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Popular Culture Studies and Autoethnography: An Essay on Popular Culture Studies and Autoethnography: An Essay on
Method Method
Jimmie Manning
Tony E. Adams
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Manning, J., & Adams, T. E. (2015). Popular culture studies and autoethnography: An essay on method.
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2015/09/PCSJ-Volume-3-Issues-12.pdf
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The Popular Culture Studies Journal, Vol. 3, No. 1&2
Copyright © 2015
187
Popular Culture Studies and Autoethnography:
An Essay on Method
JIMMIE MANNING AND TONY E. ADAMS
At a recent Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association
national conference, I (Jimmie) opened the social media app Yik Yak to
pass the time while waiting for a session to begin. Yik Yak has become
quite popular, especially on and around college campuses, as it allows
users to post anonymous messages that can be read by others who also
have the app and are in close proximity. It is, in many ways, a more
anonymous form of Twitter. Because of such anonymity, it is not unusual
to see secret confessions, rude comments about others, people making
bizarre posts, and even requests for support in embarrassing situations.
The yak I saw that particularly caught my attention seemed to be a mix of
a secret confession and a request for support: “Someone did something
called autoethnography in my last session. Really different. Left me
crying. Is it wrong to say I’m intrigued?”
I quickly yakked back: “Wrong? Heck no. Welcome to the club!” And
then, “Check out the Adams, Holman Jones, and Ellis book to learn more
about autoethnography.” That was the beginning of a stream of yaks
where participants asked for more details about the presentation,
mentioned that they were interested in the method, and asked questions
about how autoethnography could be considered “research.” There were
also some skeptical responses, including someone who questioned the
objectivity of autoethnography (an unusual question given that so much
popular culture research is humanistic) and someone who said it sounded
narcissistic and navel-gazing. However, yakking allowed us to have a
188 Jimmie Manning and Tony E. Adams
productive conversation about autoethnography, one where people had a
chance to learn about a method that has an increasing presence across
many disciplines in the social sciences and humanities.
Discussions on Yik Yak are ephemeral, and even though that
conversation is a distant memory we believe that people who do popular
culture studies would benefit from learning more about autoethnography.
In an attempt to provide something more substantial and enduring, we
collaborated to write this essay and edit a special issue of The Popular
Culture Studies Journal (Manning and Adams). The goal of both is to
offer newcomers to the method a sense of what autoethnography is and
how it can be used in popular culture studies; while simultaneously
providing new ideas for those who are already familiar with
autoethnographic methods.
We begin this essay by defining autoethnography, paying special
attention to the various orientations of autoethnographic research. We then
review popular culture research that has used autoethnography as a
method of inquiry before identifying key strengths of autoethnography. As
those strengths reflect, autoethnography is a valid, viable, and vital
method for popular culture research. We conclude by examining criteria
for evaluating autoethnography, especially in terms of quality and risk. As
we demonstrate, autoethnography offers another way to study popular
texts and contexts, or, in the words of Stuart Hall, the “local hopes and
local aspirations, local tragedies, and local scenarios that are the everyday
practices and the everyday experiences of ordinary folks” (107-108).
Defining Autoethnography
Autoethnography is a research method that foregrounds the researcher’s
personal experience (auto) as it is embedded within, and informed by,
cultural identities and con/texts (ethno) and as it is expressed through
writing, performance, or other creative means (graphy). More specifically,
Popular Culture Studies and Autoethnography 189
it is a method that blends the purposes, techniques, and theories of social
research—primarily ethnography—with the purposes, techniques, and
theories associated with genres of life writing, especially autobiography,
memoir, and personal essay.
For example, and similar to ethnography, autoethnographers often
take, as their focus, their experiences with cultural identities, popular texts,
and a community’s attitudes, beliefs, and practices. Autoethnographers
study these phenomena by doing fieldwork, which includes observing and
interacting with others, conducting archival research, and directly
participating in community life. They often take “field notes” of their
experiences; consult with relevant research and theories about the
identities, texts, attitudes, beliefs, and practices; and may interview
members of the culture to inform their understandings.
