Mini-ethnography… What’s it all about?

Portfolio: Organisational Communication

This is my first blog post on assignment two that I am conducting in a pair with Chelsey. To kick off I am going to first of all explain what a mini-ethnography is all about.

In my own words I would describe a mini-ethnography as a smaller scale full ethnography. A mini-ethnography is demonstrated in two parts, (the doing) which is the intense observation or participant observation and, (the writing) which is analysing the findings from your fieldwork and making sense of it. Ethnography as we know is a process of learning from people/organisations about a particular aspect of their lives or how an organisation is ran; including the culture, communication and environment. Then writing up about it in a report in a critical manner.

In mine and Chelsey’s case we chose to do a mini-ethnography on a charity organisation formed by the Trussell Trust. The organisation is a food bank…

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Our first visit to the food bank…

Portfolio: Organisational Communication

So today we encountered first hand the process of a food bank; from start until finish we made vigorous notes and were kept busy as well as welcomed and entertained by staff. This post is simply going to describe the steps we went through on our first visit to the food bank as ethnographers. Upon arrival we were greeted by an elderly man (a volunteer) who informed us the group were just finishing up their team brief and that Geoff* the event coordinator would be with us shortly. When the team brief had finished we were welcomed into the main hall and introduced to a bunch of volunteers, at this point all of the volunteers were preparing and setting up for the day ahead. It seemed that each volunteer had a task to do and they all just got on with it. Straight away myself and Chelsey felt very at…

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Success overall…

Portfolio: Organisational Communication

The above photos were posted by Geoff* the event coordinator to the organisations twitter. He was delighted to work with both of us from MMU and informed us that previous students had not been such a success story. So it was nice for him to have a positive experience of students contributing. Myself and Chelsey achieved a lot from this experience and we thoroughly enjoyed learning about the organisation as well as interacting with volunteers/clients and contributing to the food bank. It was a success on both parts.

When we decided to conduct a mini-ethnography we knew very little about what it actually involved as this was our first time at coordinating a mini-ethnography. However, from analysing the different assignment routes we could have taken, we preferred the mini-ethnography style over the other choices. Once we had chosen this research method we then looked into what ethnography comprised of and…

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Second time around

As this was our second visit, we felt much more relaxed when entering, as we half new what to expect and it was no longer a new experience for us. Although told, the week before, that if the weather was hot it is usually much busier. The weather was very hot, however it seemed to be the opposite.

UK Poverty

Although the poverty level in the UK has steadily for the past 25 years, it is still an issue within Britain and one that needs as much support as it can get. It is believed, that if no action is made surrounding this issue it will begin to progress for the worse, with 23% of children to be seen as living in poverty by 2020/2021.

Knocked back to success

When it was first discovered that you could work in teams for a mini-ethnography, there was no questioning, me and Natasha were definitely going to join up together. We work well as a team and bounce of each other’s ideas, ensuring we have fun whilst doing it. However, the question was where was the mini-ethnography going to take place?

Contract

This is a contract between the parties of, Chelsey Gledhill and Natasha Cain, regarding the joint mini-ethnography assignment. Producing this contract will ensure that all work is shared evenly across both parties and it will be reviewed if it is failed by either participant. The contract will ensure the assignment process is successfully completed.

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