Trace Ethnography: Following Coordination through Documentary Practices

Abstract

Like many professional work activities in this age of ubiquitous computing and high-speed internet connections, computer programming and software development are increasingly mediated by systems with 'social media' features like profiles, avatars, 'liking', and commenting capabilities. When working on shared tasks, programmers have effectively leveraged these capabilities to overcome differences in time and location while simultaneously using collaborative web applications, such as version control repositories like SCM or 'git' systems to work together more efficiently. Here we present preliminary findings from a project investigating patterns of collaboration on the social coding platform Github. We've used a research method that combines the use of statistical approaches from social network analysis (SNA) and traditional qualitative case study construction. Our results show that this method is useful in qualitatively explaining the topology of a collaborative network, especially the formation of cliques that have been identified using traditional SNA metrics.

Bot-based collective blocklists in Twitter: the counterpublic moderation of harassment in a networked public space

“…As much of the work of developing blockbots takes place online, much of my analysis involved analyzing and reconstructing the trace data that members of these communities rely on to coordinate their work (Geiger & Ribes, 2011). I did not directly participate in the development of blockbots in Twitter, but I did subscribe to multiple blockbots, regularly observed public community discussions and use cases about open source blockbots for twelve months, and developed several bots for other non-harassment purposes in Twitter.…”

Validity Issues in the Use of Social Network Analysis with Digital Trace Data

“…Clearly it is of great advantage to work directly with participants-through interviews, observation, and direct participation-to build a qualitative understanding of system use and how it fits into the overall interactions of a group. Geiger and Ribes (2011) call the process of taking digital traces and learning their meaning "inversion." The event traces themselves are a particularly valuable point for developing understanding, since "documentary traces are the primary mechanism in which users themselves know their distributed communities and act within them."…”

“…Consider undertaking "trace ethnography" (Geiger & Ribes, 2011).  Demonstrate this familiarity with the system use context in publications, such as through illustrative narratives.…”

Towards Multi‐Dimensional Ethnography

“…These are data produced as datathrough prompts, not organically captured. On the other hand, both ethnomining (Aipperspach et al, 2006) and Geiger and Ribes's (2011) trace ethnography work fit within the latter approach of looking at organic sources of data. Trace ethnography aims to combine the "wealth of data in logs" with other rich data to "reconstruct patterns and practices of users in distributed sociotechnical systems (2011)."…”