Similar to genres of life writing, autoethnographers value personal
experience, memory, and storytelling. They are interested in how people—
especially the researcher—make sense of mundane or notable life events
and the lessons they have learned across the lifespan (Bochner and Ellis).
Autoethnographers share this sense-making and these lessons with the
purpose of offering guidance and wisdom to others. Autoethnographers
might consult with artifacts such as photographs, diaries, letters, and other
personal texts, and often use storytelling devices such as narrative voice,
plot, and character development to represent their experiences.
Although we will discuss variations in autoethnographic practice, we
want to highlight three characteristics shared by most autoethnographic
research. First, autoethnographers assume that culture flows through the
self; the personal, the particular, and the local are inseparably constituted
and infused by others as well as by popular texts, beliefs, and practices.
For example, in justifying his use of autoethnography, John Fiske
characterizes himself
not as an individual, but as a site and as an instance of reading, as
an agent of culture in process—not because the reading I produced
190 Jimmie Manning and Tony E. Adams
was in any way socially representative of, or extrapolable to,
others, but because the process by which I produced it was a
structured instance of culture in practice. (86)
Fiske further writes, “Any personal negotiation of our immediate social
relations is a necessary part of our larger politics—the micro-political is
where the macro-politics of the social structure are made concrete in the
practices of everyday life” (97). Ron Pelias makes a similar observation
about personal experience, noting that we are each “situated within an
historical and cultural context,” and, as such, ideology drapes our “every
utterance” (Performance 152). To be an autoethnographer and to do
autoethnography means recognizing that personal experience cannot be
easily or definitively separated from social and relational contexts. In this
way, personal experience becomes a valid, viable, and vital kind of data
from which to make meaning and use in research.
Second, autoethnographers engage in laborious, honest, and nuanced
self-reflection—often referred to as “reflexivity”—in an attempt to
“explore and interrogate sociocultural forces and discursive practices” that
inform personal experience and the research process (Grant, Short, and
Turner 5; Berry and Clair). More specifically, reflexivity allows
autoethnographers to identify, interrogate, and make explicit the persistent
interplay between personal-cultural experiences; consider their roles in
doing research and creating a research account; and hold themselves
responsible for their mistakes or errors in judgment in a research project
(Ellis, “Telling Secrets”). Given the use of reflexivity, autoethnography
stands in stark contrast to traditional social scientific studies in the sense
that terms such as “objectivity,” “researcher neutrality,” and “stable
meaning” are eschewed in favor of understanding the researcher’s careful
and thoughtful interpretation of lived experience and the research process
(Grant, Short, and Turner 3).
Third, autoethnographers tend to write about life-changing epiphanies
(Denzin); difficult and perhaps repetitious encounters (Boylorn, “As
Popular Culture Studies and Autoethnography 191
Seen”); insights about, and dilemmas in, doing and writing up research
(Chawla); mundane but notable interactions and events (Bolen; Speedy);
and experiences about which they felt shame, confusion, and/or despair
(Herrmann, “I Know”). As Carolyn Ellis eloquently notes, “I write when
my world falls apart or the meaning I have constructed for myself is in
danger of doing so” (Ethnographic I 33). Tami Spry makes a similar
observation: “After years of moving through pain with pen and paper,” she
writes, “asking the nurse for these tools in the morning after losing our son
in childbirth was the only thing I could make my body do” (36).
Autoethnographers write about these often-private experiences not only to
better understand those events themselves, but also to show others how
they make sense of and learn lessons from them.
Although a large community of scholars across many disciplines has
contributed to the quickly-expanding corpus of autoethnographic research,
we also recognize variations in autoethnographic practice, all of which
emphasize different aspects of the social research-life writing continuum.
