Media ethnography

Contents Editorial Thematic Focus: Media Ethnography Media Ethnography and Participation in Online Practices / David Waldecker, Kathrin Englert, Wolfgang Ludwig-Mayerhofer, Oliver Schmidtke The Story is Everywhere. Dispersed Situations in a Literary Role Play Game / Wolfgang Reißmann Co-operation and/as Participant Observation: Reflections on Ethnographic Fieldwork in Morocco / Simon Holdermann Ethnomethodological Media Ethnography: Exploring Everyday Digital Practices in Families with Young Children / Clemens Eisenmann, Jan Peter, Erik Wittbusch Cooperation and Difference. Camera Ethnography in the Research Project ‘Early Childhood and Smartphone’ / Bina E. Mohn, Pip Hare, Astrid Vogelpohl, Jutta Wiesemann Reports Coordinations, or Computing is Work / Sebastian Gießman

Cooperation and difference

The article examines the fundamental role of cooperation and difference in ethnographic research. We use camera ethnography in our research project B05 “Early Childhood and Smartphone. Family Interaction Order, Learning Processes and Cooperation” to reveal the iconographic aspects of media practices and to examine their choreographies in space and time. This enables us to engage with aspects such as embodiment, materiality, and perception in early childhood and learning. Rather than using video technology to produce recordings of a ‘reality’ assumed to be simply there and filmable, a key methodological premise of camera ethnography is that the visibility of an object of research is not given a priori but has to be generated by media ethnographic research practices. Hence, ethnographic research practices are epistemic practices and constitute “epistemic things” (see Rheinberger 2006; Knorr-Cetina 1999). To discover and investigate media practices in early childhood involves building, shaping, and maintaining relationships of cooperation and difference