8

Conducting Media Ethnographies in Africa

Tanja Bosch

It's another typical day at Radio X, a local radio station in the shadow of Table Mountain, inaugurated as one of the seven wonders of the world in 2012. DJs are bustling about getting ready to go on air; producers are chatting animatedly on their phones, setting up interviews; others are downstairs broadcasting “pavement radio” to local factory workers; and a group of teenagers are upstairs in the meeting room discussing hip hop and social change. And perhaps I'm the only one out of place because I'm writing field notes on my laptop, but nobody seems to notice.

This chapter explores the research methodology of ethnography in postcolonial Africa, with specific reference to anthropological media research. It draws on an ethnographic study of a local radio station in South Africa as a starting point from which to make several observations about media ethnographies and anthropological approaches to media production and consumption. The chapter outlines how the chosen methodology revealed unique characteristics of the local, as well as how the findings and experiences could be related to national and regional contexts. Moreover, it explores notions of reflexive “backyard” or “native” ethnographies, and reveals the complex relational issues that can arise from this approach. This case study is premised on the notion of media as a collective mediation of “culture,” and argues that the practice of ethnography allows for a refreshing departure from the more common armchair textual analyses that permeate media studies. First, I provide a brief summary of the main tenets of the ethnographic methodological approach, and discuss how media scholars have adopted these practices. I then outline the specific case of an ethnographic study of a local community radio station in South Africa, and reflect on the resultant issues of authority, ownership, and conflict, which highlighted the difficulties inherent in conducting such a project.

Ethnography

Ethnography is a complex and multifaceted approach to research. One way to begin to define it may be as

Or, as La Pastina (2005, p. 141) puts it, “Ethnographers immerse themselves in a culture to retell the lives of a particular people, narrate the rites and traditions of that people, and to understand and explain their cultural practices.” The ethnographic approach is a qualitative research approach that consists of detailed, “thick,” in-depth descriptions of everyday life, in an attempt to provide a description and understanding of “culture” or the lived reality of particular groups of people. The term “thick” was coined by anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1973) to refer to descriptions that explain behavior as well as context.

Ethnography uses participant observation or long-term engagement with the field, informal conversations and observations, in-depth interviews, and field journals. Although one can argue that all research approaches exhibit forms of bias in sample selection, methodology, or analysis, ethnography has become deliberately biased and subjective, and proponents of the methodology engage in high degrees of self-reflexivity, acutely aware of their own position and voice in the research process. “Ethnography has represented a shift from empirical practices of data collection, pushing scholars to introduce non-objective strategies to audience analysis and a greater level of self-reflexivity among researchers” (La Pastina, 2005, p. 139). Following critiques of the methodology as too biased and male-centered, self-reflexivity became a focal point in the early 1970s, driven by feminist anthropologists. This “reflexive turn” led to a different style of writing in the works of James Clifford (1998) and George Marcus (1998), with a direct acknowledgment of ethnography as biased and dependent on the researcher's own subjectivities.

The ethnographic approach to gathering data emerged from the discipline of anthropology. In fact, ethnography cannot be separated from anthropology as an academic practice, which is simply “diverse ways of thinking and writing about culture from a standpoint of participant observation” (Clifford, 1998, p. 9). Traditionally, researchers would spend lengthy amounts of time, up to years, in the field, to research, study, and immerse themselves in the lives of a community or culture other than their own. Bronisław Malinowski (1922), for example, lived for years among the Trobriand Islanders and wrote expansively about their ceremonial customs, which led to the development of various social theories of culture. Since these communities were often located in geographically (and culturally) distant places, ethnography acquired the reputation of “othering” groups of people, most often ethnic minorities. Colonial administrators used ethnographic methods to collect information to assist them to govern minority groups and to collect artifacts for museums (Field & Fox, 2007; Goh, 2007), adding to the negative associations of the methodology.

