Ethnography in Everyday Media Practices in American Family Life

Introduction 

The kids will often call us throughout the weekdays and say, “I have an assignment to complete, I want to use the WiFi,” and we will go scoop them up. This project examines audience studies out of an American viewpoint, especially from the standpoint of ethnographic population studies scholars. Other nations and areas have a variety of theoretical and philosophical perspectives. In this case, ethnographic approach. Scores, focus groups, polls, and person’s meters produce essential data for marketers and mass media firms. Contrarily, audience analyses ethnographies are beneficial for policymakers as well as academics, especially in the Media, Telecommunications and Cultural Studies fields. This project explored the impact of the US Centre for Contemporary Cultural Analyses' ethnographic community methodology on American audience studies literature. 

The experiment highlights how people's spending behaviors may develop a sense of closeness to others. Similarly, the project linked to work that shows technology's meanings and applications socially created. The project then summarizes the three main types of audience research. It then moves on to a detailed overview of the American technique to doing and documenting ethnographic research. In modern work, the audience is the protagonist, deciding what to watch, why, and how to utilize communication technology at home. This article uses two case studies of audience survey ethnography to illuminate population research theory with practice.       

Audience Analyses and the Domestication of Digital Technology 

American audience ethnography affects Matthew, a 15-year-old son, loves the lounge room TV since it is larger. It also has the heater. It is the hotter chamber now. It is also cozier. Morley one of the group members pioneered a method to population research that was in direct contradiction to prior audience research ratings surveys. Rather of counting and manipulating audiences, we focused on comprehending the meanings, which audiences derived from their contact with media goods. The old communication paradigm attributed issues with meaning conveyance to ‘noise' or ‘interruption.' We argue that audiences create meanings because of the nationwide survey: audiences produce meanings. It positioned audiences as strong and capable of responding to media in a way that valued their unique worldview. 

One critique of the nationwide survey was that individuals seldom sat down at once to watch TV and discuss it. Rather, media consumption became part of daily life. Utilized eighteen family interviews to demonstrate the complexities of TV viewing in ordinary life. Highlighted how technology incorporated into everyday rhythms and activities. In assessing ‘conversion', we looked at how the outputs of technology may be used to foster identity development and the building of cultural capital. Population studies examines how individuals utilize communication technology as well as how they use mainstream, specialized, and consumer media goods. Audience members adapt media semiotics to convey their own ideals and passions, enabling people to connect.       

Semi-structured Ethnographic Audience Study Interview 

This study examined approaches to and methods of ethnographic research methods. By adopting the ethnographic technique, an ethnographer makes their presence known in the study. A semi-structured interviewing admits that not all respondents will want to react equally to all areas of the inquiry. Interviews were casual and communicative, lasting up to 2 hours, and intended to elicit narrative replies rather than short answers. This level of flexibility as well as prompt-based questioning restricts the lot of interviews each day to three (Green &Holloway, 2004). 

Interview as a social event 

The ethnographic method situated the interview inside a social knowledge transfer. It appreciated ordinary family routines and rhythms and fascinated by how families manage internet opportunities, privileges and access. We recorded spoken words and witnessed. When using a computer for study, questions of objectivity and inclusion persist (Geertz, 2010). 

Interviewing children 

Even if a study subject is too young properly interview, his or her thoughts were still be incredibly relevant. We as researchers had interest in learning how youngsters acquire acclimated to the online world will need to focus on how they first become exposed to it. As we conducted her research with children between the ages of 5 and 10, encouraged them to create their dream rooms, such as where they would place a computer. These photographs opened the door to a wealth of information that might be used to spark a conversation with the kid. One of Holloway's images depicting Rhianna's ideal bedroom is included. Rhianna was 10 years old at the time of the interviews, and her artwork illustrates the wish of many youngsters to utilize the bedroom as a private location for mingling, identity presentation and simply being alone (Green, 2010).  Rhianna's disco-themed fancy bedroom has the feel of a preteen girl's dream environment. Bedrooms tend to be private places where preteen females may enjoy personal music. 