Drawing from our previous work (Adams and Manning), here we review
four common orientations—social-scientific, interpretive-humanistic,
critical, and creative-artistic—that many autoethnographers use to design,
conduct, represent, and evaluate autoethnographic projects. Although we
list four distinct orientations, it is not unusual for autoethnographers to
blend the goals and techniques of each in a single research project or as
they write about the same experiences over time. This flexibility is linked
to the reflexive nature of autoethnographic research practices.
One common autoethnographic orientation is the social-scientific
autoethnography, sometimes referred to as analytic autoethnography
(Anderson and Glass-Coffin). This orientation involves a combination of
fieldwork, interpretive qualitative data, systematic data analysis, and
personal experience to describe the experiences of being in, or a part of, a
community. Some social-scientific autoethnographies foreground the
researcher’s experiences (e.g., Zibricky), but most tend to treat personal
192 Jimmie Manning and Tony E. Adams
experience as secondary to a more-traditional appearing qualitative
research report (e.g., Manning, “I Never”). Similar to other social
scientific qualitative research, these autoethnographies might also include
discussions about rigor, systematic data collection, use of coding
procedures, and valid and reliable findings (e.g., Burnard; Chang;
Manning and Kunkel, Researching). Social-scientific autoethnographies
are often presented as written research reports using the traditional
introduction-literature review-methodology-results-discussion format
common to most social scientific research (e.g., Adams, “Paradoxes”).
A social-scientific orientation to autoethnography is one of the least
common, as the inherent and required use of personal experience that
accompanies autoethnography is seen by some as threatening to social
scientific desires for objectivity and researcher neutrality. On the contrary,
we believe that social science scholarship that uses autoethnography
allows for lucid interpretations of research findings as readers are
connected to vivid accounts of lived experience. Given that there is often a
chasm between social scientific and humanistic approaches to popular
culture studies, this orientation of autoethnography might be especially
beneficial for blurring lines between those research orientations and
combining ideas that have been generated across the different
methodological paradigms.
An orientation that will probably feel more familiar to many who
study popular culture—especially because of its heavy focus on cultural
description and analysis—is interpretive-humanistic autoethnography.
This approach to autoethnography typically involves fieldwork, the use of
extant research and theories, and the researcher’s personal experiences and
perspectives. At the heart of this orientation is “thick description,” the
principle of recording personal and cultural experiences in descriptive,
thoughtful, and illuminating ways (Geertz 10). Although some
interpretive-humanistic autoethnographers use ethnographic research
methods such as participant observation, interviews, and/or archival
Popular Culture Studies and Autoethnography 193
research (e.g., Goodall), many choose to make the thick description of
personal experience the primary focus of a project (e.g., Ellis, “Maternal
Connections”). A coherent representational structure should also exist for
interpretive-humanistic autoethnographies, but it does not need to follow
the introduction-literature review-method-results-discussion format often
expected of social-scientific research. Based on the literature review we
provide later in this essay, we estimate that the interpretive-humanistic
orientation is one of the two most common orientations for
autoethnographies that research popular culture.
The other most common orientation for popular culture
autoethnography is critical autoethnography. Similar to other methods
that involve critical approaches (e.g., Hall), these autoethnographies use
personal experience to identify harmful abuses of power, structures that
cultivate and perpetuate oppression, instances of inequality, and unjust
cultural values and practices (Boylorn and Orbe). Critical
autoethnographies often call attention to harmful cultural assumptions
about race (e.g., Boylorn, “As Seen”), gender equality (e.g., Allen and
Piercy), sexuality (e.g., Adams and Holman Jones), social class (e.g.,
Hodges), grief (e.g., Paxton), and colonialism (e.g., Pathak). Critical
autoethnographies also make arguments about what texts, attitudes,
beliefs, and practices should and should not exist in social life, and, as
such, are not concerned about objectivity and researcher neutrality.