In fact, as Murphy and Kraidy (2003, p. 4) have argued, “a growing body of media ethnography has been shaped more by the critique of ethnography's associations with colonialism and Western discourse than by the surprise and productivity of the field encounter.” Interestingly, one notable exception to this was Jomo Kenyatta's (1938) study of his own Kikuyu tribe in Kenya, though Kenyatta was mentored by Malinowski himself. It might certainly be the case that “labeling fieldwork an act of colonialism is an obvious overstatement, designed to draw our attention to the ways in which white privilege affects anthropological fieldwork” (Wolf, 1992, p. 5). As Wolf (1992) argues, power differentials in society will always exist and anthropologists must be careful not to take advantage of their power in ways that may disadvantage the people they are studying.

Media Anthropology

The adoption of ethnographic approaches appeared at the same time in a number of disciplines. One might argue that ethnography is theoretically and empirically central to media studies (La Pastina, 2005), in order to truly understand audiences and their engagement with media products. For media scholars in the United States it arose from a desire to find alternatives to traditional social science research (e.g., surveys) on media effects. Early ethnographic work in the United States was based on an opposition to the positivist paradigm, behavioral science, and the quantitative methodologies that were popular. Later, a more critical orientation explored the politics of representation, raising questions about how ethnographies are constructed and in whose interest (Murphy & Kraidy, 2003).

In her ethnographic work with Japanese women, for example, Darling-Wolf (2003a, 2003b, 2004) conducts long-term participant observation, focus groups, and in-depth interviews to explore these women's conceptions of attractiveness and beauty within the broader context of Japan's relationship with the West. She demonstrates how in their daily consumption of Western media representations of women, Japanese women constantly negotiate cultural, gendered, class, and racial identities. Similarly, exploring audience reactions to telenovelas in rural Brazil, La Pastina (2005) has argued that an ethnographic approach is useful in understanding the complex relationships between viewers and texts, as well as allowing an investigation of reception and appropriation to better understand the role of the local in the process of media engagement. As he concludes:

Similarly, Lila Abu-Lughod (2002) has approached the consumption of Egyptian television serials as a mechanism for the production of personal subjectivities.

Historically, journalism research has focused on quantitative approaches such as survey methods and content analysis, and the use of ethnographic methods is a sharp departure from this trend. Parameswaran (2005, p. 205) has argued for cultural studies approaches to the “transformations in the mediated landscape of journalism in many locations across the world, transformations that have profound implications for scholars interested in audience research and popular communication.” More critical inquiries into the production and consumption of journalism (and not just popular media) can contribute to the field of audience research (Parameswaran, 2005).

Murphy & Kraidy (2003) argue, however, that media ethnographies have not demonstrated a commitment to immersion or long-term observation, instead relying on in-depth interviews and discussion groups and, in general, a “mostly textual and rhetorical handling of ethnography” (p. 305). Lotz (2000) similarly notes that reception researchers typically conduct a “hit and run” version of participant observation, not ethnography. La Pastina (2005, p. 147) argues for audience ethnography to be repositioned as a fieldwork-based, long-term practice of data collection and analysis: “Media ethnography needs to return to a sense of commitment to traditional practices; a long-term, in-depth, site-specific, multimethod approach.”

Studies such as those conducted by Mankekar (1999), Tufte (2000), and Darling-Wolf (2003a, 2004), among others, do draw on cultural immersion, though, as Murphy and Kraidy (2003, p. 310) point out, studying the relationship between media reception and cultural practice is complex as it requires recognition of the multisited nature of the “field,” as well as a need to “address the unique dilemmas of localized research in relation to the global issues raised by transnational media processes.” Kraidy and Murphy (2008) advocate an approach drawing strongly on Geertz and the idea of “thick” description as a means for communication studies to realize that contemporary experiences of locality are not distinct, but should be considered within the context of global historical dynamics.

The work of researchers such as Ien Ang (1996), Thomas Lindlof (1987), James Lull (1990), David Morley (1992), and Janice Radway (1984) have dominated the discussion about the qualitative study of audiences and the meaning of ethnography in the field of mass communication research. It was the early reception studies of Ang and others that paved the way for the ethnographic turn in audience research (Fourie, 2001). Many media anthropologies or studies drawing on the methodology of ethnography focus on consumption and audience reception. As Ang (1991, p. 165) writes, “an ethnographic method is “preferable to industry techniques precisely because it holds out the hope of representing consumption practices from the virtual standpoint of actual audiences.” The concern with the production of meaning lends itself to this particular methodology. However, much of this kind of work has been based on interviewing people in their homes, with actual immersion in the daily practices and social words of the people studied virtually nonexistent (Spitulnik, 1993).

