Screen Mediated Work in an Ethnography of Official Statistics

The omnipresence of screen mediated work has consequences for researchers interested in ethnographically observing digital work ‘in action’ in co-located, face-to-face, fieldwork. Researchers can encounter difficulties such as deciding how and when to observe the role of screens, and observing screen mediated work when figures and graphs appear briefly or out of view. Focussing on organizational knowledge practices, the chapter first discusses how we can conceptualize the roles of screens in digital work by reviewing five ethnographic research traditions: (1) symbolic interactionism; (2) ethnomethodology; (3) panoptic theories of power; (4) actor-network theories; (5) sociomateriality in organizational processes. Next, the chapter considers how to practically study screen mediated work via an ethnographic research project in a statistical office. On the basis of this project, we can distinguish five ‘small m’ methodological positions for conducting fieldwork in screen mediated workspaces, illustrating how ‘screen demonstration interviews’ and (participant) observation are conducted.