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Ethnography of Open Cultural Production: From Participant Observation to Multisited Participatory Communication

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Methodological Reflections on Researching Communication and Social Change

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change ((PSCSC))

Abstract

This chapter engages in an in-depth discussion of the ways in which ethnography could be adapted to understand creative practices that are scattered over multiple spatial, temporal and communicative contexts. Starting with an overview of some of the important debates about the relevance and nature of ethnography in contemporary media practices, it proposes multisited participatory communication as an efficient modification of fieldwork that reconciles two disparate fields: anthropology and development communication. The approach is exemplified through a case of a Siberian open-source animation film project. It demonstrates how using participatory communication across multiple sites, such as Skype, online training platforms, specialized community conferences and fieldwork, allows the creation of more holistic and egalitarian research frameworks.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Media and Communication Studies, Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Julia Velkova

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  1. Julia Velkova
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Communication and Arts, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark

    Norbert Wildermuth

  2. Department of Media and Journalism Studies, School of Communication and Culture Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

    Teke Ngomba

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Velkova, J. (2016). Ethnography of Open Cultural Production: From Participant Observation to Multisited Participatory Communication. In: Wildermuth, N., Ngomba, T. (eds) Methodological Reflections on Researching Communication and Social Change. Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40466-0_8

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