Fieldwork is challenging in the field of media reception because it is difficult to participate in the closed contexts or private spaces of media consumption, leading to a rethinking of what constitutes “doing fieldwork” (Murphy & Kraidy, 2003). Many early media studies that claimed to be ethnographic research simply consisted of qualitative group and in-depth interviews, and were not conducted in the respondents' natural setting. Moreover, media ethnography “should be understood as a research process of forming communities and making conversations that underscore a systematic and long-term investment in form, purpose and practice” (Murphy & Kraidy, 2003, p. 306). Finally, the very act of speaking for others can be difficult because of the structures of power in which researchers are inevitably implicated (Darling-Wolf, 2003a, 2004). By virtue of their positioning, researchers (explicitly or implicitly) wield power over the groups they study; and they are further affected by power structures related to writing and publication practices, which determine their approaches, as these approaches are dictated by such outcomes.

Case Study: Ethnography of a Local Radio Station

When I was faced with the prospect of deciding on a PhD dissertation topic in 2001, I made a difficult decision: I decided to study what was, in effect, my own community. After having worked for several years at a community radio station in South Africa, as both a volunteer and a full-time staff member, I was keen to make the radio station the subject of my research. Given my extensive involvement in the organization that I was proposing to study, reflexive or narrative ethnography seemed a logical methodological choice. In reflexive ethnographies the researcher's personal background, experiences, and reflections are critical to illuminate the culture under study. Reflexive ethnographies range on a continuum – from starting research from one's own perspective, to confessional ethnographies as described by Van Maanen (1990), where the researcher's stories of doing the research become the main focus (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000).

Wolf (1992, p. 58) advises us to be wary of reflexivity, arguing that

In addition, Wolf warns that even though postmodernist critique has encouraged more self-reflexivity, feminist researchers should think carefully about whether intense reflexivity might simply be interpreted as being tentative and self-doubting. At the same time though, this does not preclude a reflexive ethnographic approach, for as Darling-Wolf (2003a, p. 169) argues, “no matter how limited and situated our efforts to represent others might be, no matter how partial the truths we uncover . . . the attempt is worthwhile.”

I used traditional ethnographic methods to carry out the research, and Tedlock's (1991) approach of narrative ethnography to incorporate my experiences into the ethnographic description and analysis of Radio X, with the emphasis on the “ethnographic dialogue or encounter” between myself and members of the group being studied (p. 178). Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's (1987) notion of rhizomes as “grass-like,” heterogeneous entities with multiple entry points and routes rather than roots, I theorized Radio X as a connector and bridging mechanism that impacts the social fabric. The theoretical notion of the rhizome draws on the botanical image of a rhizome as an underground tuber that grows horizontally, in direct opposition to what Deleuze and Guattari call “arboric systems of knowledge” based on the model of a tree, which symbolizes linear thinking and hierarchical structures. The local radio station was thus theorized as a horizontal form of growth – not necessarily successful in comparison to commercial stations whose growth is measured more linearly, but successful in terms of its own horizontal growth and connections. “A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 21).

The methodology thus consisted primarily of an ethnographic consideration of Radio X, with the researcher as instrument and reflective heuristic device. A qualitative ethnographic approach was essential in order to arrive at a full understanding of the functions of the radio station, particularly with reference to the relationship between political rhetoric around aims of the project and actual practice on the ground.

Anthropologists have generally paid little attention to radio, even though the subaltern populations that are most frequently their subjects usually listen to the radio (O'Connor, 2001). In general, the field of media studies has had an ambiguous relationship with ethnography. Participant observation has been used to study the production of newspapers and TV shows, but cultural studies has been more receptive to ethnographic methods. As a few anthropologists became interested in the use of radio and TV by aboriginal people, there is some overlap between their writing and cultural studies, for example, the work of Eric Michaels (1994) in Australia.

