[Ethnocomm] E-seminar

Sat Feb 13 09:43:29 UTC 2016

Greetings Colleagues,

I am very excited to participate in this prolific exchange and I warmly join those thanking David for organizing and facilitating this e-seminar, and Tamar and Wendy for igniting such inspiring discussions. I’d like to make a few points, addressing (in this order) affordances and materiality, multimodality to multimediality, critical approaches (surveillance studies and big data).

Tamar (2015) highlights EC’s possible contributions to encoding, thus outlining a processual approach which a few of us reiterated and which rests at the core of EC. She points at affordances as one possible prism through which the study of encoding can be pursued productively. I suggest the same in my forthcoming definition of EC (Noy, in press), and in my research I find affordances to be an extremely helpful prism, precisely in understanding actual communication practices and the situated and cultural (de)stabilizing of sign systems (Noy, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2015a). I note that oceans of words have been written on affordances within the discussion on social construction versus deterministic approaches to technology, which I did not find particularly relevant. I begin by noting the obvious, which is that EC studies shouldn’t have needed to wait for the ‘digital divide’ to enjoy what a view of affordances can offer. f2f interaction, too, is rich with situational affordances, and there is no need for “technology” to appreciate given material interactional possibilities, and what interactants do with them. When we reference f2f as a baseline for communication, it’s good to keep in mind that the term is a metonym, and that bodies are usually present and ‘broadcasting’ (the two Jewish speakers who must give each other the heavy bags they are carrying so their hands can be free every time each of them wants to talk). Also, as ethnographers of ritual have shown long ago, and Conversation Analysis more recently, talk itself is embodied in its melodiousness and breath-related temporality. I am noting this because it’s from the complexities of ‘app-free’ interaction that we can build sensitivities to the affordances that are available to and used in interactions, and the meanings interactants ascribe to them. 

Along these lines, the f2f interactions are also highly multimodal (relates to different affordances): various modalities are always at stake in encoding processes, and when we migrate from app-free or app-less interaction to media ubiquitous environments, multimodal interactions only become exponentially more complex and interesting. 

Now I move from multimodality to multimediality, where it’s becoming literally impossible to address all the ‘new’ media platforms that are commonly in use nowadays. 

One of my graduate students, Krystal Bresnahan, writes in her dissertation on how Snapchat is used in family interactions: while family photos have traditionally been used as part of the ritual of preserving ‘family moments’ (persons, contexts, relationships), Snapchat is known—notoriously so—for functioning reversely: images are deleted by default. These affordances encourage a shift from storing images for future use, to enjoying the moment of consuming them (shortly after which they disappear).  My point is that because there is so much to learn ethnographically from each and every app, the goal to look at encoding processes and practices more generally, cutting through different apps and platforms, and different users, becomes a daunting mission. In the Snapchat study, one of the things we ethnographically observe is how family members teach each other how to communicate with each other through this app, and this offers rich insights into media literacy and socialization. As already mentioned, the availability of multiple communication platforms mean users are constantly making media choices, and constantly learn to ascribe meanings to the different platforms and their affordances. In relation to f2f interaction, Gershon (2010) observes that in multi-media environments, f2f is yet another available platform for interaction, with its distinct uses and meanings. In relation to (re)shaping and (re)learning new codes, a few of Goodwin’s (1994, 2006) studies come to mind, if more on the visual side, where viewers—jurors and archeologists (respectively)—learn to see or ‘ed/re-code’ what’s in front of them. Good to remember that for Hymes (1972), “accounts of the interdependence of channels in interaction and the relative hierarchy among them” (p. 63) was an organic art of the EC agenda. 

My third point picks on Tamar’s mention of wearables. A colleague at the Department of Communication at USF works in the field of Feminist Surveillance Studies. Here, surveillance-related communication encompasses platforms and practices whose efficacy sometimes comes not from the use of verbal codes, but from being constantly on and always signaling. A few of the recent scandals surrounding NSA activities, for instance, are not text-based (reading people’s private messages), but are rather based on recording and analyzing big-data in search of ‘patterned activities’. When more and more communication is technified and recorded, some of the required semiotic analysis shifts from language to different types of codes and new forms of encodings. So the question of all sorts of monitorings keeps being relevant. 

