Features and form: Appropriating digital storytelling for public ethnography
Features and form: Appropriating digital storytelling for public ethnography
Ethnography, Ahead of Print.
Ethnography may have a unique capacity to capture the attention of non-academic publics, but if it remains tied to conventional publication and dissemination strategies, this capacity will remain unrealized. This article examines the possibilities and challenges of appropriating digital storytelling for public ethnography. To do so, we consider how two key features of digital storytelling platforms—multimodality and multilinearity—can help ethnographers make public ethnography. We show how these features can be used by ethnographers to publicize and politicize ethnographic accounts and translate descriptive and theory-driven ethnography for non-traditional audiences. Making effective use of multimodality and multilinearity has practical and epistemological implications. Appropriating digital storytelling for public ethnography recasts how ethnographers use theory, create and configure ethnographic data, deploy interpretive and evaluative schema, and structure accounts. Though challenging and potentially risky, we contend that if ethnographers want to make a difference, they should experiment with making ethnography differently.
Ethnography may have a unique capacity to capture the attention of non-academic publics, but if it remains tied to conventional publication and dissemination strategies, this capacity will remain unrealized. This article examines the possibilities and challenges of appropriating digital storytelling for public ethnography. To do so, we consider how two key features of digital storytelling platforms—multimodality and multilinearity—can help ethnographers make public ethnography. We show how these features can be used by ethnographers to publicize and politicize ethnographic accounts and translate descriptive and theory-driven ethnography for non-traditional audiences. Making effective use of multimodality and multilinearity has practical and epistemological implications. Appropriating digital storytelling for public ethnography recasts how ethnographers use theory, create and configure ethnographic data, deploy interpretive and evaluative schema, and structure accounts. Though challenging and potentially risky, we contend that if ethnographers want to make a difference, they should experiment with making ethnography differently.