As Rhianna's room, complete with a quirky hand chair and other media gadgets, demonstrates, today's children's cultures are frequently indistinguishable from consumer cultures. Unlike adults, children's engagement in a commercial culture is a relatively recent phenomenon. It is more probable that we researchers are bogged down in the intricacies and be unable to analyze the results to our satisfaction if we gather more data (Glaser & Strauss, 2018). 

Analysis of Data 

Ethnographic research relied heavily on video clips, in-depth interviews, notes on field observation notes, as well as other researcher-recorded observations, as well as interviewees' drawings and pictures, as main data sources. A comprehensive database included all of these components may be created and analyzed using qualitative interpretative software like Vivo. Interviewees utilized this method to develop their worldview by unearthing their unconscious interpretations and organizing principles (Gray, 2013). There are some similarities to a hypothesis testing method to data analysis, however the true application of grounded theory was to produce new or updated theoretical proposals anchored in qualitative data that may be used in future studies. 

Here, the USA Centre for Modern Cultural Studies has detailed its audience study’s methodology and emphasized the contribution of Morley in showing that crowd members actively generate meaning through media texts. An analysis of audience surveys research in America over the past third century provided, positioning research within this context and suggesting that the aggressive audience is questioned in aspects of the media and technology they use much more than the media episodes they watch. Anthropological studies of multi-screen usage in the family house are therefore an ethnographic examination of new technologies and changing digital content. For the first time, it is possible to witness how tech communication connects people in the crowd with others. Therefore, audience studies are transforming the discipline to explore how and why people use technology to communicate with others, and this shift places the audience as well as their preferences at the center, rather than content interpretations (Game, 2019). 

Authenticity and dedication from the group was very necessary for ethnographic audience surveys research. From sociology as well as anthropology's raw resources, it has grown over decades into a quantitative approach employed by media and information experts to study media and communication. When it came to ethnographic audience research, household and daily life are celebrated. Understanding everyday experiences, such as soap operas like reality television, is a goal of this project. It avoids and corrects the value judgements of the high or low culture arguments. Because one of the objectives is to grasp social joys and meanings, the typical setting in which these created is the home. Free from the restraints of bosses and paid labor schedules, individuals here are more empowered to do what they want, whenever they want. Ethnographic population studies may provide light on the concepts of power in the household and examine the methods by which these alter, for instance, when children become older and seek more independence. This is because age and sex affect when and where interviewees can consume media (Carey, 2010). 

Conclusion 

Rather than focusing on content consumption, ethnographic population studies focused on the ways in which individuals use media as a means of defining and expressing their own identities. Through media audience got awareness of the human community, and knowledge on how individuals relate in the society. Via in interviews and observations it highlighted both the group and the study participants expertise such understandings are available to the researcher. Despite the fact that research study was subjective, it was genuine. The benefits of this study approach in illustrating the relevance of the media are many to our daily lives, via the use of communication technology.               

References

Carey, J. (2020). May you live in interesting times? American Journal of Communication, 20 (3), 1-12.  

Game, A. (2019). Undoing the social: towards a deconstructive sociology. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. 

Geertz, C. (2010). The interpretation of cultures. New York, NY: Basic Books. 

Glaser, B. & Strauss, A. (2018). The discovery of grounded theory: strategies for qualitative research. Chicago: Aldine. 

Gray, A. (2003). Research practice for cultural studies: ethnographic methods and lived cultures. London: Sage.  

Green, L. & Holloway, D. (2004).The role of everyday life in confounding expectations in communication research. American Journal of Communication, 31 (2), 167-184.  

Green, L. (2010). The internet: an introduction to new media. Oxford, UK: Berg. Hacking, I. (2017). The social construction of what? Cambridge: Harvard University Press.