Data Discussion: Lockdown Ethnography

On Friday the 29th of May, DISTRACT assistants Emilie Gregersen, Sofie Astrupgaard and Malene Jespersen, presented their reflections on collecting qualitative and quantitative data during the corona lockdown through logbooks and online interviews. The talk revolved around an ongoing research project on the daily routines of dorm residents in Copenhagen during the lockdown. The project also involves other DISTRACT researchers, and will be published as a blog post in the near future.

Title: Lockdown ethnography: Using logbooks, self-reporting and emojis to study routines during the corona crisis

Abstract: How can one study people’s daily lives and routines from the comfort and limitations of one’s home office? The current COVID-19 situation has challenged the classic ethnographic fieldwork approach, forcing us to explore new ways of obtaining in-depth, or ‘thick’ data, about our objects of study. In this presentation we outline our so-called ‘logbook study’ which aims to measure small changes in young people’s everyday lives over time by asking them to self-report daily data on sleeping routines, socialization patterns and screen-time usage over a period of four weeks. The logbooks included small diary entries, survey questions, emotion logging in the form of emojis, and were complemented with in-depth interviews. We will present our experiences with working at the intersection between qualitative and quantitative methods by addressing questions such as: What are the strengths and weaknesses in using self-reporting and emojis as a method to explore daily routines? How does the structure of our logbook shape the type of data we get? How do we standardize qualitative data-gathering and analysis when several anthropologists work together?