I mentioned the NSA because my point concerns critical approaches, and the rich contributions that EC could have and can still make to various domains of critical inquiry. One of the mail critiques that have traditionally been put forward to critical ‘-isms’ (Marxism, etc.) are that when research is pursued, it often support what has been presumed (namely the presence of oppressive power relations). EC is obviously invaluable here, and encoding can productively be viewed through the analytical prism of critical theories. We can look, for instance, at how hegemony—from the State to Neo-liberal agencies and discourses—contributes to the shaping of instrumentalities and encoding processes. During the last decade (2006-2012) I studied a major national commemoration site in Jerusalem, Israel. I observed interactions between visitors, and more so between visitors and the commemorative visitor book that the site presents (observing both f2f and “face to sur/face" interactions, see McIlvenny & Noy, 2011, pp. 152-153). EC helped me delineate how ordinary Israeli citizens, and international tourists, are ideologically mobilized in and through writing in the site’s impressive visitor book, which I primarily understood as a situated medium. Writing in situ is a participatory ritualistic action. Here language ideologies and media ecology come together in serving State institutions and discourses: they mobilize publics towards political ideologies, specifically hyper-patriotism and nationalism. In later studies, I pursued similar questions in different cultural contexts, spending a few years studying entextualization in public sites of commemoration and memory in the United States (Noy, 2015b, 2016). This allows for comparative findings and insights to emerge, highlighting what Katriel (2015) nicely terms “culturally inflected ‘speech events’ around which social communication is organized” (p. 454).

Finally, how can all this not be multi- and interdisciplinary? It must, and as Donal pointed out earlier, this has been the case from the onset. Interdisciplinarity seems essential for the continuous vitality and relevance of EC, and for the scholarly growth of those undertaking it. My interdisciplinary experiences in academic settings haven’t been all that good, which only makes sense because unlike the messy reality we study, universities are highly disciplined institutions. While interdisciplinary nexuses of methodologies and knowledges are appreciated (usually in the shape of trendy academic ‘centers’), the basic institutional divides, tenure lines and rites of passage, and the overall hierarchical structure is principally committed to disciplines. 

References 

Gershon, I. (2010). Breaking Up Is Hard To Do: Media Switching and Media Ideologies. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 20(2), 389-405. 
Goodwin, C. (1994). Professional vision. American Anthropologist, 96(3), 606-633. 
Goodwin, C. (2006). A linguistic anthropologist’s interest in archaeological practice. In M. Edgeworth (Ed.), Ethnographies of archaeological practice: cultural encounters, material transformations (pp. 45-55). Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press.
Hymes, D. H. (1972). Models for the interaction of language and social life. In J. J. Gumperz & D. H. Hymes (Eds.), Directions in sociolinguistics: The ethnography of communication (pp. 35-71). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Katriel, T. (2015). Expanding ethnography of communication research: Towards ethnographies of encoding. Communication Theory, 25(3), 454–459. 
McIlvenny, P., & Noy, C. (2011). Multimodal discourse in mediated spaces. Social Semiotics 21(2), 147-154. 
Noy, C. (2008). Writing ideology: Hybrid symbols in a commemorative visitor book in Israel. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 18(1), 62-81. 
Noy, C. (2009). 'I WAS HERE!': Addressivity structures and inscribing practices as indexical resources. Discourse Studies, 11(4), 421-440. 
Noy, C. (2011). Articulating spaces: Inscribing spaces and (im)mobilities in an Israeli commemorative visitor book. Social Semiotics, 21(2), 155-173. 
Noy, C. (2015a). Thank You for Dying for Our Country: Commemorative Texts and Performances in Jerusalem. Oxford Oxford University Press.
Noy, C. (2015b). Writing in museums: Towards a rhetoric of participation. Written Communication, 32(2), 195-219. 
Noy, C. (2016). “My Holocaust Experience was Great!”:  Entitlements for participation in museum media. Discourse & Communication, 10(2). 
Noy, C. (in press). Ethnography of communication. In J. Matthes (Ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Communication Research Methods. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