In other words, this study took note of the shift in the 1970s from an emphasis on participant observation to the “observation of participation,” and to concerns with power and praxis and the epistemological doubt associated with the crisis of representation (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000). The value in ethnographic methods “lies precisely in their ability to help us ‘make things out’ in the context of their occurrence – in helping to understand . . . media consumption practices as they are embedded in the context of everyday life” (Murphy, 1999, p. 208). Ethnography sets aside the notion that behavior is rule-governed or motivated by shared values and expectations, and acknowledges that social structures are locally produced, sustained, and experienced (Holstein & Gubrium, 1999). In ethnographic fieldwork, the process of conducting fieldwork involves the cultural biography of researchers and calls for negotiations of power relationships between researchers and people they meet in the field. For feminist ethnographers in particular, rigorous self-reflexivity as a way of interrogating the research process helps to reveal power inequalities that arise in the field due to social constructions of race, gender, and so on (Parameswaran, 2001).

As Huesca (1996) points out in his study of the reporteros populares (people's reporters) in Latin America, ethnography is a useful way of explaining how participation is enacted and constructed. Much of the literature on communication, participation, and democracy has been useful for documenting and justifying the move to create more inclusive media systems, but few have pointed out how this participation occurs. This construction of participation is of theoretical and practical importance given the growing interest in revitalizing the relationship between communication, democracy, the public sphere, and social change (Huesca, 1996).

Similarly, Hocheimer (1993) moved beyond merely describing community radio stations, and points out that such media structures should be more closely examined. He notes that inevitable problems need to be addressed where these newly conceptualized media come into being, and as more people start producing information for themselves. Inherent in the difficulties of attempting to establish and maintain democratic media is the problem of defining “what constitutes a communicative democracy and how to realize one in practice” (Hocheimer, 1993, p. 174). Hocheimer raises other potential problems, such as: (1) whether a station exercises any form of gatekeeping or whether it should be a conduit for all who step before the microphone (or perhaps both); (2) what happens when power, or people become entrenched, and when the interest or agendas of newcomers are at odds with those of the founders; and (3) whether a station functions to serve its constituent community segments and whether the community acts as resources for the station.

These were the very issues I was interested in exploring at Radio X, since intended practices and policies may not always translate into action. In particular, I was interested in exploring the fact that the station always claims to serve what they labeled vaguely as “the community.” This chapter now provides a brief description of the ethnography conducted and, in moments of self-indulgent self-reflexivity, reflects on the process, particularly the outcomes which led to the researcher being excluded from the community studied – a common but infrequently discussed risk.

The Fieldwork

My initial foray into fieldwork took place when I was a novice to both Radio X and ethnography (1995–1999). Fieldwork was carried out while I was working at the station as a producer of an eight-part, 30-minute series dealing with health and social issues relevant to the elderly and aging. I also drew on experiences working at the station as a full-time programmer for two years prior to that, and in a voluntary capacity in earlier years. During these times I presented programs, facilitated training programs, assisted with scheduling, wrote and edited stings and advertisements, assisted with studio technical assistance for some evening programs, and facilitated a training course. The primary data gathering methods during these periods were participant observation and in-depth interviews with permanent and voluntary staff. Fieldwork, thus, comprised a long-term engagement with the station over a period of several years.

Insider/Outsider Dilemmas

While I did not consciously set out to conduct a native ethnography, at some point during my research I realized I was doing exactly that. My knowledge of and interaction with the field had made me part of the field. Denzin and Lincoln (2000) describe native ethnography as third- and fourth-world researchers who share a history of colonialism or subjugation, including subjugation by ethnographers who have made them the subjects of their work. Many students and interns have passed through Radio X to do research on the station, but the station had never seen the physical products of this work; or their writings were often in languages other than English. These researchers arrived from abroad armed with tape recorders, cameras, and notebooks, then vanished, presumably back to their first-world locations, to write up their notes. It was often the case that neither the notes nor the final products of their academic tourism ever made it back to Radio X. Over the years many visiting students had told Radio X that the organization or some aspect thereof was the subject of their academic research, but the station did not have any copies of these documents.

