We've used artifact bundles
-- to collect material related to events where we do participant observation. See, for example, the artifact bundle associated with the Santa Ana City Council Meeting (4-19-2022).
-- to collect material relevant to organizational profiles that we are building for the project. See, for example, the artifact bundle associated with an organizational profile of FERC (US Federal Energy ? Commission).
This draft essay (for an edited vol focused on devices supporting experimental ethnography) says a little more about how we are archiving participant observation of events for our Santa Ana research: "Participation observation of public events: Meetings of the Santa Ana City Council have also been important in environmental governance, especially over the last two years as the city updated its General Plan. Cities in California are required to have General Plans; since 2016, all cities with CAL-EPA designated disadvantaged communities must include plans to address environmental injustice in their General Plan Updates – thus making such updates important venues for environmental advocacy. EcoGovLab researchers( including those who are MPNA community members) attended these and related meetings, collecting documents along the way, writing advocacy letters, and participating in formal public comment periods during recorded City Council meetings, later posted on the City’s website. Here, collaborative hermeneutics first involved the creation of artifact bundles for each meeting – with relevant clips excerpted, notes from lead-up meetings, advocacy documents, and so on. Researchers then annotated these bundles, using an often-used analytic structure titled “Reading an Event.” Some questions in this set are fairly straightforward, some less so: Who hosted the event and what was the stated purpose? What social groups are involved or implicated? What vocabulary was in play and how was it charged? Responses to these questions by different researchers sometimes confirm each other, strengthening a particular interpretation; other responses are markedly different or go in different directions. Sometimes the differences are worthy of argument and need to be worked out; often, the differences add hermeneutic dimensionality.
