Abstract
Over the last three decades, the relationship between ethnography and communication studies has deepened. Yet, the meaning of “media ethnography” remains contested, as communication scholars describe a wide variety of research practices as “ethnographic.” This article overviews the broader literature on ethnography in communication research with a focus on the contributions of media production ethnography. Specifically, the paper examines the value of long-term, in-depth engagement with research subjects. It concentrates on ethnographic methods’ capacity to open a unique and behind-the-scenes view of media production and examines the readable and engaging storytelling style of this type of research. To illustrate the value of media production research, this article draws on contemporary newsroom ethnographies as well as the recently published books of Natalia Roudakova's Losing Pravda, Alexander Fattal's Guerrilla Marketing, and Narges Bajoghli's Iran Reframed. The analysis reveals that despite the challenges, ethnographic research remains invaluable to the study of media.
This article assesses the contribution of media production ethnography to the discipline of communication. I argue that ethnographic methods offer a unique “behind-the-scenes” view of the production of media commodities. In a manner unmatched by other approaches, media ethnography reveals the intricacies, contradictions, and power relationships that shape the media products we consume. Furthermore, robust ethnographies provide not just a glance at processes of media production but offer an in-depth, exhaustive analysis based on long-term and often arduous engagement with research subjects. Undoubtedly, this feature adds a layer of evidence and detail incomparable to other methods. Yet, as I explain below, fieldwork's time-consuming nature and financial cost are also its main enemies in an increasingly more corporate university environment. Another strength of ethnographic research is that it often results in highly readable and engaging articles and books with the potential to reach beyond academia. This unique characteristic, inapplicable to most academic writing, derives from ethnographic research's engagement with living human beings and their fascinating stories.
This paper explores these strengths of ethnographic methods in media research through a survey of the existing scholarly literature on the subject, an exploration of the contemporary wave of newsroom ethnographies, and an analysis of three recently published books that embody the strengths of media production ethnography described above. Natalia Roudakova's (2017) Losing Pravda: Ethics and the Press in Post-Truth Russia, traces the unraveling of journalism in post-socialist Russia and offers a media-centered account of the rise of Vladimir Putin. Narges Bajoghli's (2019) Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic examines the internal divisions among Iranian pro-regime media producers and their quest to reach the younger generations detached from the aging Islamic Revolution. The third book, Guerrilla Marketing: Counterinsurgency and Capitalism in Colombia, by Fattal (2018) explores the convergence of consumer marketing and counterinsurgency in Colombia and the role of branding in war and militarism. While there are subjective reasons behind the choice of these three books, their positive reception, illustrated by numerous book awards, glowing reviews, book talk invitations, and publicity beyond academia, warrant their selection as exemplary ethnographic projects that speak to the strengths of media ethnography. Additionally, I include these titles because they indicate an expansion of media production research beyond the Global North, and more specifically, the U.S., which has historically assumed the primary focus of news media ethnographies. The Western-centric nature of media production ethnography is part of a broader feature of the discipline of communication (Lee, 2015) and journalism (Hanitzsch et al., 2019). However, Roudakova (2017), Fattal (2018), and Bajoghli's (2019) books and several other recent publications (Asik, 2019; Figenschou, 2014; Marinos, 2023; Sorce, 2019; Zhang, 2022) engage with media production research and ethnographic methods outside of the U.S. Furthermore, though Roudakova's book includes newsroom ethnography, Fattal's focus on advertising and PR and Bajoghli's study of film production suggest that media ethnography could be deployed beyond journalism and still yield high stakes, politically significant research. However, a discussion of these recent publications first requires familiarity with the broader history of ethnography and its appropriation in media studies and journalism.
Ethnography and Media Research
Defined as “description based on intimate, long-term reflexive encounters between scholars and the peoples they are studying” (Peterson, 2004, p. 8), ethnography is not a singular approach. It includes several data-collecting strategies, including participant observation, in-depth interviews, informal talks, field notes, and diaries by informants. Referred to as “triangulation,” this methodological variety implies the gathering of data through several approaches that produce heterogeneous material. This does not necessarily translate in “a more ‘true’ or ‘complete’ picture,” but in fact, it is often the discrepancies that are the most significant and revealing outcome of this approach (Drotner, 1994, p. 98). Even though ethnography encompasses a wide array of qualitative methods, the central feature of the classic ethnographic model is participant-observation, “which involves relatively long-term relationships between the ethnographer and his or her host community, in which researchers attempt to situate themselves within quotidian situations and events” (Peterson, 2004, p. 8). Participant observation is so central to ethnography that the “terms are often used interchangeably today” (Cottle, 2007, p. 4). Even though this method is vulnerable to the unpredictability and “contingencies of the field experience” it is not a mere “fishing expedition” and involves planning on several levels including design, securing access, negotiating field relationships, collecting and recording data, analyzing data, and write-up (Cottle, 2007, p. 5). Passive, or pure, participant observation implies non-involvement of the researcher in a social situation, while active participant observation entails taking part in the observed activities. One of the outcomes of participant observation and ethnography more generally is “thick description” (Geertz, 1973) or the careful and detailed depiction of social phenomena, not only based on their outward appearance but also on account of the context they take place. Because of the subjective interpretive input of the researcher, self-reflection is a commonly encountered feature of ethnographic research.
