Throughout working on this task there has been no shortage of epiphanies or learning curves I have experienced.

This post will serve as an update on the previously mentioned experiences and ephiphanies and how I will apply what I learnt from these experiences into my final few weeks of production.

How’s My Following Going?

To be completely upfront, I knew this was going to be the hardest part going into the task and nine weeks in it has proved to be just that. In a landscape already filled with so many accounts with similar persona’s and well established followings, breaking the mould and gaining some form of traction has been the most difficult. So as of right now I have relied heavily on replying to larges pages of the same niche that already have an audience that I can observe.

This allows for me to be an cover observer, ethically and anonymously gathering information surrounding consumers of my media niche whilst still interacting with them and contributing to the community.

Data in ethnography traditionally arise from interviews, participant observation field notes, document and artifact analysis, and research diaries (Mayan, 2001; Morse & Richards, 2002). 

The quote above is from a study done by Sarah Wall from the International Institute of Qualitative Technology titled Easier Said than Done: Writing an Autoethnography. It basically summarises the entire approach I am taking to the final report as all these means are the main sources of critical data in ethnography.

How is the Playlist Travelling?

So far the playlist itself is moving fairly well, it has become more of an archive into what tracks and artists are circulating and are popular during that week and has therefore been incredibly useful in the final stages of research. It has also been really fun to compile the big songs of the week and concise it down to 30 songs on a weekly basis. 

Instagram Comments, Reddit and even Discord?

As of right now the utilisation of Instagram comments have been imperative across the entirety of my digital artefact, by having the opportunity to diverge across multiple platforms and see what is trending on a wider scale other than just Twitter and Spotify, platforms such as Discord, Instagram and Reddit give me a wider landscape of ideas to use when it comes to making memes, tweets and adding songs to the playlist.

So yeah! That is how I am going right now and how I have been incorporating my findings through epiphanies and readings into my own work, see you all next week!