Whereas some autoethnographers focus on the use of more traditional
research practices and choose more traditional forms to represent their
autoethnographic research, creative-artistic autoethnographers are more
concerned with the life writing side of the social research-life writing
continuum. As such, those who create creative-artistic autoethnographies
value aesthetics, evocative and vulnerable stories, and the use of different
forms or media to represent their work, including fiction (e.g., Leavy,
Fiction), poetry (e.g., Faulkner; Speedy), performance (e.g., Pelias,
Performance), music (e.g., Bartleet and Ellis), and blogs (e.g., Boylorn,
194 Jimmie Manning and Tony E. Adams
“Blackgirl Blogs”). Creative-artistic autoethnographers might consider
themselves “artists” rather than “researchers” and are the least likely to
use academic jargon or care about systematic data collection. Instead, they
are moved by the research/artistic process, emergent questions, and new
ideas. They often take great care in the craft, feeling, and flow of research
and incorporate these sensory processes into their finished texts.
As popular culture scholars embrace autoethnographic research, it is
important to recognize that there is no single way to do autoethnography
and that these orientations fall across the social research-life writing
continuum. Similar to Laura Ellingson and other scholars who encourage
the blending of methods, we believe some of the best autoethnography can
happen when orientations overlap. This overlap might be subtle, such as a
social-scientific autoethnography adopting a critical tone as personal
experience is brought into the discussion section (e.g., Zibricky); or it
might be more obvious, such as personal artwork being placed throughout
an interpretive-humanistic essay to complement the written text (e.g.,
Metta). Because autoethnography is a form of research that involves at
least some creativity, blending orientations can be illuminating and useful.
Connecting the Personal to the Popular
Now that we have explained what autoethnography is and some of the
most common ways that researchers choose to do it, we turn our attention
to the ways autoethnography can be beneficial for popular culture studies.
To begin, we review popular culture research that has used
autoethnography to provide a sense of how the method has been used as
well as to serve as inspiration for those who want to do their own
autoethnographic projects. In the spirit of autoethnography, particularly its
focus on the use of personal experience, we begin by sharing our
experiences related to autoethnographic popular culture studies.
Popular Culture Studies and Autoethnography 195
I (Jimmie) have mostly written social-scientific and interpretive-
humanistic autoethnographies. My social scientific work includes a
qualitative interview research project where I interviewed viewers of the
television program Grey’s Anatomy to learn about how they identified
with the characters featured in the program (Manning, “I Never”). Because
I found that most participants identified as the characters—people would
say, “I am Meredith Grey” or “I’m just like Christina Yang”—I opened
the essay with an autoethnographic vignette about how my coworkers and
I engaged in similar behaviors as part of our office banter. I then blended
that opening into the discussion section of the essay where I offered a
theory of symbolic boasting, or the idea that people place themselves
inside particular popular culture figures or characters in order to boost
their personal worth. In other words, even though the theorizing I did was
tied to the data, it was also informed by my personal experiences that
resembled what participants in the study were sharing.
In another study, I blended autoethnography and media criticism of
Catfish: The TV Show. In this mixed-orientation project, I juxtaposed my
own story about being catfished (i.e., tricked by someone online) with
analysis of the television program (Manning, “Ipsedixitism”). This back
and forth between my personal account and the arguments I made as part
of the criticism allowed for an expanded sense of scope in the essay. I
could also understand more about the assumptions and values I carried
when approaching the text as a media critic. As I argue in an upcoming
essay (“Relationships and Popular Culture”), the awareness that
autoethnography can allow is helpful for researchers in the social sciences
and humanities. Not only does it provide the potential for new insights and
research ideas about a topic or project, but it also allows a good personal
sense of values, assumptions, and inclinations as they relate to the
research.
