Massive :: Micro :: Sensemaking :: COVID
Project Description
How is the experience of COVID-19 transforming everyday life? How are we making sense of this moment on both a global and granular scale? This project was launched in April 2020 in recognition of the growing problems emerging from social distancing, working and learning from home, being in lockdowns. We developed a unique collaborative digital ethnography research project to respond to the need for critical study of the lived experience and social impacts of the pandemic. This is a time-sensitive, 6-month project to collaboratively generate rich autoethnographic accounts of the impact of life under pandemic conditions even as these change.
Responding to a general call, more than 150 artists, activists, and social researchers have been collaboratively studying the social impact of COVID-19 moment through an autoethnographic approach. Experimental collaboration include a 21 day series of prompts to consider three research questions: How are we making sense of the Self, our relationships, and the world around us? How is COVID-19 helping us think about the relationships between humans, machines, and the planet? Through this pandemic, how might we understand the relation between massive and microscopic sensibilities and ways of knowing?
Read more in the blogposts below. Follow the progress of this experimental initiative on Twitter or Instagram hashtag: #massive_micro.
Primary Facilitators
Anne Harris
Annette Markham
Project Posts
Making Social Change Requires Academics to Take Risks
Post by Annette Markham, 10 November 2020: This year illuminates many things about the power of microscopic actions and decisions on the ground among everyday people to make impact on issues and systems that are massive, overpowering, or seemingly unchangeable. Among...
Articles studying the impact of COVID-19
Articles that study lived experience of COVID-19 through the lens of digital ethnography and autoethnography
Thinking Aloud, some video clips about the Massive_Micro Project
In these video clips, Anne Harris and Annette Markham think aloud about the process, next steps, and ‘where we’re at’ in the Massive_Microscopic_Sensemaking project.
“21 Days of”: A COVID-19 Autoethnography Experiment
The immediate and overwhelming level of interest is a powerful indicator of how much people really want to connect with others to try and make sense of this strange time of global trauma. The process we put in place is experimental and collaborative:
Massive and Microscopic Sensemaking Call
Call for Expressions of Interest As the world grapples with the fallout from the pandemic of 2020, people everywhere struggle to deal with everyday challenges. [there are struggles but also the renewal of old hobbies, finding...