This document discusses ethnographic research approaches to studying media practices and the Internet. It provides 4 examples of ethnographic studies that follow people's everyday mediated practices. The studies observe practices like self-producing video, digital photography, blogging, and online dating. They use diverse theoretical frameworks but commonly view the "field" as blurred and defined by participants' practices across physical and digital spaces, rather than a fixed geographical location. Studying practices allows researchers to understand how people engage with and make sense of media technologies in their lives.

1. Media practices and the Internet: some reflections through ethnography Elisenda Ardèvol Adolfo Estalella Edgar Gómez-Cruz Begoña Enguix ECREA, Barcelona, November, 2008 Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

4. Theoretical approach Internet as Culture Internet as Cultural Artifact Internet as Media Concepts Cyberspace, virtual life, cyberculture, desembodiment, desterritorialization Online/Offline, embedded in everyday life, locality Convergence of media, everyday life, new media, digital culture Object/Field Text based: Chats, BBS, IRC, Usenet, Newsgroups, MUDs Web based : Personal pages, Websites, Virtual Worlds Social networks, multimedia objects: Users Generated Content, Web 2.0 Methodology Qualitative Ethnography Virtual Communities, Computer Mediated Communication, Online Identity, (only) Screen Studies Social ties, identity representation, ‘beyond the screen’ studies, appropriation of technology, virtual ethnography Multimedia ethnography, connective ethnography, network ethnography…

8. follow the practices! a ) it allows “to follow the actors” in their everyday practices without conferring them with a priori schemes for the definition of those practices, but aiming to make sense of the practices that they devise and about which they think; b) it introduces the need to incorporate objects to the construction of the social, bringing into consideration their materiality and not only their symbolic dimension.

9. 3. Ethnography of mediation “ a field site can no longer be seen merely as a geographical location, but rather may be viewed as an intersection between people, practices and shifting terrains, both physical and virtual” (Strauss, 2000: 171-172)

10. 4. Examples of ethnographic research on media practices:

11. Self-producing video practices Elisenda Ardévol

13. Dating practices among Gays Begonya Enguix

15. Digital Photography Practices Edgar Gómez

17. Live Blogging Adolfo Estalella

20. Thank you! Gràcies! http://mediacciones.es/