PR 680 Lecture Notes - Lecture 34: Ethnography

• School: Ball State University
• Department: Public Relations
• Course: PR 680
• Professor: Dr. Sungwon Chung

Document Summary

In order to study people anthropology uses a process called ethnography. With ethnography, you have to be fluent in the language of the people you are studying so you are on the same page and everyone understands each other. You have to establish a mutual trust with a full range of the people you are looking at, studying, or researching. It usually requires that the researcher stays in a specific location like a company, town, village, etc. The skills you need as an ethnographer include interviewing and observing skills. You can do overt and covert observations, which have different ethical issues within them. Ethnography research is also called observational research, fieldwork, immersion, in-home, or anthropological research. The goal is to get a more realistic understanding and view of the attitudes, behaviors, motivations, and needs of a consumer within their environment. After this is done, you do a complete analysis of the data you collected from this environment.