I have also used more traditional interpretive-humanistic
autoethnography. In a project I described as audience autoethnography, I
196 Jimmie Manning and Tony E. Adams
examined the thoughts and feelings I had when watching the television
program Mad Men, specifically my reactions to storylines regarding
alcoholism (Manning, “Finding Yourself”). Even though my father was
not much like the main character Don Draper, I still found myself making
comparisons between the two. These comparisons motivated me to
consider my father’s motivations for drinking and how they were probably
quite different from Don’s. I also considered Betty Draper’s feelings of
being trapped to how I imagined my mother felt. The essay included thick
description both from my experiences as child and the television program.
That allowed me to theorize about how we use popular narratives and the
characters in them to make sense of our own lives.
I (Tony) too have used autoethnography to study popular culture texts.
In my first book, Narrating the Closet: An Autoethnography of Same-Sex
Attraction, I used personal experiences to write alongside, and against,
popular representations of coming out of the closet—that is,
representations of the moment when a person discloses a lesbian, gay,
bisexual, or queer identity. I specifically discuss coming out
representations featured in the television sitcom Will and Grace and films
such as Brokeback Mountain and Another Gay Movie, and as discussed by
popular writers such as E. Lynn Harris and Dan Savage. In orientation, I
would classify the book as a mix of interpretive-humanistic, critical, and
creative-artistic autoethnography.
In another essay (Adams, “Watching”), I use autoethnography to
describe how the values and practices represented in the reality television
series Here Comes Honey Boo Boo align with my experiences of being
raised in a rural, lower class environment. And I am currently finishing an
essay about “Queering Popular Culture,” in which I use both queer theory
and my personal experiences to offer queer interpretations of popular,
mass mediated texts such as The Golden Girls, The Leftovers, and Inside
Out. In orientation, I would classify these essays as a mix of interpretive-
humanistic and critical autoethnography.
Popular Culture Studies and Autoethnography 197
Beyond our work, there is a small but growing body of
autoethnographic popular culture studies. For example, some authors have
written about their relationships with popular music. In one essay, Andrew
Herrmann described how popular cultural texts—particularly music—can
assist in the “creation of self” (“Daniel Amos” 7); and, in another essay,
reflected on his punk identity as he interacts with younger members of
punk culture (“Never Mind”). Patricia Leavy described her connections
with musicians such as Tori Amos and Paula Cole, her daughter’s
connections with musicians such as Pink and Katy Perry, and how these
musicians espouse empowering messages for women (“Confessions”).
Derek Greenfield also examined the power of music to inspire, sharing his
accounts of using hip-hop in the classroom. In an auto/ethnographic study
of popular music and karaoke, Rob Drew described what happens in
karaoke environments, such as who participates, how, and why people
choose and perform particular songs. Stacy Holman Jones has written two
books about her experiences with torch singing, feminism, and popular
music (Kaleidoscope Notes; Torch Singing). And Art Bochner used
Leonard Cohen’s “Bird on a Wire” to write about his tenuous relationship
with his father, including the ways he has freed himself from the grief and
memories of his father’s actions and how he has learned to live and love
himself—and others—more (“Freeing”).
Other autoethnographers have critiqued popular representations of
race, ethnicity, and gender. Robin Boylorn (“As Seen”) used
autoethnography to describe and critique problematic representations of
Black women on reality television shows, especially representations that
perpetuated erroneous stereotypes and assumptions. Ron Pelias used
autoethnography to write against harmful binaries of masculinity,
particularly the (perceived) need to be a “Jarhead,” a tough and violent
man, and the fear of being called a weak “girly-man,” a phrase
popularized by actor-celebrity-politician Arnold Schwarzenegger
(“Jarhead”). And an entire issue of Cultural Studies ↔ Critical
198 Jimmie Manning and Tony E. Adams
Methodologies, “Iconography of the West: Autoethnographic
Representations of the West(erns),” included essays by authors who use
autoethnography to write against “the script of how we discuss notions of
the West” (Alexander 224). Authors specifically discussed their (lack of)
relationship to representations of the West, disturbing characteristics of the
Western television and film genre, and how recurring motifs of Western-
themed texts can be perpetuated and embodied by audiences (e.g.,
discourses about exploration and domination; human connections to the
environment; and relationships between “Cowboys” and “Indians”).
