A better understanding of other culture that you never have should be a collaborative media ethnography. According to Fetterman (1998), the term of ‘ethnography’ can be defined as the activity of documenting routine of people’s daily lives and exploring cultural characteristics of a group. It is a two-way communication, people can give feedback and ask more to get a deep understanding of the other’s perspective.
Last week, I had an interview with my father about his memories of his television watching when he was young. It has such fun that our childhood is very different, his childhood is the generation that just started to have media (telephone and television), but my childhood is much more modern compared to his. For example, television is very normal for me, I already used to have a television at my house and it is colourful and fun, it is part of my daily life in my childhood memory. After the interview with my father, I found out it is very surprising for him to first saw a picture on television, although it is black and white. When I ask him about his feeling, he shows me how he look when he was young to show how surprise he is. He opened his mouth and speechless and smile at the same time if I doing this facial expression I may be seeing a UFO in my city. So he sees the television is the same feeling as me to seeing a UFO, it is feeling impossible and incredible.
He also gives me some body-languages such as how the television looks like. He put his hands like a big box to show me the old television is in a big square size. He also shows me the television is putting how high in the convenience store so he had to sit on a very high chair when he is watching the TV show. All of these body-languages and the way his answer me show that it is very unforgettable memories of him.
However, there also have a challenge of collaborative media ethnography that people may need additional time or efforts on the research. When we want to know more, we need to spend more time and efforts on it, the time may also need more compared to other research. Also, the size of the sample may be limited and small since we do not have enough time or effort to have more sample.
Moreover, this kind of research is really good for me to know more other’s culture that I may not experience before, I really love that and it is fun to do so.
Reference
- Fetterman, DM 1998, Ethnography: step by step / by David M. Fetterman, Thousand Oaks, California.
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