ABOUT THIS BOOK

Digital ethnography can be understood as a method for representing real-life cultures through storytelling in digital media. Enabling audiences to go beyond absorbing facts, computer-based storytelling allows for immersion in the experience of another culture. A guide for anyone in the social sciences who seeks to enrich ethnographic techniques, Digital Ethnography offers a groundbreaking approach that utilizes interactive components to simulate cultural narratives.

Integrating insights from cultural anthropology, folklore, digital humanities, and digital heritage studies, this work brims with case studies that provide in-depth discussions of applied projects. Web links to multimedia examples are included as well, including projects, design documents, and other relevant materials related to the planning and execution of digital ethnography projects. In addition, new media tools such as database development and XML coding are explored and explained, bridging the literature on cyber-ethnography with inspiring examples such as blending cultural heritage with computer games.

One of the few books in its field to address the digital divide among researchers, Digital Ethnography guides readers through the extraordinary potential for enrichment offered by technological resources, far from restricting research to quantitative methods usually associated with technology. The authors powerfully remind us that the study of culture is as much about affective traits of feeling and sensing as it is about cognition—an approach facilitated (not hindered) by the digital age.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Natalie M. Underberg is Associate Professor of Digital Media and Folklore in the University of Central Florida School of Visual Arts and Design.

Elayne Zorn (deceased) was Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Central Florida and author of Weaving a Future: Tourism, Cloth, and Culture on an Andean Island.

REVIEWS

This important, original work is a major contribution to contemporary cultural anthropology. The book charts new territory for ethnographic investigations, rather than merely reporting on already completed methods for presenting anthropological data that was collected in other (usually pre-digital) ways. The chapters are very stimulating. I constantly found myself stopping because the ideas made me think about new venues for conducting and presenting research.

— Blenda Femenías, Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, Catholic University of America

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Rethinking Culture through Multimedia Ethnography
Chapter 2. Florida and Peru: Experiments in Ethnographic Representation
Chapter 3. Digital Tools for Anthropological Analysis
Chapter 4. Using the Extensible Markup Language in Cultural Analysis and Presentation
Natalie Underberg and Rudy McDaniel
Chapter 5. Using Features of Digital Environments to Enable Cultural Learning
Chapter 6. Cultural Heritage Video Game Design
Conclusion. Narratives and Critical Anthropology: Roles for New Media
Appendix: Guide to Web-Based Materials
Glossary
References Cited
Index