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Nomads Digitised, Abuses Communicated

The Economist published a special report on digital nomads that includes contributions from colleagues and peers. The future perfectesque addition comes the form of a phone-in diary of life on the road (hosted on the economist site here) that spanned a week in Tokyo and Seattle.

In situations where we need to collect data, where it's inappropriate to be present in person we sometimes ask people to self-document their lives in the form of audio-visual diaries. From experience the results of self documentation can be a bit hit or miss, with participants often deciding to re-interpret the boundaries of the study on the fly, but when it works the results can be powerful. Whilst I prefer to be on the other side of the microphone/lens the use of Dropio to record voice mail messages was pretty painless and hei, its not as if I had to be asked to take photos. Is self-documentation appropriate for your study? Judge for yourself:

Abuses archived? Putting self documentation in the context this week's Global Philanthropy Forum take a look at Witness / The Hub - a participatory media site for bringing human rights abuses to a worldwide audience. And if there's any of our Ovi guys reading this ...

Writing from San Francisco | April 12, 2008 | Permalink