This raises the issue of the origins of ethnography as a methodology for studying the colonized Other, often replicating the existing status quo by reinscribing the continued oppression of groups of people. This increasingly raises issues of who is able to speak on behalf of whom:

This also raises issues regarding the audience, or those we study and how we theorize them. Shome (2006) points out that trends in postcolonial theory and transnational cultural studies have changed the way we think about “audience,” “reception,” and “spectatorship” as a homogeneous stable group. “Contemporary conditions of mobilities and immobilities, cultural flows and stasis, produce new hybrid spaces (and practices) of consumption that productively throw into crisis any notion of the audience as being culturally stable and predictable” (Shome, 2006, p. 264). The idea of studying the Other as a culturally stable group, thus needs to be interrogated.

Everyone, particularly management, was enthusiastic when I arrived in June 2002 with the news that I too was making Radio X the subject of my research. The organization seemed to think that finally someone would write something that they could share ownership of. While I was working at the station, a workshop facilitator visiting from the United States brought in an academic article on Radio X that had appeared in an international peer-reviewed media journal. The author had written extensively on Radio X, though he had not visited the station or interviewed any staff. Shortly thereafter, the station director sent an email to several people, including myself, saying that since we had direct access to the organization we should correct this kind of work by writing and publishing in our capacity as Radio X staff or volunteers.

One evening, during a casual conversation after work, one staff member said to me, “I can't wait to read your thesis.” The station director had said to me on numerous occasions that I should write a book on Radio X or that my thesis should be published as a book. I was held responsible for telling the story that no one else had told. I was trusted to produce a tangible product from my interviews and observations as no one else had done. At some point during the research, I was motivated by the words, “I can't wait to read your thesis.” I kept thinking that if they wanted to read my thesis, I'd have to write it first! Of course my next thought was, “Do I really want them to read my thesis? Will they like what they read?” In the field, ethnographers often find that they cannot fulfill a specific role as insider or outsider. This introduces an increased complexity into the dichotomy, resulting in the embodiment of multiple selves (Darling-Wolf, 2003a). In this instance, I was blurring the roles of both insider and outsider, which raised its own unique sense of power dynamics – in this case the radio station wielded a form of power and control over me, but of course there was also my own embedded power as the researcher and author of their story. “The very structural features of [ethnographers'] discursive practice create problematic power relations between the privileged researcher . . . and her subaltern subject” (Darling-Wolf, 2003a, p. 155).

This raised many ethical issues in terms of how much was disclosed in the final report. When I started the research process I entered Radio X from a very critical perspective, almost certain that they would be unprepared for my inevitable criticisms of the organization. I had had the benefit of three years abroad in graduate school and I returned bursting with ideas about how the organization should be transformed from my new vantage point of theoretical “superiority.” However, what I found was something completely different. The more time I spent at the station, the more I struggled to find the flaws. Every single day I spent at Radio X during the research period, I found evidence to support the positive work being done there. This was clearly a manifestation of “going native,” a phrase usually used to describe the phenomenon of researchers becoming too closely aligned to their subjects to view matters “objectively” – I could clearly see flaws several years later when I looked back at my field notes. Furthermore, I was determined that my relationship with Radio X would not end when I finished the research. Since I planned to live in the country after graduation, I also planned to return to the organization in a voluntary capacity; and indeed I took up the offer to return to the station full-time in as station manager. As a result, decisions about what to include in the final report became increasingly important, even though I may not have been aware of this at the time.

My dual positionality as insider and outsider, academic researcher and member, was advantageous, yet problematic. Adler and Adler (1994) coined the term “complete member” to refer to this problematic. While no longer employed by the station, I was always introduced to outsiders as an “ex-programmer who is now a volunteer producer.” And even though I assumed the relatively demoted title of volunteer producer during the research period, I was still accorded my old role by those in leadership, particularly because the same people were still running the station when I returned. Leaders confided in me about their hopes for and concerns about the station, and producers frequently elevated me to a position of authority by requesting my help with or advice on their programs.