Ethnography is an approach intimately connected to the discipline of anthropology. In fact, ethnography “is so deeply held by anthropologists as a hallmark of their approach that there have been longstanding debates as to how anthropology could or should be seen as anything more than ethnography” (Peritierra, 2018, p. 8). In addition to its wide use by anthropologists, some sociologists also utilize it, as evidenced by approaches such as institutional ethnography (Smith, 2005). Nevertheless, ethnography remains primarily connected to anthropology and its long and at times problematic history. The discipline traces its roots to the late-19th century, though it flourished in the early-20th century. Traditional anthropology's notion that research must take place in remote and potentially dangerous places reflects colonial ideas of exoticism and sensationalism. Indeed, the image of the anthropologist as “a white man in a faraway place, surrounded by exotic Others” still haunts the discipline (Peritierra, 2018, pp. 6–7, 23).
Considering this long history rich in internal debates and critical self-reflections, the encounter between ethnography and media studies commenced relatively late. Scholars note that until the early 1990s, there was still no “robust and sustained” exchange between anthropology and media studies (Bird, 2010, p. 2; Jackson, 2008, p. 666). Though this is correct, it is important to note that the major reason behind this was anthropologists’ reluctance to engage with media scholars whose work they viewed as ethnographically thin (Murphy, 2008, p. 274). Not only was anthropology “slow to come to mass media as a serious object of study” (Murphy, 2011, p. 383), but prominent anthropologists also adopted “a rather polarized view of the boundaries between anthropological work and media and cultural studies,” that ignored the research advances of communication scholars in order to build the case that “anthropology ‘proper’” could only advance media ethnography (Couldry, 2003, p. 46). Nevertheless, since the 1990s, research framed as “media anthropology” or “media ethnography” has grown exponentially. Peterson (2004) points out that in the early 2000s alone, “four book-length efforts to summarize this rising domain of research emerged” (p. 17). More recently, the collaboration between media production scholars supported by the International Association of Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) and the International Communication Association (ICA) resulted in a very useful edited volume on media production research (Paterson et al., 2016). Indeed, IAMCR's Media Production Working Group was founded in 1999 to advocate for such research. Along with ICA's Journalism Studies section, the Cultural Production Working Group of the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA), and the International Conference on Media Industries are venues supportive of media production research. This shows that despite the difficulties, the field of communication still values ethnographic methods in media research.
Scholars note that “finding a clear and consistent definition for ‘ethnography’ in the literature of communication studies is a challenge” (Paterson & Domingo, 2008, p. 4), that is compounded by the sheer range of works that describe themselves as media ethnographies (Murphy, 2008, p. 268). Despite this ambiguity, a separation between ethnographies of production and reception has emerged. Still, even this division is not without its detractors. For instance, Bird (2010) has scrutinized ethnographers’ lack of attention to texts and insists that they study media content as rigorously as discourse scholars do (p. 11). Indeed, Bird's widely cited study of tabloids (1992) is one of the few media ethnographies that encompasses production, texts, and reception. The reality, however, is that most ethnographic media scholarship focuses either on reception or production. Consequently, focusing on different ends of the communication process yields a distinct engagement with ethnographic methods. Yet, both emerged in search of an alternative to established approaches in communication studies.
Audience ethnography developed as a response to the “unsatisfactory” uses and gratifications theory and the linear model of media effects research, rooted in cognitive and social psychology and reliant on surveys, quantitative methods, and experimental research (Murphy, 2008, p. 274). As Jackson (2008) explains, communication scholars realized that they could no longer “crunch seemingly self-evidential numbers” about the aggregate responses of audiences and “unproblematically presuppose idealized interpretations of texts and then retroactively imbue abstracted audience with those readings. They had to go out and determine what people were doing with the texts…” (p. 670). The seminal works of Janice Radway (1984) on the reception of romance novels and Ien Ang's (1985) study of the audiences’ viewership of the television soap opera Dallas, are good examples of this motivation within reception studies. Since then, ethnographic research of reception has grown, especially in the area of popular and entertainment media.
Production ethnographies also share audience studies’ motivation to challenge established modes of research, as they strive to show that “the seemingly monolithic and straightforward production of media was also far more contested and complex than earlier models had allowed” (Jackson, 2008, p. 670). However, unlike audience ethnographies’ focus on popular and entertainment genres, production scholars turned their attention to the manufacturing of political news and journalism. In addition, it was mainly sociologists who led this first wave of news ethnography research (Altheide, 1976; Gans, 1979; Schlesinger, 1978; Tuchman, 1978). These scholars showed “how the in-depth study of news producers, their cultural milieu and professional domains could help to explain the dynamics and determinants of news output and, as such, they served to qualify the generalizing and largely speculative theories of that time” (Cottle, 2000, p. 19). Indeed, news production ethnographies are “the most developed field” in media production studies and “have generated some of the most penetrating insights into the complexities and levels of analysis required in the empirical exploration of media production” (Cottle, 2007, pp. 12–13). Although very few newsroom ethnographies emerged in the 1980s and 1990s, this type of research experienced a renaissance in the new millennium as scholars turned their attention to the effects of new media technologies on media industries.
