Media Ethnography: The Challenges of Breaking Disciplinary Boundaries - Special Issue of Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture.

Abstract

Call for Papers: Scholars from a wide range of academic disciplines have embraced ethnography as a way to understand media as artifacts, experiences and practices. Whilst this trend has contributed significantly to the study of media, culture and society, researchers that adopt or are inspired by ethnographic approaches to the study of media face the challenges of producing knowledge on both the margins and intersections of clearly demarcated disciplines. What are the constraints and opportunities created by media ethnography’s inherent hybridity? How can researchers effectively locate the field, especially given the rise of multi sited and digital ethnographies? What range of research methods is appropriate? To what extent can media ethnography be thought of and practiced as an independent field? What is distinctive about the knowledge that is produced through an engagement with media ethnography? Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture invites submissions from international and multidisciplinary perspectives that explore some of the key debates around media ethnography and/or draw on media ethnography (or studies inspired by it) to produce original empirical research. In keeping with the aims of WPCC, we welcome submissions from new and emerging scholars. Possible topics include but are not limited to: * Challenges and opportunities, strengths and weaknesses of media ethnography * Ethical concerns in media ethnography * Media ethnography, social activism and social change * Sensory ethnography and anthropology of the senses * Media ethnography, power and authority * Media ethnography, presence, non-presence, digital ethnography and the concept of “the field” * We particularly encourage the submission of original empirical studies of media which draw on ethnographic approaches