For me, this meant I had to rethink research practices in more culturally interactive ways, and to be consciously self-reflexive (Hedge, 1998). After all, “research is an expression of our location in a world connected by lines of power and cultural asymmetry,” in order to study “counternarratives from global peripheries” (Hedge, 1998, p. 285). Hedge (1998) warns that we should be careful of the notion of indigenous theory and of viewing society as organic or authentic, as this fails to recognize the contradictions and contested nature of culture. The “historical predicament” of ethnography is that it is always caught up in the invention (not the representation) of cultures (Clifford, 1998, p. 2). Hedge (1998) and others have called for transnational inquiry which explores the interstices or the in-between, and thus becomes more than just doing research about the Other or the “authentic native.” Instead, the autobiographical position of the researcher is highlighted. In addition, “transnational research requires a progression from uncovering of universals to the representation of contextually specific material practices” (Hedge, 1998, p. 288). Similarly, in her research with Japanese women, Darling-Wolf (2003a) warns against the “essentializing tendencies by Western scholars to search for indigenous traditions and authentic cultural forms in their attempts to represent ‘exotic’ others” (p. 154). “As ethnographers, we must be prepared to look at culture not as a system enclosed in itself, but rather as a system in continuous motion” (La Pastina, 2005, p. 141).

I found that my rapport with the organization, as the result of having worked there, facilitated interviews considerably. Staff members were briefed on my research during a staff meeting, and everyone was asked to make time for my interviews. I also found that my personal relationships with staff members helped because they were much more open in conversation during the interviews. Even though our conversations were tape-recorded, people appeared comfortable talking with me and frequently referred to shared experiences. Ethnographic rapport refers to building up trust and friendship with respondents in exchange for information, though as Field and Fox (2007) argue, this is disingenuous because of the ulterior motive of an academic career underwritten by the fieldwork.

To some extent this may also have been a limitation, because I found that I had to constantly push interviewees for greater detail. Because they assumed that there was a shared understanding about Radio X, they frequently omitted what they believed to be minor details or facts that they assumed I was already aware of (Jackson, 1987). This was also a personal limitation – that is, because I was already familiar with the organization, I had to guard against asking questions based only on my own experiences there, or my own preconceived understandings of the station, lest they limit my conclusions. It is for this reason that I carried out participant observation during the first few weeks of fieldwork, before drafting interview questions based on notes from these observations. Participant observation was thus used to generate the basic interview questions.

Furthermore, because Radio X has won many awards, staff members are accustomed to being interviewed frequently by the local and international press. The station has even been the site of several films and documentaries, including an internationally produced documentary. I was concerned that this, together with my familiarity with some of the interviewees, could lead to stock positive responses or what Spradley (1979) describes as translation competence, that is, the undesirable tendency of informants to provide prepackaged, party-line, and extra-emic answers to questions (Agar, 1986).

At the same time I think that former and current volunteers were more open with me during interviews because, in their eyes, I was no longer associated with the station. Many volunteers openly expressed their criticisms of the station in ways that they never did with staff members, and would never have with me had I not been perceived as a researcher or, at the very least, an ex-staff member. Another issue that arose when conducting interviews was a struggle over the ownership of these interviews. At some point I became involved in a discussion with some staff members about how poorly organized the Radio X archives were and how it was necessary to record a history of the organization. One person suggested that my interviews could fill this gap and that I should make them available to be burned onto CD and kept in the archive for future reference. Another concern someone raised was that many of the people whom I planned to interview may not be alive in the next decade and that their interviews are important pieces of oral history. At first this seemed an excellent idea – a way for me to complete my research and also to give back something concrete to the station, in the form of contributing toward an oral history archive. However, once I actually started the interviews, I quickly changed my mind as I heard material that could be considered confidential. For example, material in which interviewees make personal, potentially harmful comments about each other may not be appropriate for such an archive.

The situation was autoethnographic in the sense that I could not completely distance myself from the research or the ethnography as a distant or objective observer. The autoethnographic experience is neither here nor there, but betwixt and between, since one is simultaneously insider and outsider, native and foreign, standing “in that undeterminable threshold place where she constantly drifts in and out” (Trinh, 1989, p. 418). Occupying the spaces in between also has advantages. As Said writes, “The essential privilege of exile is to have, not just one set of eyes but half a dozen, each of them corresponding to the places you have been” (quoted in Akindes, 1999, p. 48).

Authority and Ownership

In a rhizomatic methodological approach, where the ongoing deconstruction of binary opposites is key, and things are both this and not this (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987), authority and ownership must be deconstructed. Even in so-called participatory research, the voice of the researcher is usually dominant. This hierarchical, arboric approach means that the researcher is always in authority, and ultimately owns the text.