Some autoethnographers have described their media use, fandom, and
the ways in which they relate to popular texts, events, and celebrities. For
example, David Lavery’s autoethnographic essay about crying at
television programs—written in response to his own tears during the final
episode of Six Feet Under—illustrated how popular culture texts can bring
us together, make us reflect on our own lives, and encourage us to think
about the values we hold dear. Although Lavery clearly wrote his essay
from the perspective as a fan of the series, Jeanette Monaco took a more
explicit approach to theorizing about how fandom ties to popular culture
research by advocating that autoethnography is a way of making motives
more explicit in popular culture studies. Damion Sturm also used
autoethnography to study fandom, drawing from his experiences as a fan
of gaming, football, racing, and wrestling to consider the affects and
contexts in which fandom occurs.
Some explorations of fandom have been more personal and intimate.
Markus Wohlfeil described his experiences as a fan of celebrity Jena
Malone and how the actress has been present in his everyday life—
including his awkward dating experiences—and by way of numerous
autographed photos, wall posters, and films (Wohlfeil and Whelan). Other
fan-oriented autoethnographies have been more media-centered. For
example, Danielle Stern described her connections with the feminist
characters and messages of three televisual series—My So-Called Life,
Popular Culture Studies and Autoethnography 199
Felicity, and Sex and the City—and how these characters and messages
informed her intimate relationships. Stern placed media texts in the
forefront of her essay, but Shinsuke Eguchi—who also explored
connections between intimate relationships and media texts, only with a
focus on interracial dating—chose to put his personal experience at the
forefront of his writing with the critique of media texts serving more in a
supporting role.
Although this review is not exhaustive, it provides a sense of the many
ways that autoethnography has been used in popular culture studies. As
the review demonstrates, many different forms and genres of popular
culture are being explored, and by way of many different methodological
approaches. Collectively, the essays also help to illustrate some of the
many strengths that accompany the use of autoethnography for studying
popular culture. In the next section, we more explicitly consider these
strengths, drawing from the contents of this special issue to provide
concrete examples.
Strengths of Autoethnography for Popular Culture Research
Here we articulate five strengths of autoethnography for popular culture
research. Our hope is that by making these strengths explicit, popular
culture scholars will gain both a better understanding of how they can use
autoethnography in their work as well as be able to justify that work to
others who might not be familiar with autoethnography. These strengths
include the ability for researchers to 1) use personal experience to write
alongside popular culture theories and texts, especially to show how
personal experiences resemble or are informed by popular culture; 2) use
personal experience to criticize, write against, and talk back to popular
culture texts, especially texts that do not match their personal experiences
or that espouse harmful messages; 3) describe how they personally act as
audience members, specifically how they use, engage, and relate to
200 Jimmie Manning and Tony E. Adams
popular texts, events, and/or celebrities; 4) describe the processes that
contribute to the production of popular culture texts; and 5) create
accessible research texts that can be understood by a variety of audiences.
Although most popular culture autoethnographies will not capitalize on
every strength, we expand on each one here so that one or more might be
used in a particular autoethnographic project.
First, autoethnographers can use personal experience to write
alongside popular culture theories and texts and, more specifically, show
how their experiences resemble or are informed by those same theories
and texts. In this way, autoethnography can be used to illustrate the
importance of theories and texts for particular audiences. As Hall writes,
“It is only through the way in which we represent and imagine ourselves
that we come to know how we are constituted and who we are” (111).
Many essays in the special issue use autoethnography to write alongside
popular culture texts and show how those texts influence their experiences
and relationships. For example, Janice Hamlet describes how different
television and movie characters have served as her personal mentors,
showing how characters such as Celie from The Color Purple or Olivia
Pope from Scandal have informed her experiences as a Black woman.