Contemporary Newsroom Ethnography
Much of media production research has centered on journalism in the Global North. Thus, the division between a “first” and “second wave” of news production ethnographies (Cottle, 2007) could be misleading because there are continuities between them when it comes to thematic and geographic focus. However, the division between a “first” and “second” wave of newsroom ethnography might be warranted purely due to the time gap between the two. Between 1980 until the mid-2000s, this type of scholarship “remained mostly dormant.” (Usher, 2014, p. 21).
A more important justification for this division is the deep transformation of the media landscape since the 1970s “golden age” of newsroom ethnography. Thus, the newer wave of ethnographic studies of news production conducted primarily by scholars cognizant of digitalization and the spatial reconfiguration of newsrooms qualifies the groundbreaking work from the 1970s (Anderson, 2013; Boczkowski, 2004; Bunce, 2019; Bunce et al., 2018; Domingo & Paterson, 2011; Paterson & Domingo, 2008; Ryfe, 2012; Usher, 2014; Wall, 2015). Another feature that distinguishes the two periods of media production research is that in the 1970s, most researchers who engaged in this type of work were sociologists, while the more recent studies were conducted primarily by communication scholars. This is another sign of the growing embeddedness of media production ethnography in the communication discipline.
A survey of the second wave of media production ethnographies reflects the contributions of this type of research to the study of media industries. Below, I focus on its long-term, in-depth engagement with research subjects, its capacity to open a unique, behind-the-scenes view of media production, and its readable and engaging output. At the same time, I also discuss the growing challenges faced by newsroom ethnographers.
Long-Term Immersion
One of the unique features of ethnographic research is its lengthy duration because fieldwork “involves relatively long-term relationships between the ethnographer and his or her host community in which researchers attempt to situate themselves within quotidian situations and events” (Peterson, 2004, p. 8). Ryfe (2016) explains that in ethnographic research, “explanation develops iteratively, over time…” and notes that “time allows a researcher to make mistakes” and learn from them (pp. 46–47). Indeed, Ryfe's (2012) book on U.S. journalism is the most extensive study of U.S. newsrooms. He spent two-and-a-half years over five years in three newspapers (Ryfe, 2016, p. 38). Though his time investment remains unmatched, most of the more recent media ethnographies also feature substantial immersion. Pedelty's (1995) study of the foreign correspondents who covered the Salvadoran civil war included a full year of ethnography (p. 4). Usher's (2014) book on the New York Times was based on 5 months of ethnography and over 700 hours spent in its newsroom (p. 5). In his study of the Philadelphia media ecosystem, Anderson (2013) spent 6 months of ethnographic immersion, completed more than 300 hours of participant observation, and conducted more than 60 interviews (p. 171). In one of the earliest analyses of the digitalization of U.S. journalism, Boczkowski (2004), spent more than a year observing three media outlets where he conducted 142 interviews (p. 190).
Undoubtedly, the long-term immersion that underpins these studies heightened their explanatory value. Yet, this asset of media production research also turns into its enemy in the changing political economy of academia. Even though Ryfe suggests that a long duration of ethnographic research stretching over several years is necessary for such an approach, he also acknowledges that “few researchers will have time [his emphasis] to spend years in the field…” (Ryfe, 2016, p. 38). Indeed, “the pressure on scholars to produce more with less” encourages “faster and easier modes of research,” (Paterson et al., 2016, p. 5) that can satisfy the growing publication requirements for the increasingly more elusive tenure-track jobs (Ryfe, 2016, p. 42).
Behind-the-Scenes Perspective on Media Production
According to (Cottle, 2007), a major reason behind the explanatory power of ethnography is that it is “the only method by which the normally invisible realm of media production can be recorded and made available for wider consumption” (p. 5). Similarly, Paterson and Domingo (2008) note that it is the only approach that provides “an adequate description of the culture and practice of media production, and the mindset of media producers” and add that without the first wave of news ethnographies, we would know very little about journalism (p. 2). The embodied, immersive experience in media production ethnography opens the rare possibility to examine the “engine room” of media industries. According to Ryfe (2016), interviews, focus groups, and textual analysis cannot substitute the first-hand observation of interactions in real time, because people “mobilize culture to justify what they do to others” in interactions (p. 45).
The second wave of newsroom ethnographies has provided us with an invaluable picture of the effects of digital technologies and the internet on journalism. For instance, Paterson's (2011) study of international television news agencies provides a rare insight into the inner workings of a very secretive and monopolistic aspect of the international media system. Another example of a rare inside perspective on media industries is Ryfe's (2012) masterful description of how journalistic habits, investments, and constitutive rules inhibit U.S. reporters’ adaptation to the transition from print to digital journalism. Of similar value is Usher's (2014) unique study of the New York Times and its adjustment to the online media ecology. Overall, the collective contribution of contemporary media production ethnographies to our understanding of the massive technological and socio-economic transformations of the media landscape and their effects on journalism cannot be underestimated.
