ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the value of ethnographic approaches to media studies. It discusses a working definition of ethnography as both a methodological practice and analytic framework and demonstrates how ethnography can offer media scholars a way to expand the field. The chapter argues that ethnography is well-suited to addressing a specific tension between a push for objective neutrality in reporting human activity and a pull to produce grounded research that engages with the holistic experiences of participants. It focuses on how theories of production and media effect change when people's engagements are considered with media, beyond a moment of creation or reception. Several fields claim ethnography as a primary methodological practice, particularly the humanistic social sciences of anthropology and qualitative sociology. Ethnography stands as a defining feature and core element of not just the methodological toolkit of these intellectual traditions but also as their analytic framework.