Similarly, Renata Ferdinand shares her stories of being inspired or shamed
about having dark skin based on both celebrities as well as popular culture
representations. M. Cuellar draws from parasocial theory to describe his
relationship with media, telling stories about how different celebrity
personalities served as his mediated boyfriends in times of loneliness and
longing. And Michaela D. E. Meyer takes yet a different approach,
making sense of falling in love with her future husband against the
backdrop of the popular television series Castle.
Autoethnographic studies about how popular culture has informed
personal lives are not limited to television and film. For example, L. N.
Badger weaves popular literature (e.g., Flowers in the Attic) with
narratives about illness, insanity, and her family. Sandra Carpenter writes
Popular Culture Studies and Autoethnography 201
alongside the work of bell hooks and Dorothy Allison, considering how
their writings inform her sense of history and space. Linda Levitt
demonstrates how early feminist icons, including Mary Tyler Moore and
Maude, influenced the ways she understands and lives feminism. Finally,
Gary Strain considers how the board game Pretty Pretty Princess offered
him a context to play with gender and express his femininity. Each of
these essays shows palpable, personal, and profound ways that popular
culture has played into or against the author’s life experiences, both
informing and constituting their lived worlds.
Second, autoethnographers can use personal experience to criticize,
write against, and talk back to popular culture texts, especially texts that
do not match their personal experiences or that espouse harmful messages.
In this special issue, numerous autoethnographers did just that. Authors
critique harmful representations of class (Rennels) and ability (Scott); the
inaccurate and harmful ways in which Brazilian comics portray
indigenous Amazonian people (de Almeida); and everyday moments in
which Disney princess culture—a culture that is problematic in terms of
feminist values—infuses the lives of parents and children (Shuler). We
mentioned previously that Strain described how the board game Pretty
Pretty Princess offered him a context to play with gender and express his
femininity, but Strain also offers important critiques of the game, not only
in its encouragement of competition but also its insidious racialized
aspects such as the game’s celebration of White beauty norms.
As the topics of these essays and of the many essays reviewed earlier
suggest, pointing to the harms of popular culture texts will likely result in
a project that embraces a critical orientation. To be certain, problematic
representations related to race, ethnicity, class, gender, nationality,
sexuality, and ability—among countless other identities—are often
harmful. In addition to exposing personal and cultural injuries related to
identities and social inequality, autoethnographers should also consider
how popular culture provides and perpetuates harmful information. Such
202 Jimmie Manning and Tony E. Adams
information could be about health, relationships, technology, civic
processes, or a host of other topics. For example, actress and talk show
host Jenny McCarthy famously made anti-vaccination comments that led
to movements against allowing children to be vaccinated as well as
countermovements, often led by health scientists and physicians, that
involved educating people about why vaccines are not harmful. An
autoethnography from a parent who bought into McCarthy’s popular
rhetoric but who has since realized the importance of vaccinations might
help other parents to consider how they, too, might be tempted to believe
popular discourses about their children’s health.
The first two strengths of autoethnography we identify here combine
to suggest a third strength: The method can show how researchers serve as
audiences of particular texts (Berry). As Rob Drew notes, “Few people
nowadays linger within particular ‘audiences’ long enough for researchers
to monitor them” (25). Related, Dhoest critiques closed, survey questions
asked of audiences about their media use as these questions “often hide
mixed feelings or more complex stances” about such use (37). Instead, he
suggests, autoethnography can provide more complex insider accounts
about how people use media – specifically how they engage and relate to
popular texts, events, and/or celebrities. Such a shift also allows for the
dominant research focus on media or popular culture effects to expand to
consider how affect circulates in relation to some aspect of popular culture
(Manning, “Finding Yourself”). That is, the autoethnographer can
consider complex historical, emotional, and embodied responses as they
are constitutive of popular culture and lived experience.