Despite its insightfulness, not unlike the long-term immersion feature of media ethnography, the behind-the-scenes approach also creates obstacles to this type of research. First, in the contemporary climate of instability and crisis, few commercial media companies are willing to expose themselves to a critical investigation of their inner workings. Thus, as Ryfe (2016) explains “It was one thing for producers at CBS News to grant Gans [1979] access when the organization was at its height of prestige and power. It is quite another to grant permission when the organization faces a crisis” (p. 41). Other media production scholars concur that the “increasingly secretive corporate cultures which see little value in inviting observation of their work” are a major obstacle to newsroom ethnography (Paterson et al., 2016, p. 5). Second, the fact that the profile of researchers is far more visible today than it was during the “golden age” of media ethnography does not help the already arduous process of building rapport and trustworthiness with media institutions (Paterson et al., 2016, p. 5; Schlesinger, 2016, p. 33). Finally, universities also place obstacles to such research, including waiting for months for approval from an Institutional Review Board (IRB) (Ryfe, 2016, p. 41).
These challenges are evident in the newsroom ethnographies discussed in this section. For example, Usher's unprecedented access to the New York Times was the result of “a confluence of lucky events” including a strong personal and professional connection to a senior figure in the newspaper. Nevertheless, she still had to “hammer out an agreement” with the New York Times’ lawyers on the parameters of her study that precluded her from a discussion of their sourcing and business strategies (Usher, 2014, p. 242). Even then, she was still “almost kicked out of The Times” in 2009 when the paper laid off 100 employees and editors feared it was too sensitive a time for her to be there (Usher, 2014, p. 38). It is unlikely that this kind of challenging research experience will become less common in the foreseeable future.
The Values of Storytelling and an Engaging Writing Style
The third unique strength of ethnographic research lies in its storytelling component or as Pedelty (1995) put it “it is the story—a sense of narrative place and time—that separates ethnography from other forms of sociological exposition” (p. 21). There are two major benefits to including stories in academic literature. First, they make it more readable and accessible to audiences beyond academia. Additionally, they strengthen the interpretative dimension and theoretical rigor of academic scholarship. Murphy (2011) notes that the experiences in the field are not a “simple matter of sharing a good story (though they should be that),” but they help the reader understand decisions made in the field and articulate Geertz's notion of drawing “large conclusions from small, but densely textured facts.” (Geertz, 1973, p. 28; quoted in Murphy, 2011, p. 391). Consider, for instance, the value of one of the many tragicomical stories told by Pedelty (1995) in his book on the largely problematic U.S. foreign correspondents’ coverage of the Salvadoran civil war. To illustrate the susceptibility to superficial stories and propaganda of “parachute journalism,” where U.S. journalists are “parachuted” in an unfamiliar context to cover a story, Pedelty shares the account of a U.S. individual who claimed to run an aid project in war-torn El Salvador. A major U.S. newspaper parachuted a journalist who wrote a flattering story of this person, describing him as an “idealist.” But because much of Pedelty's fieldwork took place in a location frequented by Westerners, including the said “idealist,” he was able to provide a very different account of what appears to be a deeply disturbed character who openly displayed his support for the Salvadoran military. According to Pedelty (1995), the “idealist's” “favorite hobby was describing sexual adventures with young prostitutes at great length” while his “second favorite pastime was making racist jokes about Arabs during the Persian Gulf War” (p. 112). Most people familiar with this individual were troubled by his persona, but this important detail remained inaccessible to the “parachuted” journalist who constructed a hagiographic image of this rather repulsive figure.
Stories can also put a human face to facts that are familiar. For example, there are plenty of important yet dry statistics that reveal the shrinking of U.S. newsrooms. But isn’t it better to also illustrate this decline with a story that exposes the human toll of this phenomenon? For example, in his book, Ryfe (2012) includes documentary evidence of this problem, illustrating it with fascinating stories, including a recollection of when he witnessed a newspaper editor read the names of 27 staffers to be laid off due to budget cuts. At the end of this painful exercise, the editor read his own name as he resigned, ashamed of his failure to avoid this situation (Ryfe, 2012, p. 112; Ryfe, 2016, p. 46).
Newsroom ethnography deserves a more thorough appreciation than the succinct description I offered above. However, in the final section of this article, I continue the discussion of the three strengths of media production ethnography in relation to works that do not fit the newsroom ethnography category. For example, Roudakova (2017), Fattal (2018), and Bajoghli's (2019) focus on non-Western societies. A recent conference at the University of Leeds, entitled “Researching Media Production in the Global South” (May 30, 2024), addressed precisely the need to “de-Westernize” media production research. The books below demonstrate that such an approach could be highly informative beyond the Global North. It is also important to note that these publications appeared after the “second wave” of newsroom ethnographies and might be part of a new trend of media ethnographies focused on societies beyond North America and not restricted to journalism and news media.
Media Production Research's Contributions Beyond the Global North
Even though Roudakova, Fattal, and Bajoghli do not describe their work as “media ethnography,” they are expert anthropologists and media production is at the center of their work. Additionally, two of them (Fattal and Roudakova 1 ) are/were faculty members in the communication department at the University of California San Diego. This is another illustration of their connection to media studies. Even though Bajoghli works as a professor of Middle East Studies, she describes herself as a “media anthropologist” and she is also a filmmaker. The authors’ training in ethnography, their media focus, and connections to the discipline of communication promise an informative engagement with their works as examples of media production research.