I intended to invert this with my ethnography of Radio X through a rhizomatic approach. I hoped to achieve this by writing a text that would be accessible to the members of Radio X, as opposed to one that excludes the very subjects of the study. Furthermore, the text would be both accessible and available, as opposed to the many researchers who do dissertation research in the developing world and are never heard of there again. The final copy of the thesis was left on a central table in the station's building, a meeting place for informal chats and the spot where everyone took their lunch. After a few days, the printed and bound copy became well thumbed, as it was constantly being leafed through by staff members during their tea or lunch breaks. In addition to the physical hard copy, the thesis was submitted online, and thus available electronically to anyone with a download link and Internet access.

I also intended for the final project to reflect the voices of the people at the station, and to engender a sense of ownership and empowerment. With this in mind, the final text was part academic essay, part narrative journalism, with interviewees' voices constantly present through the use of direct quotes. Privileging interviewees' personal experiences in this way in turn validated the work being done at the station, and hopefully resulted in a sense of collective empowerment. The final project was an academic dissertation, but it is also a live text that reflects the complex interpersonal relationships and the rich visual impressions that constituted the research process, as well as the station itself.

Conflict

And then it all began to unravel, perhaps at the point at which I exited the organization, or perhaps at the point at which I re-entered as station manager. Somehow, somewhere along the line, the organization had taken ownership of me and my dissertation. I could no longer be an independent researcher – I was an embedded researcher (much like an embedded journalist attached to a military unit during armed conflict). While, as mentioned earlier, I found it hard to find the flaws during my dissertation research, they became all too clear to me when I returned as station manager, particularly through the process of trying to get the thesis published or to publish chapters as academic journal articles. One major critique I faced was the writing style of the thesis. While, as mentioned, I had deliberately set out to combine the stylistic features of narrative journalism and academic writing to make it more accessible to a nonacademic audience, this was a limitation in terms of its suitability for publication. There was no pressure to publish (or not to publish) aspects of the thesis, but the benefit of distance allowed me to see the flaws in what I had previously written, and I found myself disagreeing with my own work and questioning my own initial interpretations as I began to see it in print. At this stage, I also felt as though taking the next step – moving beyond merely vocalizing my critiques to actually putting them down in writing, and publishing this writing, might be seen as an act of betrayal.

Differences in management approaches arise out of diverse or conflicting ideas about the purpose and value of community broadcasting (van Vuuren, 2003). In particular, I came into conflict on many occasions with the station director on this very issue. While we were in agreement that the goal of community broadcasting was to empower the local community, there were disputes as to the exact ways to go about doing this. Furthermore, I believed that the key was to build a sense of agency in the community, and not to treat the community as a vacuous mass, in the classic sender–receiver model. The station director model did not believe that funds should be made available for this purpose. I slowly discovered, to my disappointment, that while the organization had huge promise as a vehicle for participatory communication, it was being held back by the person at its head. The station management had not changed during my tenure at the station, but I had slowly grown more critical as a result of daily interactions, and as a result started noticing these flaws.

Furthermore, I discovered that, while others shared my opinions, they would not support me in meetings because they feared the station director. We were really all puppets on a stage, being controlled by the station director puppet master, and completing an intricate dance for the international funding agencies. Our salaries were constantly cut back; we worked without contracts or benefits; the threat of being fired was constantly dangled before us; and we had absolutely no decision making power. Everything had to be run through the station director.

I also started to realize that an intricate process of exclusion limited access to most individuals. It was ultimately up to the puppet master to decide who was to be employed and who was to go on air. He hired family members who underperformed, and on several occasions used us to fire staff, whom he then summarily rehired, in order to construct his reputation for compassion. While the concept of the public sphere does not necessarily imply equal access for all, I found the control by the station director to be particularly exclusionary.

We had conflictual interactions several times in management meetings, and I eventually tendered my resignation, stating clearly that I was leaving because I did not feel that I had enough room to fully carry out my job as station manager. There appeared to be no hard feelings, and I carried on with my research and writing about the station, my friendships with individuals at the station, and my occasional visits and part-time voluntary production work.

