Conducting Ethnographic Research on Platforms That Avoid Scrutiny

Up next at the 2019 AoIR Flashpoint Symposium are Tiziano Bonini and Alessandro Gandini, who are interested in ethnographic research in the age of platforms, even in spite of the black boxing strategies now employed by many platforms to protect themselves from scrutiny.

They apply this principally to the field of music streaming – where they were met with a total denial of access to the inner workings of the platform production and operation teams. In the face of such a rejection of access, how is it possible to conduct ethnographic research into these new places of cultural production?

First, the blackboxing strategies themselves are worth studying. These often include deflection and silence – where enquiries are bounced from one staff member to another, but where the second staff member never responds or a final negative response is sent only after months of silence.

Further, in the light of this knowledge asymmetry between platforms and scholars there is a need to scavenge information from wherever it is available. This includes treating mainstream media interviews as fieldwork, and parsing corporate heteroglossia. Other approaches include the activation of personal networks into these companies, multi-sited ethnography, focussing on ex-workers, going undercover, and using digital ethnographic methods (e.g. by mapping the social media networks of the staff at these platforms).

Through such work, a richer understanding of these cultural workers and their practices emerges even without their active participation. (That said, sometimes the staff of these platforms are also willing to break their own non-disclosure agreements in order to reveal platform practices they are uncomfortable with – but this should be managed very carefully, of course.) This circumvents the object of study in order to understand the cultural patterns that surround these platforms.