Paper Reading #19- Reflexivity in digital anthropology

Title: Reflexivity in digital anthropology
Reference Information:
Jennifer Rode, "Reflexivity in digital anthropology". CHI '11: Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference on Human factors in computing systems ACM. New York, NY, USA. ©2011. ISBN: 978-1-4503-0228-9.
Author Bios:
Jennifer Rode- She is an Assistant Professor at Drexel's School of Information, as well as a fellow in Digital Anthropology at University College London.
Summary:

• Hypothesis: If people can better understand  how to effectively use the different types of ethnographies, then the field of HCI will become clearer and more advanced as well as suited to target user audience.
• Methods: Jennifer Rode really had no methods in her paper. She argued that there are different types of ethnographies and defined each of them. She also argues that in each scenario a certain type of ethnography is optimal. The results section outlines these in more detail.
• Results: She defines reflexivity as having four main characteristics: intervention is seen as a data gathering opportunity, understanding how the method for data gathering actually impacts the data that is gathered, find structural patterns in what was observed, and extending theories. She claims that having reflexivity is crucial in ethnographies. She defines three types of ethnographies: realist, confessional, and impressionistic. A realistic ethnographical approach has four keys to it: experimental authority (in which the ethnographer, over a period of time, becomes familiar with his new environment and can no longer have to make inferences about it- rather make testable hypotheses), its typical forms, the native's point of view (from which the ethnographer hopes to study closely and represent accurately), and interpretive omnipotence (the author has the final say on what is written and recorded- basically he controls how the target group is perceived and represented). A confessional ethnographical approach broadly provides the ethnographer with doubts/faults concerning the study and allows them to answer them. Lastly, the impressionistic ethnographical approach recalls certain events uniquely with dramatic detail (like a well-told story). She also argues that there are several ethnographic conventions- discussing rapport, participant-observation, and the use of theory.
• Content: Jennifer wanted to bring to the attention of anyone in the field of HCI the ethnographical approaches, conventions, and uses of each in modern-day society. She uses past examples, related work, and paradigm studies to provide examples for each.

Discussion:
This was a bit of a relatively unusual paper to read. I thought it was interesting and felt that a few of her points were definitely correct, but overall I feel like devoting an entire research paper to something along these lines is overkill. A simple "remember what you're doing out there- everything has a consequence. Everything!" will do. Like in my ethnography, I make a cautious effort to keep in mind how I am perceived, how I am gathering data, how I come across, etc. I got rather bored halfway through the paper because I felt her points were redundant or common sense. They were good to keep in mind for sure, but any GOOD ethnographer already knows to do/act certain ways that she addressed. There's no real "sure-fire" way to record if she achieved her goal or not because it is technically unclear to determine who all uses these proposed techniques or if they are actually referenced while in the field. I'm sure she believed she achieved her goals, though.