I also selected these three books because of their overwhelmingly positive reception. They are excellent ethnographic studies and thought-provoking, illuminating, and engaging academic scholarship more generally. While this is a subjective assessment, numerous factors illustrate that I am not alone in my appraisal. While these books are the authors’ first manuscript publications, prestigious university presses accepted them (Cambridge, Stanford, and Chicago). Each book received a dozen or more very positive reviews in top journals in media, communication, anthropology, and other disciplines. Reviewers described Losing Pravda as “groundbreaking” (Han, 2018, p. 175), “tour de force” (Repnikova, 2018, p. 837), and an “invaluable guide” (Malykhina, 2020, p. 218); Guerrilla Marketing as a “must-read” (Field, 2020, p. 135) and “path-breaking” (Ballve, 2020, p. 233); and Iran Reframed as “groundbreaking” (Siamdout, 2020, p. 569) and an “extraordinary feat” (Fattal, 2020, p. 976). Additionally, the three books received a combined total of eleven prestigious awards including the Outstanding Book Award of the International Communication Association (ICA) (Losing Pravda), Harvard University's Davis Center Book Prize in Political and Social Studies (Losing Pravda), the ICA's Global Communication and Social Change Division Book Award (Guerrilla Marketing), the Sharon Stephens Biennial Book Prize of the American Ethnological Society (Guerrilla Marketing), the Margaret Mead Award from the American Anthropological Association (Iran Reframed), and the Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Title from American Library Association (Iran Reframed). 2
These books make the perfect case studies for an exploration of why ethnography is an invaluable approach to the study of media production. In addition, the fact that all these books study phenomena in the Global South and the former Second World adds a valuable perspective since “the majority of locations for ethnography have been large cities in the Western world, especially in the United States and the UK” (Wahl-Jorgensen, 2010, p. 31). Not only do they contribute to the much-needed effort to de-Westernize communication research, but these books also show that, besides news production and journalism media production scholarship can also shed light on public relations, advertising, filmmaking, and propaganda. Below, I describe how these books embody the strengths of media production ethnography.
Long-Term Immersion
Long-term engagement builds a strong layer of evidence and opens an in-depth perspective that captures details inaccessible through other research methods. The three books examined in this paper illustrate this, but they also show that ethnographic research requires significant time, effort, and personal sacrifice. Roudakova's book began as a dissertation, successfully defended in 2007, and Losing Pravda appeared in 2017. In 2001–2002, the author conducted 11 months of ethnographic fieldwork in newsrooms in Russia's industrial city of Nizhny Novgorod. During her research, two powerful groups and their media consortiums competed intensely for the gubernatorial and mayoral seats. Though it took her several months to build trust, eventually, she gained access to media outlets belonging to one of the dominant groups. However, as a result, the other group immediately regarded Roudakova as a “sympathizer” of their rivals and declined her request to meet (Roudakova, 2017, pp. 128–129).
Fattal's research for Guerrilla Marketing took place “intermittently” from 2007 to 2016 and the book appeared in 2018. However, he points out that most of his fieldwork took place in a 22-month period between 2011 and 2013. The amount of data Fattal collected is impressive. It includes 200 interviews with former combatants, military officers, and marketing agents. He conducted two dozen life history interviews and a half-dozen focus groups and engaged in participant observation in demobilized communities and government institutions. Similarly to Roudakova's experience, building rapport with some of his interlocutors was very difficult, as some of them saw little return from their interaction with Fattal. Specifically, government officials and PR agents sought feedback from him because of his Duke and Harvard University background. Due to the controversial involvement of the U.S. in Colombia's conflict, which included the recruitment of social scientists as counterinsurgency specialists, he (and other members of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists) refused to provide assistance to his subjects besides “buying an odd meal” (Fattal, 2018, p. 26). His refusal led to diminished access and challenged the completion of his research.
Of the three books examined here, Bajoghli's Iran Reframed undertook the most difficult fieldwork experience. The author explains that it took her 4 years (2005–2009) just to secure the introductions to engage in research and another 5 years (2009–2014) of regular visits to conduct long-term ethnographic fieldwork, and her book appeared in 2019. Bajoghli completed participant observation in Iranian production studios, film and theater sets, and classrooms. She attended production meetings, promotional trips, film festivals, and other venues. Bajoghli supplemented this research with formal and informal interviews with 200 individuals, all of them members of the Revolutionary Guard and the Basij paramilitary.
She faced numerous challenges throughout her research because she conducted most of her investigation during the highly conservative atmosphere of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's second term. As an Iranian American, whose family members were leftists who barely escaped Iran, building trust was not easy. Additionally, another set of difficulties emerged out of Iran's conservative restrictions on women. In many of the meetings she attended, Bajoghli was the only female and was often approached with suspicion. As if the challenges in Iran were not enough, she also faced the constant threat of indefinite termination of her research due to the U.S. government's sanctions on Iran and the designation of her research subjects as “specially designated nationals,” a code word for “terrorists.” It took Bajoghli one year and “tens of thousands of dollars” in legal fees paid by her university to embark on her research (Bajoghli, 2019, pp. 19–20).
The tests faced by Roudakova, Fattal, and Bajoghli in their long-term immersive research illustrate ethnography's challenging nature. To use a metaphor, ethnographic research is akin to a slow-cooked meal that requires marination, seasoning, and other time-consuming and labor-intensive preparations that are worth the effort and patience. However, the increasingly neoliberal academic environment focused on high research output that is produced in shorter periods at a lower cost, prioritizes cheap, frozen, microwave meals. Media ethnographers are aware of this situation: Long-term ethnographic research takes time, and, more crucially, money. Media ethnographers need to be able to make repeated visits to their research site, house and feed themselves there for the long term (or pay others to be there), and often pay for the transcription of hours of interviews—all prior to the actual analysis of data. Few academics receive the funding or time from their institutions for such work, few funding agencies show enthusiasm for it, and few postgraduate degrees provide support for students to undertake such projects. While few in the academy will dispute the value of such research, institutional efforts to facilitate it are rare. (Paterson & Domingo, 2008, p. 8)
Behind-the-Scenes Perspective on Media Production
Ethnographers of media production point out that analyses of media content provide only a partial explanation of what takes place in media institutions. Cottle (2007) notes that critics of media often make an “illicit leap from a critical reading of media content to inferences about the motivations or explanations accounting for this output” that is frequently wrong precisely because they lack access to the “the complex of forces, constraints, and conventions that shape the selections and silences of media output” (p. 5). The three ethnographic projects examined here demonstrate that access to the inside workings of media offers an invaluable critical perspective of their output.
As a scholar of Eastern Europe, I deem Losing Pravda as a heresy to the vast majority of post-1989 scholarship on the former socialist world. Roudakova's argument is that, contrary to common belief, Soviet media built a relationship of trust with their audiences. She posits that the 1990s privatization and commercialization of media destroyed this relationship and set the stage for Putin's cynical, post-truth regime.
One line of Roudakova's argument challenges the view of Soviet media as mere tools of propaganda and control. According to her, journalists maintained two sets of relationships, one with the Communist Party and another one with their audience. She claims that journalists “spoke on behalf of readers unjustly wronged by Soviet bureaucracies” and if there was a conflict between citizens and bureaucracies, they came on the side of their audience (Roudakova, 2017, p. 23). While in post-Stalinist Russia, there were still limits to criticism, audiences complained about a wide variety of issues, including malfunctioning infrastructure, bureaucratic malfeasance, shortages, and workplace corruption (Roudakova, 2017, p. 72). Media professionals took this responsibility seriously and audiences knew that they could depend on the media to investigate their complaints. As a result, a level of trust in journalists developed, and the profession came to be seen as “the most humane department of Soviet power” (Roudakova, 2017, p. 36).
The situation changed dramatically after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Through participant observations in Russian newsrooms, Roudakova reveals the “deprofessionalization of journalism” and journalists’ attempts to “monetize their truth-seeking skills” by turning into the faces of Russian oligarchs’ information wars. This unraveling of the profession wiped out the trust in journalism. It culminated in the widespread perception of journalists as “political prostitutes” and of journalism as “the second oldest profession” (Roudakova, 2017, p. i). The broader outcome of this situation was the erosion of truth-seeking as a moral obligation that paved the way for the cynicism and post-truth politics of Putin's authoritarianism.
The uncomfortable yet inescapable resonances of Roudakova's narrative to contemporary political and media developments in the U.S. and Western Europe contribute to the broad appreciation of her book. However, the main value of her ethnographic project is its challenge to the post-1989 linear portrayal of media development in the region as a transition from state-owned censored press to free market democratic media. It was only through robust ethnographic research and long fieldwork in Russia that Roudakova challenged this narrative and redirected attention to Russian journalism's detrimental collision with capitalism—a conclusion rarely encountered in the massive literature on East European media and democratization.
Similar to Roudakova's Losing Pravda, Fattal's Guerrilla Marketing offers a unique behind-the-scenes perspective on media production. His book focuses on the convergence between militarism and consumer marketing in Colombia. Fattal shows how branding recasts a brutal military state policy into a humanitarian strategy. In fact, Fattal's rich ethnographic research shows that the main goals of Colombia's government's glitzy campaigns are to sow doubts among the FARC 3 guerrillas, weaken their allegiance to the organization, and gather intelligence from them once they have demobilized. Through participant observations in communities with demobilized FARC fighters Guerrilla Marketing also traces what happens to them once they return to civilian life and reveals the gap between the stated goals of the Colombian government and their actual outcomes.
Fattal's approach exposes PR and advertising's problematic relationship with a repressive state. Even though Colombia has one of the worst human rights records, PR companies helped the government advance an image of a “postconflict” nation open for tourism and foreign investment while papering over the cracks of the deep class divisions and widespread violence that remain rampant there. Undoubtedly, only ethnographic research that included observations in marketing offices, military institutions, bases, and battlefront areas, concerts and campaign events, as well as interviews with former rebels, military officers, and marketers, could bring to the fore a very different image than the one advanced by the government and the PR firms it hires. Thus, Guerrilla Marketing shows that media production ethnography could offer a unique critical perspective, largely absent in PR and marketing scholarship.
