From street to satellite: Mixing methods to understand mobile money users

Taylor, Erin B.; Horst, Heather A.

doi:10.1111/j.1559-8918.2013.00008.x

Cited by 9 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 8 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In doing so, our approach both corroborates and extends existing attempts to practically explore the interface of big data and ethnography (e.g., Ford, 2014;Taylor and Horst, 2013), adding to them a tangible account and a methodological language for what complementarity might entail when working across these data-worlds. In particular, in ways resonant with more speculative accounts of big social data (e.g., Ruppert et al, 2013), we seek to affirm and experiment with the way digital-transactional data create new affordances of 'extensive processuality' (Edwards et al, 2013), by allowing us to combine the processual focus of ethnography with the spatially extensive focus of quantitative research in new ways.…”

Section: Concluding Remarks: Experimentalizing the Big Social Data Mosupporting

confidence: 75%

“…What we wish to do is to explore what such granularity consists of; what kind of granularity it is, relative to ethnographic observations; and, most importantly, what novel kinds of granularities or data densities we might get when attempting to stitch together different digital-transactional and qualitative-ethnographic observations. This approach of ours shares its overall orientation, as noted, with like-minded attempts to work across the ethnography-big data divide (e.g., Curran, 2013;Ford, 2014;Taylor and Horst, 2013) -while also, we believe, adding notions of complementarity, stitching and granularity as novel methodological orientations for what that might entail in practice. Moreover, the particularities of our data test site mean that we inscribe this exploration into the wider research field of college parties (e.g., Ronen, 2010;Sweeney, 2014), understood here in the Goffmanian sense of a relatively dense, evanescent yet semi-coordinated social occasion of bodily co-presence (Goffman, 1963;Wynn, 2016).…”

mentioning

confidence: 82%

“…Importantly, a range of innovative concrete examples and reflections on collaborative data practices, not least set in joint industry-academia contexts, inform such debates (e.g., Boellstorff et al, 2015;Curran, 2013;Ford, 2014;Taylor and Horst, 2013). Among other things, these debates and endeavours may be said to raise the following pertinent questions, at once methodological, epistemological and ethical, and still very much open-ended and unresolved: how to combine or mix otherwise disparate datasets, formats and worlds?…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Stitching together the heterogeneous party: A complementary social data science experiment

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The era of 'big data' studies and computational social science has recently given rise to a number of realignments within and beyond the social sciences, where otherwise distinct data formats-digital, numerical, ethnographic, visual, etc.-rub off and emerge from one another in new ways. This article chronicles the collaboration between a team of anthropologists and sociologists, who worked together for one week in an experimental attempt to combine 'big' transactional and 'small' ethnographic data formats. Our collaboration is part of a larger cross-disciplinary project carried out at the Danish Technical University (DTU), where high-resolution transactional data from smartphones allows for recordings of social networks amongst a freshman class (N ¼ 800). With a parallel deployment of ethnographic fieldwork among the DTU students, this research setup raises a number of questions concerning how to assemble disparate 'data-worlds' and to what epistemological and political effects? To address these questions, a specific social event-a lively student party-was singled out from the broader DTU dataset. Our experimental collaboration used recordings of Bluetooth signals between students' phones to visualize the ebb and flow of social intensities at the DTU party, juxtaposing these with ethnographic field-notes on shifting party atmospheres. Tracing and reflecting on the process of combining heterogeneous data, the article offers a concrete case of how a 'stitching together' of digital and ethnographic data-worlds might take place.

show abstract

Section: Concluding Remarks: Experimentalizing the Big Social Data Mosupporting

confidence: 75%

mentioning

confidence: 82%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Stitching together the heterogeneous party: A complementary social data science experiment

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Several researchers, like Blok and Pederson, have tried to rethink relations between data science and qualitative or ethnographic traditions (Curran, 2013;Taylor and Horst, 2013). Some attempt to re-specify the offer of qualitative research to their quantitative counterparts while others try to rethink what traditionally 'quantitative' tools can offer ethnographers and qualitative researchers.…”

Section: Big Data Network and Quali-quantitative Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quali-quantitative methods beyond networks: Studying information diffusion on Twitter with the Modulation Sequencer

Moats

Borra

2018

Big Data & Society

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Although the rapid growth of digital data and computationally advanced methods in the social sciences has in many ways exacerbated tensions between the so-called 'quantitative' and 'qualitative' approaches, it has also been provocatively argued that the ubiquity of digital data, particularly online data, finally allows for the reconciliation of these two opposing research traditions. Indeed, a growing number of 'qualitatively' inclined researchers are beginning to use computational techniques in more critical, reflexive and hermeneutic ways. However, many of these claims for 'quali-quantitative' methods hinge on a single technique: the network graph. Networks are relational, allow for the questioning of rigid categories and zooming from individual cases to patterns at the aggregate. While not refuting the use of networks in these studies, this paper argues that there must be other ways of doing quali-quantitative methods. We first consider a phenomenon which falls between quantitative and qualitative traditions but remains elusive to network graphs: the spread of information on Twitter. Through a case study of debates about nuclear power on Twitter, we develop a novel data visualisation called the modulation sequencer which depicts the spread of URLs over time and retains many of the key features of networks identified above. Finally, we reflect on the role of such tools for the project of quali-quantitative methods.

show abstract

“…This made for challenges to the EPAM Continuum team's usual process, as they struggled to balance accommodating multiple stakeholders' representatives that they wanted to attend the interview with the need for intimacy, due to the sensitivity of the conversations that the teams would be having with NMB clients about their finances. (Taylor, 2013) From their past work, the EPAM Continuum team was distinctly aware of the potential decrease in candidness (and therefore quality of ethnographic data) that came with having more strangers in the interview environment. To get around this, the team decided to "overrecruit" and run additional in-context ethnographic interviews around the capital, Amman, (where it would be most convenient for the representatives from both USAID and the Central Bank of Jordan to attend) and be prepared to account for those interviews not yielding the same quality of data as interviews where it was only the core NMB and EPAM Continuum team members in attendance.…”

Section: Field Approach Stakeholder Management: Balancing Data Qualitmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mattresses and Moneyboxes: Cultural Affordances for Microfinance in Jordan

Hyman¹

2018

Ethnographic Praxis

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This case study will present how a multicultural and multidisciplinary team from EPAM Continuum, the global innovation design firm, gathered, analyzed, and presented back different forms of “evidence” to satisfy the complex set of client and customer needs for a Jordanian microfinance bank with 30 branches and 65,000 clients. The team navigated cultural and linguistic barriers as they sought to provide stakeholders and their customers the evidence they needed to confidently design a new “mobile payment service” for their microloan customers. Over the course of the engagement, the firm's team strove not only to research, design, and prototype a new service to hand off to a local development team, but also to (1) use a combination of deliverables and in‐field accompaniment to train microfinance bank staff in their process; (2) present evidence demonstrating the deep customer understanding that can result from pairing ethnographic research and human‐centered design; and (3) create evidence that the firm's process was both effective and replicable by bank staff.

show abstract

From street to satellite: Mixing methods to understand mobile money users

Abstract: How do users incorporate mobile money into their existing practices and adapt it to their needs

Cited by 9 publications

References 8 publications

Stitching together the heterogeneous party: A complementary social data science experiment

Stitching together the heterogeneous party: A complementary social data science experiment

Quali-quantitative methods beyond networks: Studying information diffusion on Twitter with the Modulation Sequencer

Mattresses and Moneyboxes: Cultural Affordances for Microfinance in Jordan

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About