My Personal Social Identity Project

We are often reminded of the adage, “the eyes are the windows to the soul.” Selfies are seen with the eyes; transitively, they must also be the windows to the soul. Just as this one opening statement exposes my logical-minded nature, this selfie exposes viewers to facets of my entire reality. It depicts my best friend and I working in the audiovisual control room of a local mosque. At the first glance, viewers deduce that both of us are of similar races. In fact, most of my close friends and I share an African-Indian heritage. They, like me, spend much of their time volunteering at or attending mosque-sponsored events, largely dominated by this culture; this frequent proximity caused strong bonds to form between us. Furthermore, viewers may notice that our clothing is the typical American formal attire. This is a testament to my generation’s Western acculturation in comparison to our African elders, who continue to dawn traditional festive garb. Now, if viewers choose to dive deeper into their analysis, they will find further elements exposing intrinsic parts of my personality.

Technology is fast becoming our generation’s source of information. Not only does it provide us with the ability to communicate personally, but with forms such as the internet and the media, it allows ideas to be broadcasted to a large audience. Though the ideas expressed through the media can be straightforward, it is often the subtleties that create the greatest impacts amongst audiences.

Ethnographies are the interpretations which are contoured by the personal thoughts, ideals, experiences and the situation and setting by which the ethnographer was situated. This setting is an ever changing mix of relations and actions; socially, mentally and physically, which have an effect on the ethnographer, society, history and the idea of culture. These ethnographers serve as both anthropologists and historians.

What does it mean to be ethnocentric? How is ethnocentrism dangerous in conducting social research? How is ethnocentrism problematic among nonresearchers in their everyday lives? These are the questions I will be answering in this essay. Hopefully this will prove to be useful in the future.

|Ethnographic Designs |Pages 20-22 and |Ethnographic design is a qualitative research method in which the researcher is able to |

Ultimately, van den Born’s project addresses the definition of "reality." It is no doubt that people are constantly sharing images from their vacations and daily lives, but, her project begs the question, how much of it is real? While we necessarily don’t spend hours in Photoshop for sharing ordinary photos; however, we are building, rather fabricating, our own little story that we choose to post on social media to share with the

After viewing our assigned videos, I experienced a range of emotions and thoughts that affected me on different levels. These emotional responses ranged from expressions of apathetic dissonance to enthusiastic nods of agreement. What I discovered was a developing themes of human expression that equated to unfulfilled needs and/or voids. Therefore, I will attempt to engage and discuss the eight video’s assigned for Evangelism, Photography and Social Media class. I will analyze the attempted message of each video based on the developing theme of “ the four unmet human needs” first through a theological lens, then as a sociological issue, and finally how each video raised conversations about these issues.

While this study may have not taken the ethnographic approach, which is more appropriate in such a situation, it is prudent to note that the qualitative – quantitative – qualitative sequence in analysis may have given it the near accurate results that is desired in the end. As such, it is great to note that the interviewer used more analyses than one in achieving the output of a more synthesized result. The barriers to using ethnography in this case are more related with the nature of the variable under study than any other factor. For instance, while studying poverty, it would be more difficult to have a researcher position themselves in a society well enough to experience the poverty. In light of this, it should be noted that the approach taken was the best since it positioned the researchers at a point where they could have the best data (Fink, 2000).

Qualitative research ‘typically relies on an in-depth interview strategy, although this may be supplement with […] other forms of data’ (Marshall & Rossman, 1999, p.61). In order to answer the research question, the research will use methods analysing data from the social media YouTube and from human subjects.

There are multiple characteristics of ethnographic approach. The research is considered to be more of a descriptive type research approach, Which is intended for “in-depth investigation and description of cultural groups, cultures, large organizations and groupings, and their features (Percy, Kostere, & Kostere, 2015, p. 16). This type of research immerses its selves in the organization or culture they are reviewing, and becoming a part of the culture so that we can learn about it from the inside out. Therefore, this methodology often involves longer time frame for information collection, and will f regularly return a number of times to the location where their research to

In determining my peer’s favorite social media platform, I followed James P. Spradley’s concepts of explaining its explicit purpose, giving ethnographic explanations, and ethnographic questions (1979). Through these explanations and openness shared between the interviewer and informant, my peer and I were able to maintain an environment of a friendly conversation throughout the interview, which Spradley suggests is extremely important in making an informant more comfortable and willing to talk.

Ethnography is a strategy of analysis coming from anthropology and sociology where the researcher studies the common forms of a person’s actions,vocabulary, and movements of a complete social cluster in an ordinary location over a lengthy period of time. Documents gathering often includes clarifications and dialogues(Creswell, 2014).A qualitative researcher uses ordinary locations, they are the main mechanism, collects numerous origin of evidence, uses inductive and deductive statistics study, put emphasis on contributors’ significance, has a developing strategy, reflexivity, and develop a complete explanation.

Not only new media is remediating its predecessors, it also shapes new modes of subjectivity. Subjectivity means the process of being a subject; it refers to who we are to how we react to the world. The emergence of new media has unprecedentedly change the subjectivity of different things. For example, we are experiencing new forms of textual experiences and representations such as genre, form and consumption. There are new forms of embodiment and identity that change how we perceive ourselves and our bodies. Organization also changes the rules of ownership, control, regulation. These subjectivities are all being reshaped due to the change of our relationship with technologies. The example discussed in lecture is subjectivity related to selfies. Media technologies has created selfies which are these self-portraits taken by phones that gets uploaded to social media. It is a convergence of technology, interaction and body. Selfies become a way to call to the world about who we are and a commanding representation of self. Because the immediacy, ubiquity and ephemerality of the social media, selfies have embodied these characteristics and become instant, common and short-lived. The characteristics of new media is shaping the subjectivity of selfies. Moreover, devices functions are more determinative than aesthetic conventions. Technologies offer people the power to edit selfies. People

The aspect of a visual medium has been around for decades, so it’s safe to say, every aspect of social relationships have been explored, in the home and outside; even the most unlikely or unnatural.

After exploring the loads of questions that I came across following the prompt. I then had to ask myself “What does it mean to be an ethnographer?”. In order to successfully explain the importance of the role, one needs to know the duties and the purpose for the position of an ethnographer. An ethnographer is in many ways an expansion of an Anthropologist, though from a more theoretical interpretation of studies. The role of an ethnographer has been explained as, “one who uses both a qualitative research process or method and product, whose aim is cultural interpretation”(Brian A. Hoey). In understanding the mission of an ethnographer I have been able to focus on the three mainstages of human life in order to get