--
Chaim Noy, Ph.D.
Associate Professor 
Department of Communication
University of South Florida
http://communication.usf.edu/faculty/cnoy/
www.chaimnoy.com
Recent book: Thank You for Dying for Our Country: Commemorative Texts and Performances in Jerusalem. Oxford University Press, 2015. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Ethnocomm [mailto:ethnocomm-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] On Behalf Of Katherine Peters
Sent: Friday, February 12, 2016 8:40 PM
To: ethnocomm at listserv.linguistlist.org
Subject: [Ethnocomm] E-seminar

I have enjoyed watching our e-seminar from the sidelines so far, and now feel compelled to add my own noticings.

The piece of Katriel's article that most intrigued me was her discussion of the materiality of new technologies like smart watches. The Apple watch and similar devices may signal a certain kind of status, in much the same way as a designer bag would, which indexes particular kinds of identities or modes of being rather than others.  In the course I teach, I had students who identified as iPhone-users describe the range of identities they would associate with users of that device. They provided a range from "trendy" to "conformist". Similarly, I asked the students who identified as Android-users to describe what it meant to be an iPhone-user, and their list ranged from "simple-minded" and "basic" to "conformist". Likewise I had both groups describe Android-users, with very different associations ("techie" to "cheap" to "non-conformist"). Through this conversation, an iPhone-user admitted that she didn't like her Android-using friends as much because the text bubbles are a different color (green) than everyone else's (blue). It has been my experience from these conversations and musings that the social and material are not completely separable, and I'm excited about encoding as a way to potentially theorize how this comes to be.

I think that it's also important to see and study how communication technologies can divide communities even as they bring them together. This is something that I tried to demonstrate through my study of video-conferencing technology used for meetings, which is included in Trudy's edited volume (Peters, 2015). The software this organization chose to use both enabled the presence of distant members and constrained the (inter)actions they could accomplish, like joking, which people who were also meeting face-to-face could do. Furthermore, the possibilities for acting also affected how members could relate to each other. For this organization, technology not only shaped the process of meeting, but also subsequently shaped culture and meanings.

This brings me to David's thoughts about process. If we do indeed turn to studying process and culture as emergent in those processes, then I wonder what happens to structure. My thoughts here are partially informed by moves in organizational communication that focus on the intertwined nature of agency and structure, such that the distinction no longer seems useful. Structure and organization are thus "grounded-in-action", and action, process, and agency become the focus of analysis. As I think through what this might mean for the ethnography of communication, I think that at the very least this would ask us to view technology (and perhaps even codes) as practice or process, and not necessarily separable into a structural level. Questions about technology and their affordances might thus turn to how the use of hardware, software, etc. "makes a difference" such that the use of them enables and constrains action in the moment (Cooren, 2010). I also wonder if turning to process, practice, or encoding as the focus of analysis might also ask us to conceptualize codes as an effect or trace of processes and relations, rather than something separable from its enactment and "held" by members. And if not, then at what point would we consider encoding "complete" and a code stabilized? Or are codes always, in some ways, in flux and changing in processes and enactment?

That's where these ideas have taken me so far, and I've enjoyed reading everyone else's reflections. I'm excited to see where these ideas and dialogue around them takes us!

Best,
Katie

References:
Cooren, F. (2010). Action and agency in dialogue: Passion, incarnation, and ventriloquism. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.
Peters, K. (2015). “Showing we’re a team”: Acting and relating in online/offline hybrid organizational meetings. In T. Milburn, Communicating user experience: Applying local strategies research to digital media design (pp. 63-86). Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

--
Katherine R. Peters, M.A.
Graduate Part-Time Instructor
Department of Communication
University of Colorado Boulder
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