An Auto-ethnographic diary
The next step in your research will be to write an auto-ethnographic diary. As a research method, auto-ethnography is rather different from library research. When you conduct library research, your aim is to discover what other researchers and writers have had to say about your topic.
However, when you conduct an auto-ethnography, your aim is to record and to reflect upon your own experience. Hence the prefix auto, which is Greek for “self:” an auto-ethnography is you researching yourself.
But what about the “ethnography” part? Ethnography is a form of research practiced by anthropologists and other social scientists and humanists, wherein the researcher immerses him- or herself in a culture, both observing what participants in the culture do as well as participating in the doings themselves, in an effort to gain a deeper understanding of what that culture means to the people who belong to it.
In an auto-ethnography, then, the researcher immerses him- or herself in his or her own cultural experience in order to explore what that experience has meant for him or her, by recording their personal experiences, telling their stories, and reflecting upon the meaning of both.
To conduct your auto-ethnography, you’ll keep a diary of your personal experiences with the tech you’ve chosen to write your TED Talk about. You’ll spend at least an hour a day playing with, working on, or otherwise interacting with the app, gadget, or platform you’ve selected, and then you’ll write about that experience in your diary, keeping your research question in mind.
For example, if you’re researching World of Warcraft, then you’ll spend at least an hour a day playing that game, and then you’ll write a diary entry about the experience; if you’re researching the iPhone or Facebook — i.e., technology that we tend to use for shorter periods of time across a longer span of the day — then you’ll make sure that you interact with your tech for at least an hour spread across the day, and, at the end of the day, you’ll write your diary entry. What should go into each diary entry? It’s important to remember that you’re not simply recording facts in your diary but reporting and reflecting upon experiences. That is, you’re writing stories, and you’re writing about what they mean to you.
So your diary entries won’t consist merely of a record of when you started, when you finished, and what you saw/heard/read along the way.
Instead, you’ll tell the story of your experience with your tech that day: what you did with it, how, and why, what it meant to you, and, most importantly, what it made you think and feel with respect to your research question. At the end of this auto-ethnographic exercise, you’ll have collected a whole bunch of little stories and interpretations, some or all of which will add up to a larger story that you’ll incorporate into your TED Talk.
To give you an example of what I mean: Imagine that I were conducting a research project in which I sought to explore how the experience of narrative that we have when we binge-view a series on Netflix differs from the experience of narrative we have when reading a novel. For my auto-ethnography,
I’d first write a diary entry about my previous experiences with novel-reading and binge-viewing, and then I’d spend alternate afternoons with each form: watching a few back-to-back episodes of Breaking Bad on Saturday, Monday, and Wednesday, and reading a few chapters of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday.
After each viewing or reading period, I’d write a diary entry with three parts:
· First, I’d describe what I viewed or read that day; whether I viewed/read continuously or in chunks; and whether I viewed/read straight through or rewound/flipped back, and why.
· Second, I’d write about the experience of viewing/reading: When was I was most involved in the narrative, and when least? How did my understanding of the narrative develop and change? What was my intellectual or emotional reaction to key events.
· Third, I’d write about how the day’s experience of viewing or reading compared to what my sources say about it; about how that experience speaks to my research questions; and about any new ideas I have.
For an example of an actual auto-ethnography, check out “On Being Degraded in Public Space: An Autoethnography,” (Links to an external site.) by Todd A. Schoepflin. It’s not about virtual realities, but it’s a good example of the genre of auto-ethnography. Scroll down to the section of Schoeplin’s piece labelled “The Incident.”
So, to recap, here’s what you’ll do for the next few days:
Today (Friday, July 1)
· Read “Autoethnography: An Overview,” (Links to an external site.) by Carolyn Ellis, Tony E. Adams and Arthur P. Bochner.
· Create your auto-ethnographic journal document. Name the document Last name, first name – WRIT 1133 – Auto-ethnographic Diary. Begin each diary entry with an entry number and the date: “Entry 1, July 1, 2022,” etc.
· Write your first entry by telling the story of previous experiences you’ve had (if any) with the tech you’ve chosen to write about. When did you start using it? Why?
What purposes has it served in your life, and in what other ways has it been meaningful to you? Have you had any particularly memorable experiences with this tech, and, if so, what are they? Finally, how would you connect the experiences you’ve had so far with what the scholars you’ve found through your research are saying about it?
Tomorrow (Saturday, July 2) and the day after (Sunday, July 3)
On July 2nd and 3rd, interact with your chosen technology for at least an hour a day, and then write a diary entry for each day that addresses the following:
1. What happened? (I.e., what did you do with your tech during the time you interacted with it today?)
2. How did you feel about what happened? (I.e., what were you thinking and how did you react to the experience as it happened?)
3. What did you think about the experience afterwards? (I.e., what connections can you make between what you experienced today and what’s written about in your annotated bibliography? How did your experience speak to your research question? What new thoughts or questions came up for you?)
Monday, July 4
Submit the whole diary (three entries in total) in a single Word doc by noon on Monday, July 4. If you’d like to spend Independence Day wholly free of WRIT obligations, then you can submit your doc anytime Sunday, but make sure that it includes all three entries: July 1, 2, and 3. And again, the doc is to be named Last name, first name – WRIT 1133 – Auto-ethnographic Diary.
“Autoethnography: An Overview
https://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1589/3095
Example:
