Anthro x Journo: Sister disciplines offer solutions

Ethnography and journalism are close kin. Some call journalism “fast anthropology” and ethnography “slow journalism.” And each can benefit by incorporating methods from the other’s profession.

words by Emily Kennedy

For anthropology it’s about jumping into the public discourse.

Over the last few decades, anthropologists focused their efforts on realizing academic pursuits and ethnography became out-of-sight, out-of-mind for the general public. But that’s changing: applied ethnography helps big tech gain competitive advantages; new graduates are self publishing their work via blogs, podcasts, and social media; and researchers are increasingly looking to bring their expertise outside the ivory towers and into the mainstream. 

Since the work of journalists and anthropologists is so similar in many respects (fieldwork, participant observation, interviewing, reducing bias, writing…) applying journalistic methods will feel familiar for many ethnographers. Here are a few journalistic tools to help the anthropologist get their research into the public discourse:

1. Predicting what will make the news is generally a prescient skill learned on the job; but, there are some themes to what makes a story newsworthy. Knowing these goes a long way to helping the social scientist recognize when their research can jump into the news cycle (aka when to approach news outlets), and when their own self-publishing (blogs, podcasts, Twitter threads, etc…) will make the biggest splash. So what makes a story newsworthy? 

   1. Recency (related to something that just occurred, this is what we usually think of when we think of “news”); 

   2. Timeliness (has this topic been in the public discourse a lot lately? News will often jump on a topic or theme for a week or more); 

   3. Proximity (think geography: pitch your story to your hometown media outlets, e.x., publications in the city where your research took place; your institution’s city, etc…); 

   4. Celebrity/rarity (if it’s unique or rare–celebs are rare–then it’s of interest to the media); and 

   5. Conflict or controversy (the majority of news has an element of friction: see more on Victor Turner’s social drama below). 

2. Writing quickly. Journalists are quick at churning out written work because they are well-practiced writers, yes, and because they generally write to a formula. In daily news, few journalists stray from it: the five Ws in an inverted pyramid. Researchers looking to write for news or for blogs can borrow this format: Answer these five questions at the top of the article: Who? What? Where? When? Why? (For an excellent example of this, see this article that even involves an archaeologist!). This is called the “inverted pyramid” structure because it places the most fundamental information (the “base” of the pyramid) at the top of the story, followed by the remaining details. There are critics of this structure, however, including media anthropologist Susan Allen who suggests adding a W for “whole.” An ethnographer is well-placed to add some concise context to the story, righting the inverted pyramid so details can place facts in a cultural lens and deliver the “whole” story..

3. Editing (i.e.: knowing what to cut or keep). From journalism, “murder your darlings”; and “keep only the pearls,” are two common sayings. Over time, you learn what is a pearl and can more quickly omit the rest.

For journalism it’s about solving industry challenges. 

You don’t need to be a working journalist or J-school student to know the media industry is in crisis. Legacy media business models continue to feel the blast of technological disruption; trust in news is circling the drain; and newsrooms are experiencing their own bias reckoning. To tackle these challenges, the profession is doing the right thing: looking to the outside. They’re pulling from a variety of other disciplines (business, design theory, systems thinking and more) to find solutions and adapt. Pulling from outside the discipline is nothing new. Journalism programs have long peppered their core curricula with other social sciences ( e.x., history, psychology, sociology, and political science). Yet the social science with the most to offer is noticeably absent: Anthropology. 

Photo by Kate Bezzubets on Unsplash

Here are a few ethnographic notions, that when applied to journalism, could help:

• Challenging this idea in journalism that objectivity at all costs is ideal. Instead, journalism is experiencing a reckoning around representation. The idea that understanding a community in an intimate way is a form of bias is incorrect. Understanding a community on its own terms is what ethnography does well. This work is subjective, yes; but, to know communities through their own lens is to accurately represent communities. 

• Related to the above, challenging the idea of “objectivity” could even help with online harassment faced by journalists. Jacob L. Nelson, author of a recent study on journalists' reaction to newsrooms' social media policies writes "[J]ournalists feel newsroom social media policies tend to make matters worse, by offering difficult to follow guidelines focused primarily on maintaining an ‘objective’ perception of the organization among the public rather than on protecting journalists from the harassment that many will inevitably receive.” Some of the study’s interviewees questioned whether audiences were firmly committed to old-school ideas about total objectivity and neutrality, “which many journalists see not only as impossible aspirations on their own, but also as wholly inconsistent with the performed authenticity privileged by social media.”

• The rise of community listening sessions hosted by publishers mirrors ethnography’s participant workshops. Journalists could go even deeper down this line of research and use ethnographic methods from participant workshops to help gain trust and better understand the insider’s perspective.

• As we saw above, anthropologists could consider the five W’s journalists are traditionally looking for when pitching a story. But journalists should be adding a “W” for the “whole”--a notion coined by media anthropologist Susan L. Allen. Allen explains that facts exist within the context of a culture, and so they should be presented to the public in this holistic context. 

Journalists can learn from anthropologists in predicting newsworthiness: theory like Viktor Turner’s Social Drama. In fact, the social drama is actually affected by news reporting. The cycle of “social drama” news is so predictable, that journalists who understand the nuance of its anthropological roots could go somewhere new with it: to the liminal spaces (which often include minority voices). For more on this see anthrojourno.org page on understanding liminal spaces as overlooked reporting opportunities.

Tune into This Anthro Life where Emily and Adam deep dive the Anthropology - Journalism connection: Anthropology Meets Journalism: How Two Fields Can Save Each Other