The Ethnographic Approach to Doing Global Media Studies

Bremen.
The final speaker at the ‘Doing Global Media Studies’ ECREA 2010 pre-conference is Friedrich Krotz; he begins by noting our conservatism in using methods – once we have learnt them, we tend to utilise the same methods each time, regardless of the specific object of study.

Friedrich draws on the work of Clifford Geertz and Norbert Elias in approaching the study of culture and society; Elias’s main concepts are figuration (of various groups of actors – nations, families, groups of people in specific social situations) and habitus. It is not enough to simply measure cultural exchanges, of course, but we must aim to understand their meaning; this is complicated also by the fact that researchers themselves are embedded in their own cultures, of course.

We must take into account the social and the culture; the facts and the sense and meaning behind it. Figurations and habitus depend on culture and history, and acting happens as it makes sense for the people. Additionally, of course, cultures are also not homogenous; even within given national cultures there are significant variations, fragmentations, and sub-groupings. People live in a variety of social worlds, even within the same overarching culture. These have also been variously described as different fields, different realities, different stable and situative figurations.

Doing research under such conditions requires us to learn the culture of the people who are relevant for our research question; we must also reflect our own culturally determined identities and ways of thinking; and only then can we begin to collect data for our research questions. The only research methodology that is relevant for such an approach is ethnography – and a multi-method approach that builds on sequences of case studies is crucial here.