Of the three books discussed in this paper, Bajoghli's Iran Reframed is the best example of how ethnographic lenses reach spaces inaccessible by other approaches. Her book offers a rare inside look at Iranian pro-regime media producers. She observes and interviews members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard and Basiji paramilitary responsible for the state's media industry. She paints a much more nuanced picture of them than their familiar media representations in the West as bearded men fanatically devout to Iran's Supreme Leader. Her ethnographic research shows pro-government media producers with substantial qualms with the Iranian state. For instance, one of her main interlocutors is a high-ranking official in Iran's state-owned film-producing company, who is very critical of the regime, even though he is a veteran of the 1980s Iran-Iraq War, where he lost both of his legs. Nevertheless, he is no closeted dissident and continues to work for the ideals of the Islamic Revolution. The author's rich ethnographic research shows that he is not a singular case. Many of his colleagues exhibit a similarly complex and at times, contradictory worldview.
There are reasons behind the multilayered political perspective of these state actors. But where Bajoghli's ethnographic intervention contributes the most is in identifying the role of generational differences within pro-regime media producers as well as within their own families. She shows that the older generations of Basiji view younger members of the paramilitary organization as opportunists who do not understand the sacrifices made in the 1980s. At the same time, younger Basiji view the older generation as increasingly more corrupt and secular. Thus, Bajoghli's ethnography yields a counterintuitive conclusion, whereas the younger generations of pro-regime media producers appear more conservative than their elders, who participated in the 1979 Islamic revolution and fought the brutal war with Iraq.
Besides the intergenerational fissures within the Iranian pro-regime actors, Bajoghli also exposes the generational differences within their families. For instance, she quotes a member of the Revolutionary Guard who laments that his daughter, a graduate at the top of her class in law school, is not allowed to become a judge because of Iran's restrictions on women and admits that she has helped him reevaluate these restrictions (Bajoghli, 2019, p. 48).
Ultimately, the author paints the picture of a divided group of pro-regime media producers who have “fierce debates” with one another on how to reinvigorate the aging revolution's appeal to Iran's youth. Through her ethnographic research, she points to three strategies adopted by media producers to keep the system alive. One approach is to hide the origins of government-produced films and present them as originating outside of the state. Second, government media producers strategically expand their presence beyond television to social media and increase the production of music videos and other products previously despised as non-pious and Western. Finally, and perhaps the least surprisingly, given the state of contemporary global politics, pro-regime media producers turn to populist nationalism as a motivating force.
Similar to Guerrilla Marketing and Losing Pravda, Iran Reframed demonstrates ethnography's capacity to expose crucial behind-the-scenes dynamics of media production. It is hard to imagine that another research approach could offer a more penetrating look into a closed social formation, such as Iran's pro-government media producers.
The Values of Storytelling and an Engaging Writing Style
The third strength of ethnographic research lies in its storytelling component. This, however, is not a widely shared position because the incorporation of stories and a dynamic writing style elicit “uncomfortable parallels” with journalism. In this line of criticism, the description of ethnographic research as too “journalistic” implies superficiality or glibness (Bird, 2010, p. 4).
There is certainly a danger of exclusive reliance on description at the expense of theoretical rigor or documentary evidence. It is also important to be cautious of arguments that appeal to more “simple language” and less “academic jargon.” Yet the portrayal of ethnography as too “journalistic” or too “descriptive” is more of a caricature than a valid criticism. In actuality, there are hardly any ethnographic studies solely based on storytelling or description of field experiences and observations. Most ethnographic research, including the books discussed in this paper, incorporate other forms of research as well.
Besides participant observation in newsrooms, Roudakova also engaged in substantial archival research (Roudakova, 2017, p. 53). She engaged in textual analysis of newspapers, journalism textbooks, and over three dozen memoirs of journalists and editors as well. Besides the diverse sources and methods, Losing Pravda features a solid theoretical underpinning through an engagement with moral and political philosophy. Although Fattal's book is more faithful to the ethnographic tradition than Roudakova's Losing Pravda, he also includes a historical chapter on Colombia's armed struggle, consults archival and documentary evidence, and his book is rich in theoretical references and criticism of neoliberal capitalism. Additionally, as a photographer and a filmmaker, the author is attentive to images and includes analyses of audiovisual media. Of the three books, Bajoghli's is the most ethnographic one, and her approach could have benefited from a more rigorous theoretical engagement, especially with media scholarship. Yet, her book also engages in non-ethnographic methods, such as textual analysis of books by cultural producers, pamphlets, state press coverage of films and events, and non-regime media coverage of pro-regime media (Bajoghli, 2019, p. 21).
In short, most media ethnographies are practiced in conjunction with other methods. It is also a misnomer that it is an approach juxtaposed to theory. In fact, there are some examples, such as Dominic Boyer's Spirit and System: Media, Intellectuals, and the Dialectic in Modern German Culture (2005), where ethnography underpins a philosophical argument. Boyer engages in ethnographic research with journalists in post-1989 East Germany to unpack the dialectic between creative subjectivity or internal potentiality (the Spirit) and external actuality or restrictive exteriority (the System). Thus, his book opens with a lengthy and dense quote from Hegel's The Philosophy of History, followed by Boyer's contemplation of his conversations with former East German journalists after a night of drinking. This rather unusual combination of philosophical thought and storytelling is evident throughout Spirit and System.
