The Evolution of EthnographyA Tried-and-True Method for Answering Today’s Questions…

Stacey Megoloff, Social Intelligence Research Analyst

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Ethnography as we know it today started with

Bronislaw Malinowski

Historical Ethnography

• Taking research away from the armchair and out into the field with Participant Observation

• Participate and engage subjects in daily activities to understand worldviews, thought processes and motivations

Famous for his ethnographical studies of the tribes of the Trobriand Islands and their modes of reciprocity and exchange

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Ethnography is now a widely used methodology among social scientists and researchers

Contemporary Ethnography

Contemporary Ethnographical topics:

• Consumer behavior

• Drug culture• Religious culture• Sexuality and

identity culture• Gang culture

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To capture the social meanings and ordinary activities of a cultural community in their natural setting

Data Collection Methods

Tools:

• Participant observation• Field notes• Interviews• Surveys

A minimal amount of personal influence from the researcher results in a “purer” dataset that can give valuable insights to a social research question

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As online communities are born every day, a vast new dataset is created for the ethnographer

Virtual Ethnography

The online community is pure and provides unsolicited feedback at a lower cost

“Ethnographers of varying disciplinary hue, …find in the Internet a plethora of virtual field sites ripe for the novel understanding of

interaction, culture, community, and Identity”… Dr. Christine Hine (2008)

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CXM and Virtual Ethnography

• Applies an unfiltered lens of textual expression

• Provides new insights into cultural and psycho-social motivations within the customer experience

Big Data, Big Insights - A New avenue for CXM

This process puts predictive analytics in a whole new arena supported by an age old academic methodology that is still today used, taught, and

validated by university professors and researchers world-wide

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