TY - JOUR T1 - Ethnographic Approaches to Digital Media JF - Annual Review of Anthropology Y1 - 2010 A1 - Coleman, E. G. KW - cell phone KW - Communication KW - computers KW - Ethnography AB - his review surveys and divides the ethnographic corpus on digital me dia into three broad but overlapping categories: the cultural politics of digital media, the vernacular cultures of digital media, and the pro saics of digital media. Engaging these three categories of scholarship on digital media, I consider how ethnographers are exploring the com plex relationships between the local practices and global implications of digital media, their materiality and politics, and their banal, as well as profound, presence in cultural life and modes of communication. I consider the way these media have become central to the articulation of cherished beliefs, ritual practices, and modes of being in the world; the fact that digital media culturally matters is undeniable but showing how, where, and why it matters is necessary to push against peculiarly arrow presumptions about the universality of digital experience. VL - 39 ER - TY - CHAP T1 - An Ethnographic Method for the Study of Religion in Video Game Environments T2 - Methods for Studying Video Games and Religion Y1 - 2017 A1 - Grieve, G.P. KW - Ethnography KW - religion KW - video games AB - Focusing on the practice of Buddhism in Second Life, this chapter describes an ethnographic method for the study of religion in video game environments. Gregory Price Grieve argues that if one takes into consideration the narrative imagining of role-play, then Second Life can be considered a game and that its religion practice is authentic because its game play engages with what its users perceive as sacred. He then goes on to outline an ethnographic method based on the field of virtual game spaces, the methodological tool of participant observation, and the analytic instrument of thick description, as well as briefly touching on ethics. Finally, Gregory Price Grieve illustrates a case study by examining Second Life Zen Buddhist objects, places, avatars, groups, and events, as well as touching on the life cycle of the research project described. JF - Methods for Studying Video Games and Religion PB - Routledge CY - New York UR - https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781315518329 U1 - Vít Šisler, Kerstin Radde-Antweiler, Xenia Zeiler ER - TY - ICOMM T1 - Virtually Embodying The Field: Silent Online Buddhist Meditation, Immersion, and The Cardean Ethnographic Method Y1 - 2010 A1 - Grieve, Gregory KW - Buddhism KW - Ethnography KW - Immersion KW - Meditation AB - This article sketches the Cardean Ethnographic research method that emerged from two years of study in Second Life’s Zen Buddhist cloud communities. Second Life is a 3D graphic virtual world housed in cyberspace that can be accessed via the Internet from any networked computer on the globe. Cloud communitiesare groups that are temporary, flexible, elastic and inexpensive in the social capital required to join or to leave. In our research, we found ourselves facing a two-sided methodological problem. We had to theorize the virtual and its relation to the actual, while simultaneously creating practices for an effective ethnographic method. Our solution, named after the Roman Goddess of the hinge, Cardea, was a method that uses the model of a hinge to theorize the virtual as desubtantialized and the worlds opened up by cyberspace as nondualistic. This understanding of the virtual worldscalled for a classic ethnographic methodbased on participant observation and thick description. PB - Online - Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet UR - http://www.online.uni-hd.de/ ER - TY - BOOK T1 - Digital Zen: Buddhism, Virtual Worlds and Online Meditation T2 - Religion, Media and Culture Y1 - 2013 A1 - Grieve, Gregory KW - Buddhism KW - Digital KW - Ethnography KW - Meditation KW - Second Life KW - Virtual World KW - Zen AB - Because it makes its practitioners mindful of desire, _Digital Zen_ argues that the primarily Western converts who practice Anglo-Buddhist digital religion offer a form of religion that allows them to flourish in a late capitalistic society. Much contemporary popular religion is a protest against, and also a product of, the suffering produced by the desires of living in late capitalism. Being mindful of desire is crucial for human flourishing in late capitalism, because while “solid” modernity was driven by need and production, the current “liquid” system is driven by desire and consumption. Digital Buddhism is an apt place to locate such desires because freed from the physical, digital media display the unhindered imagination of its users, and Buddhism, throughout its historical phases, has seen desire as the cause of suffering. JF - Religion, Media and Culture PB - Routledge CY - new York ER -