding digitisation and metadata standards for common usage, that still retain the richness of different research projects and data types, could enable open access to ethnographic data, and facilitate data exchange.
The purpose of the article is to present guidelines for the acquisition and archiving of qualitative research data in the Slovenian Social Science Data Archives (ADP), which were prepared as a complement to the existing working procedures of archiving predominately quantitative studies. To this end, we have developed guidelines for the acquisition and archiving of ethnographic research data and recommendations for the editing of ethnographic data for researchers and data archivists that took into consideration best practices, international standards, recommendation and tools from working and interest groups of the Research Data Alliance (RDA), working groups and international projects of the CESSDA ERIC (Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives), guidelines and recommendations by the UK Data Archive, and the Finnish Social Science Data Archive.