Linked Ethnographic Data: From Theory to Practice

Dominic DiFranzo, Marie Joan Kristine Gloria, James A. Hendler

Abstract: As Web Science continues to mix methods from the many disciplines that study the web, we must begin to seriously look at mixing and linking data across the Qualitative and Quantitative divide. A large difficulty in this is in modeling and archiving Qualitative data. In this paper, we outline what these difficulties are in detail with a focus on the data practices of Ethnography. We describe how linked data technologies can address these issues. We demonstrate this with a case study in modeling data from audio interviews that were taken in an ethnographic study conducted in our lab. We conclude with a discussion on future work that needs to be done to better equip researchers with these tools and methods.