Then one day it all finally unraveled. There was word that the station director was using other staff members to spread a rumor that the organization had “sent” me to graduate school (I was a Fulbright scholar), and that I was repaying this debt by leaving. My staff member friends and informants stopped returning work-related emails and calls, and an agreement to broadcast my students' radio projects was summarily ignored. I suspect that requesting my framed diploma was certainly a pivotal point. Faced with the daunting prospect of personalizing an office for the first time in my life, in my new position as a research fellow at a local university, I had called the radio station and asked whether, since I was no longer the manager, I might have my diploma back to display in my office. After several months, and a pointed email from myself to the administrator, I was told that I was now part of the Radio X Hall of Fame and that they would like to keep the diploma. Even upon exit from the organization, they felt the need to wield a sense of ownership because I had once researched them. It is possible that colleagues and friends whom I had interviewed felt betrayed because they had thought of me as “one of them,” and the production of a doctoral thesis together with the title of “Dr” clearly set me apart, even if this was not my intention.

Discussion

I had fully immersed myself in Radio X, a process I found constantly exciting as both researcher and staff member. In negotiating the line between insider and outsider, I found an uneasy space in between the two, from which to understand and interpret what I was seeing. Conducting a native ethnography in your home city, surrounded by friends and colleagues, positions you in a realm very different than the one occupied by the pioneers of anthropological and ethnographic research. Instead, an element of social responsibility comes to the fore as you attempt participatory approaches, try to please your future audience – academic professors, peers, colleagues, and research subjects – and simultaneously attempt to create an academic assignment that is going to be graded, and which might determine your future career.

I conducted the ethnography of Radio X while acknowledging all the while that no blueprint for such a methodology exists, yet creating a product which was both something that selfishly helped me to understand myself and my passion for community radio, as well as a gift that I presented to Radio X, so that they could see themselves as I did – and hopefully this is still as close to a mirror image as anyone can get.

But perhaps it was inevitable that the “natives” would eventually turn against me. After all, one cannot betray one's friends by turning them into research subjects. Or is it the other way around? Either way, I lost friends and the opportunity to participate in what I still believe to be a truly grassroots medium, despite an autocratic leadership structure. Researchers need to think consciously about how to manage relationships with informants, particularly in terms of negotiating this line between informants and friends. While the relationship will always be tricky, they should remain aware of possible ethical and other implications as these relationships deepen over time. Maintaining a professional distance while building intimate friendships in order to deepen understanding of context is necessary, but potentially difficult; fundamentally, relationships are central to the practice of ethnography.

In fact, the breakdown of the relationship may have been primarily a result of my paternalistic relationship with the station director, and its subsequent breakdown. Perhaps this is where I made the greatest methodological mistake – to set myself up as a researcher and then to follow this by taking a job, a very unusual sequence of events for any anthropologist. Some might say that this was a small price to pay for an award-winning¹ PhD dissertation and the anthropological experience of a lifetime. Dynamics of gender and race also come into play here, and the ethnographic media researcher needs to be aware of how his or her own class, race, and gender might affect research outcomes. In this particular instance, being a black woman was a key factor in the relationship. It was clear that having a black woman station manager with a PhD was important to station management in a national context with few female media managers, and at a radio station with a strong black identity. In addition, this particular radio station had clear gender equity targets, always proudly stating that at least 50% of management staff were always female. As a result, I was always introduced as “Dr Bosch,” and the station director always mentioned my thesis and educational qualifications to visitors.

As Darling-Wolf (2003a, 2004) pointed out in her feminist research with Japanese women, silencing ourselves for fear of criticism could be epistemologically dangerous in its avoidance of political responsibility. In the present instance, my responsibility was to remain true to myself and to be honest and critical with the station director as a researcher and not as an employee. But for future researchers, there remains a valuable lesson never to confuse real life with the research setting. South African radio, particularly community radio, remains under-researched, and ethnography still remains a valuable methodological tool to understand it, despite the challenges one will invariably face. Despite the problems it raises, “the need for ethnography – away and at home – is greater than ever before” (Van Maanen, 1990, p. xi).

NOTE

1 The dissertation was awarded the 2003 Broadcast Educational Association (BEA) Kenneth Harwood Outstanding Dissertation Award.

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