Research design

processes in terms of what particular media technologies can do and in terms of what users think about and do with them in practice. To this end, the thesis employs qualitative-ethnographic methods that highlight both the technological affordances of digital media devices and the role of thinking, feeling, and experiential human subjects that use them.²³ In doing so, it produces what digital ethnographers refer to as ‘theoretically enriched descriptions’ (Hine 2015: 56) of digital mediation in practice.

While case studies can be utilized for a range of scholarly purposes, this thesis employs the case study as a qualitative research strategy inspired by ethnography, in which each case is studied for the sake of providing ‘thick’, or detailed, descriptions of one or more socio-technological contexts rather than broad, generalizable explanations for socio-technological phenomena.

This does not mean that the thesis does not want to say anything about global humanitarianism more generally, however. Indeed, as John Gerring argues, what defines case studies is the ‘reliance on evidence drawn from a single case and its attempts, at the same time, to illuminate features of a broader set of cases’ (Gerring, 2007: 29-32). According to Gerring, case studies should thus be regarded as the ‘intensive study of a single unit or a small number of units (the cases), for the purpose of understanding a larger class of similar units (a population of cases)’ (ibid: 37). Indeed, by tracing their differences and similarities, this thesis discusses the chosen cases in relation to the broader question of how and with what consequences global humanitarianism is increasingly digitally mediated.

Specifically, Facebook, Sense of Home, and the ShareTheMeal donation app are examined in this thesis as ‘paradigmatic cases’ that highlight socio-technological dynamics that are in many ways unique to each media technology, but which might nevertheless offer a number of ‘reference points’

for broader discussions about the digital mediation of global humanitarianism (see also Flyvbjerg, 2006: 332). Hence, the cases have been selected in order to offer varied and detailed insights into the issues identified in the extant literature on media and humanitarianism. For one, as elaborated in Chapter 1.3, the emergence of social media platforms have forced scholars to rethink how humanitarian disasters are shown and seen by the public, due in great part to the growing reliance on algorithms for sorting and curating digital information (Brighenti, 2010: 91-108; see also Bucher, 2012; Tsinovoi, 2020). That is why the question of how algorithms shape how humanitarian disasters are shown and seen by caring publics in the Global North is the focus of Chapter 4. Similarly, as noted earlier, the rise of VR in the aid industry has been accompanied by claims about the novel experiential and emotional forms of audience engagement it enables, thus raising questions about the

‘regimes of pity’ (Chouliaraki, 2006a) made possible by this particular media technology. For this reason, the question of how audiences are invited to ‘care’

for vulnerable others in and through virtual encounters is the focus of Chapter 5. Lastly, donation apps are widely believed to have introduced new ways of responding to humanitarian disasters that are both more accessible and less time-consuming than traditional forms of everyday humanitarian action and which are claimed to be more appealing for a new generation of potential do-gooders that have been born and raised in the digital age. In Chapter 6, I thus ask what kind of ‘everyday humanitarianism’ (Richey, 2018) that donation apps encourage, and discuss what this might tell us about the nature of global helping in the digital age.

There are two important questions to address in light of this: the first is the question of why I have chosen to focus on three very different digital media technologies as opposed to one or a number of similar ones; and the second is why each media technology is analysed in relation to only one as opposed to all three of the issues identified in the extant literature. Concerning the first question, the reason for focusing on media technologies that are fundamentally different in technical terms is the observation that, to draw principal conclusions about a broad research problem, variation in its empirical manifestations is necessary. That is to say that no single empirical instance of a complex issue, such as the digital mediation of global humanitarianism, can provide enough variation from which to draw more principal conclusions.

Hence, I have chosen to prioritize empirical variation in my selection of cases.

At the same time, however, I have also chosen to study each media technology in relation to only one of the issues identified in the extant literature rather than in relation to all three. While this might seem counterintuitive at first, the reason for this is to make room for a more exhaustive analysis of each media technology. In this way, when read individually, the analytical chapters provide a detailed understanding of one media technology in relation to one theoretical issue whereas, when read together, the chapters provide varied perspectives that allow me to draw conclusions that relate to broader issues beyond the specific contexts that I study.

Balancing a sufficient level of analytical detail with the need for empirical variation is also the reason for limiting my analysis to three media technologies, since analysing the complex technological configuration of these devices, as well as the social imaginaries that circumscribe them in practice, presupposes a great deal of familiarity with both the media technologies

Figure 1: Research design

themselves and the social contexts in which they are employed. Considering this, I reached the conclusion that analysing three cases was both manageable in terms of detail and sufficient in terms of variation. But why these three media technologies and not others, then? When selecting from the vast pool of digital media technologies that have emerged and proliferated in recent years, it was essential that the media technologies I chose to study had not only recently begun to receive substantial interest from the humanitarian sector but that they had also—in spite of this—already been employed extensively across multiple humanitarian agencies. The rationale behind this was to ensure that the conclusions drawn from the analysis of these specific media technologies have relevance beyond the confines of the socio-technological contexts that I study. Indeed, it is because of their perceived cultural ‘newness’ and the broader public interest that surrounds them, together with their recent consolidation within the humanitarian community, that Facebook, Sense of Home, and ShareTheMeal have been chosen as cases through which to study the digital mediation of global humanitarianism.

In summary, the research design of this thesis thus organizes the analytical chapters according to a specific theoretical issue and a specific digital media technology. As shown in Figure 1 (above), each of the chapters will analyse the digital mediation of global humanitarianism by focusing on one specific digital media technology in relation to one of the theoretical issues identified in the extant literature only. The theoretical and empirical insights generated

Chapter 4

•Theoretical focus:

Visibility

•Empirical context:

Facebook (algorithms)

Chapter 5

•Theoretical focus:

Emotions

•Empirical context:

Sense of Home (VR)

Chapter 6

•Theoretical focus:

Action

•Empirical context:

ShareTheMeal (apps

)

by this will be discussed at the end of each chapter while the final, concluding chapter will combine the insights generated by the individual chapters to answer the research question and point forward to future avenues for research.