Maria Cury. "Elevating And Innovating Fieldnotes In Applied Ethnography, Using A Collaborative Online Tool As A Case Study” redassociates.com/all-perspectives/fieldnotes-as-a-social-practice. Accessed 22nd January, 2025.

Completed by Irede Adekunle

Maria strongly advocates for two key ideas:

1. Increasing the use of fieldnotes to bridge the gap between ethnographic teams and stakeholders, emphasizing their value in demonstrating the importance of ethnography.
2. Transforming fieldnotes from a solitary practice into a more collaborative and social practice, using Podio as a case study to illustrate this innovation.

Fieldnotes are foundational tools in ethnographic practice, yet their potential remains underexplored.

Van Maanen: refers to fieldnotes as ‘secret papers of social research’. further emphasizing the existing solitary practice of fieldnotes.

‘ethnography from outside looks to the uninitiated as a semi-respectable form of hanging out’

Jackson: refers to fieldnotes as ‘mystique’.

Clifford, Sanjek, Lederman: describe fieldnotes as anything from notes scribbled during an event, typed transcripts from an interview, or musings in a diary.

Fieldnotes are usually taken during fieldwork (observation of participants in their environment) and are subsequently organized & analysed, leading to ‘thick data’, i.e. analysis that goes beyond pure observation).

Despite their advantages, the discussion around ethnographic fieldnotes has been largely thin, with the closest to exploration being ETHNOKEN which is primarily focused on video footage and transcripts), even among ethnographers.

This gap is what Maria attempts to call out; the benefits of sharing fieldnotes to increase the visibility of the work that goes into turning participant-observation into insight. And how this strengthens;

• The working relationship between researchers, and researchers and stakeholders, and
• The perceived impact and contributions of ethnography amongst other practices, amongst others.

Podio as a Case Study

Using Podio.com as a case study, Maria illustrates how fieldnotes have evolved from solitary ‘behind-the scenes’ practice into a shared collaborative practice. At ReD Associates where Maria works, the platform is used to

• organize and track their projects.
• customize how they manage deadlines and responsibilities,
• share fieldnotes and discuss ideas. This way, researchers within and outside the same field sites could submit, contribute to conversations (through text, images, video files) on activities during fieldwork.

It’s suddenly clear how Podio helps the researchers and project managers to collaborate effectively on team projects;