Red Juntos y Familias en Acción

Ethnographic research takes a highly participatory approach, which is based on a systematic approach (Lennie &Tacchi, 2013). This model is important for understanding the communication structure and information flow of people’s lives within the community (Lennie &Tacchi, 2013). Simply exploring the communication activities, the use of communication technologies and the availability of communication channels within the community allows the researcher to gain a better understanding of the community structure and the social interaction of community members (Lennie &Tacchi, 2013). Ethnography as a research methodology is a highly valued research approach when assessing communication for development research. This methodology however requires time that exceeds a month, as argued by Dutta (2011) who states that ethnographic non-participation observation is a time consuming method.

In this research, a period of less than one month was used because of time constraints. This research therefore borrowed ethnographic non-participant observation as a tool of data collection but because of the time limitation we cannot call this ethnographic research. Non- participant observation is a systematic method of data collection that is conducted in the real

community to learn about the social and cultural life of the community without interrupting or intervening in the people’s way of life (LeCompte & Schensul, 2010; O'Leary, 2010). The purpose of using this method is to provide insights into communication needs of the community living in the UXO contaminated area. Since the researcher was not part of the community, the community locals did not freely share ideas about whether the programme implementation was actually meeting their needs or not. (This is because the community members are not open to sharing with persons they consider strangers.)

Ethnographic research is a long-term process and the duration of time needed is difficult to determine (LeCompte & Schensul, 2010), but it runs for more than one month. Nevertheless, due to the time constraints of this research, the researcher spent four weeks in the community while collecting data. In order to achieve high-quality ethnographic research with a short period of research time, the research objectives needed to be narrowed and focused to address specific issues (LeCompte & Schensul, 2010). The community leader, who is respected by the community members and acts as a gatekeeper to the community, was well informed and had an opportunity to discuss the aim of the research before the research commenced. Consent or verbal agreement was also required. The ethnographic research process combined observational interaction with people in the researched community and the use of such tools of data collection as field notes and photographs (LeCompte & Schensul, 2010). These research techniques permitted the researcher to determine the communication needs of the community by observing the communication processes and their day-to-day activities. Every interaction made with the community members or community leaders during the observation period was noted or recorded precisely for data analysis later.

The ethnographic non-participation method has challenges and limitations that have the potential to affect the results of a research project negatively (Riemer, 2009; Fuller, Hodkinson, Hodkinson& Unwin, 2005). This method has four main limitations. The method takes time, up to more than a year, and the researcher is required to be present in the study location for all this time. Moreover, it doesn’t only take time in the collection of data, but also in the analysis and writing up of the data (Fuller et al., 2005). Even though the time was insufficient to carry out ethnographic non-participation, the method was used because of its potential to provide useful and insightful data for the study. To counter the challenge of time, the study focused on data specific to the research objective, that is observation of community members’ behaviour with regard to UXO. Behaviour was observed as it is determines the success of previous MRE communication, and any current behaviour determines the communication needs of the community for future MRE programmes. In addition, methods like focus group and interviews were used to add to the data gathered.

The second limitation is that since ethnographic methods uses triangulation methods, the data collected needs to be validated and verified and if it is insufficient, it can negatively affect the results, mainly through inconsistencies (Fuller et al., 2005). To overcome this challenge, the data collected through ethnographic observation was qualified against the data collected through interviews, the focus group, and through the literature reviewed. Third, since ethnography is about a particular context, it is limited in that it is difficult to produce any generalization (Riemer, 2009). Like other qualitative research methods, this method can’t be extrapolated to other areas. This limitation, however, doesn’t have a negative impact on the research results. Lastly, the ethnographic method is limited in that there is no way to check the

validity of the researcher’s conclusions, as normally there is no numerical data (Riemer, 2009: Fuller et al., 2005). This limitation was overcome by using information provided through the reviewed literature.

In addition, ethnographic non-participatory observation added to the understanding of how local media are being employed by the current mine risk education programme. The researcher spent approximately one week mapping the community setting to fully evaluate the surrounding environment of the community, such as the village office, temple, village health centre and school. A hand-drawing of the community map (social mapping) (Nielsen et al., 2003) with assistance of community members was made by the researcher and become an important part of the research analysis.

Reeves et al. (2008) state that the typical ethnographic research method requires more time invested in the collection of useful data. The time suggested by Reeves et al (2008) and LeCompte & Schensul (2010) as the minimum for an ethnographic research method is one month. However, given the time this research project allowed, ethnographic observation was focused mainly on public areas for the collection of maximum data, and to accommodate the time-limitation, focus groups and interviews were used to compensate for any lack of time with additional data. Observation was done by taking a non-participatory role in the community’s day-to-day activities in the village pubic areas such as the village centre, the temple, farms, and in the market.

In the market, observation was done to establish if there was any trade in UXO as scrap metal, and the various communication methods used. In the temple, observation was done to establish if there was UXO communication done during worship. On the farms, observation was

done to establish whether villagers were involved in risky behaviour and how they handled an encounter with UXO. In the village center, which is mainly administrative in nature, observation was to establish the information available concerning risky UXO behaviour and how the village administrators communicated information about UXO.