Besides the relationship among ethnography, narrative description, and theory, it is also important to emphasize the effects of storytelling on the writing style. Ethnography implies contact with living human beings and their fascinating stories. For example, Roudakova tells the story of her observation of a media outlet owned by one of Russia's oligarchs. She notices a “blacklist” on the newsroom board with the names of people journalists should smear. When she asks why the name of a prominent personality is on that list, one journalist replies that no one knows why, but they all know that they should hate her (Roudakova, 2017, p. 133). The story is interesting, but it is also informative of the moral collapse of Russian journalism and its capture by oligarchs. Bajoghli's book is also rich in engaging stories. For example, she details the fascinating case of her attendance of an anti-regime film screening followed by a discussion organized by a prominent Iranian media producer with reformist leanings. Prior to the occasion, he informed Bajoghli that he had invited to the screening the most hardline Iranian media critics, who he humorously describes as the “Islamic Ku Klux Klan” due to their extremism. Present at the meeting is also the anti-regime filmmaker whose film Bajoghli describes as “the most blatantly political film against the Islamic Republic” she had ever seen produced in Iran (Bajoghli, 2019, p. 70). The acrimonious reactions and absorbing debate following the film's screening are not only a fascinating read, but they also illustrate the dilemmas of media producers who do not advocate regime change, but at the same time, believe that critical voices should be engaged and not only repressed.
The best example of incorporating stories from the books discussed in this article is Fattal's Guerrilla Marketing. In fact, each of his six chapters is followed by a deeply moving life story of a guerrilla fighter. They include stories of teenagers who joined the FARC because of poverty, violence, or simply because they followed a lover or a relative. These are stories of love, suffering, disappointment, hope, rape, and torture, and they add a human angle to former guerrillas perceived largely as terrorists in mainstream media discourse.
Stories add an interpretive layer to research and reinforce theoretical arguments. There are different understandings of what theory is. However, it is important to remember that the ancient Greek word theoria, from which the word theory derives, means “to see” or “to look.” Theories help us see things better, and so do stories.
Finally, ethnographic stories improve academic writing. Indeed, much of the success of the books analyzed in this paper derives from their writing style. Reviewers describe Roudakova's work as an “outstanding read” (Repnikova, 2018, p. 839) and as “highly readable” (Malykhina, 2020, p. 216; Pace, 2019, p. 370). Fattal's book is described as “engaging” (Mendoza, 2020, p. 91) “fascinating” (Ballve, 2020, p. 234; Gill, 2019, p. 4), “momentous” (Jaramillo, 2020, p. 401) and a “must read for scholars and nonscholars alike” (Field, 2020, p. 135). Reviewers found Bajoghli's book “palatable to a general readership” (Siamdout, 2020, p. 570), and one scholar portrayed it as “the perfect balance between scholarly authority and accessible expression, the words flowing off the page elegantly, making it simply a pleasure to read” (Langford, 2021, p. 911). Indeed, Bajoghli has been very successful in relating her work to non-academic audiences and has written pieces for the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Foreign Affairs, the The Guardian and countless other media outlets outside of the academic sphere. Thus, ethnography reminds us that storytelling matters not only for academic scholarship but also for our relationship to people beyond academia.
Conclusion
Ethnography has different meanings for communication scholars who describe a wide variety of research methods as “ethnographic.” At the same time, most researchers focus either on ethnographies of media production or reception. This paper focused on media production ethnography and three of its contributions to the understanding of media phenomena, including its unique “behind-the-scenes” view of the production of media commodities, its in-depth, exhaustive analysis based on long-term engagement with research subjects, and its readable and engaging output. The arduous, time-consuming, and costly nature of ethnographic research turns it into an endangered species in the contemporary corporate university. Yet, the appeal of ethnography should persist in the future despite the obstacles, not only because of its contributions but also because of the scholars it attracts. Although it is not mandatory, engagement with ethnography often implies a personal and/or political commitment. For Bajoghli, the connection is Iran and its revolutionary political history that pushed her leftist parents to immigrate across the globe. For Roudakova, it is her native Russia where she studied journalism and where the legacy of state socialism, a project her father believed in, still awaits a more nuanced analysis. For Fattal, the attractions are political, and he admits that his own “affinity is with Colombia's democratic left” (Fattal, 2018, p. 30).
News media ethnographies are also stimulated by personal and political commitments. For instance, Pedelty (1995) admits that his meeting with Salvadoran Marxist guerrilla who reminded him of the cattlemen and workers he knew when he was growing up in Iowa, had “profound impact” on him (p. 150). In the conclusion of his book, he laments that “the extreme social injustice and fear that defines Salvadoran culture,” is missing from the U.S. news (p. 232). Though appreciative of the international television news agencies and the people who work for them, Paterson is clearly critical of the concentrated structure of this industry and the one-sided, Western-centric perspective it offers. Thus, he concludes his book with a call for the creation of a “non-commercial option” of television news agencies focused on humanity and not solely profits (Paterson, 2011, p. 155).
While I cannot pretend to know all the motivations behind the research discussed in this article, it seems clear that there are political and personal elements that stimulated the work and perseverance of many media production ethnographers. Indeed, ethnography is political and personal, and as long as there are scholars who relate to their intellectual pursuits passionately through the political and the personal rather than through antiquated notions of detachment, ethnographic research will continue to attract academics despite the challenges.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