Fourth, autoethnographers can use personal experience to describe the
processes that contribute to the production of popular culture texts.
Thinking of popular culture as an industry—an industry that produces
everyday pleasures, values, and texts consumed and appreciated by many
people—requires thinking about its numerous gatekeepers.
Autoethnographers who have directly encountered and transcended these
Popular Culture Studies and Autoethnography 203
gatekeepers and who have directly participated in creating popular culture
texts can use their personal experiences to offer insider accounts of
production processes and the numerous decisions that go into making
these texts. By doing so, they offer insight into processes and products that
outsiders, including most researchers, could rarely access.
Stephanie Patrick’s article in this special issue offers one such
example. She uses her experiences as a film and television casting agent to
offer an insider, behind-the-scenes account of how media texts come to be
populated by certain kinds of actors. Her descriptions both provide the
reader a sense of seeing the casting process in action as well as her inner
turmoil about some of the requirements of the job. Because essays offering
insider accounts of production are rare, they are an especially valuable
resource for popular culture studies. Other notable examples include
Ragan Fox’s autoethnography that explored how he had to perform
“multiple characters” on the popular reality television series Big Brother.
As he explains, “Other research methods would not provide immediate,
ongoing, and in situ access to the Big Brother house, nor would CBS
likely permit non-affiliated investigators to enter the show’s immediate
contexts (e.g., soundstage, casting interviews, and sequester house)” (194).
In a similar way, Amber Johnson uses a kind of autoethnography—
“autocritography”—to describe her experiences auditioning for and
performing as a “video vixen” in a rap music video, as well as her
struggles in being perceived as a (hyper)sexual Black woman. In so doing,
Johnson provides an insider account of how the music industry
commodifies and sexualizes particular raced and gendered bodies.
Fifth, autoethnography allows popular culture scholars the opportunity
to create and disseminate accessible and relatable research. As an
interdisciplinary field, popular culture studies has excelled at making its
work accessible to others while still making sure it exemplifies academic
rigor and merit. Multiple academic book series (e.g., the Blackwell
Philosophy and Pop Culture Series) have allowed scholars and fans alike
204 Jimmie Manning and Tony E. Adams
to consider philosophical themes, think about sociological implications,
understand communication practices, and critically explore television,
movies, music, and sports. Departments that are dedicated exclusively or
even partially to popular culture studies are rare, however, and most
scholars who study popular culture do so while housed in another
discipline. These disciplines tend to have decades if not centuries of
writings that are difficult to access, filled with jargon, and that reference
research ideas that likely appear unfamiliar to readers with little academic
training (Herrmann, “Criteria”). Although these studies almost certainly
have value to those in the academy, their direct value to people outside of
academe—especially those who could possibly benefit from the
findings—is suspect.
Given autoethnography’s ties to genres of life writing, particularly
uses of storytelling and personal experience, the method often results in
texts that are both interesting and accessible. Such accessibility can
ground dense theories and concepts in lived experience (Herrmann,
“Criteria”); allow readers to gain an intimate understanding of how those
theories and concepts look and feel (Manning and Kunkel, “Making
Meaning”); and allow scholars to serve more in the role of “public
intellectual” (Batchelor). Autoethnography is also easily translatable for
outlets beyond academic books and journals. For example, Robin Boylorn,
a prominent and prolific autoethnographer, is a regular contributor to the
Crunk Feminist Collective (CFC), an online blogging site whose Facebook
page has more than 34,000 members. In addition to her regular CFC posts,
all of which reach thousands of readers, Boylorn also published an essay
in The Guardian about Black and White uses of the term “bae” (Boylorn,
“Now That”). Within a few months, Boylorn’s article had been shared
more than 2,000 times via social media and had more than 1,000
comments from readers. Such reach and impact are not enjoyed by most
academic writers.
Popular Culture Studies and Autoethnography 205
Evaluating Autoethnography: Quality, Risks, and Limitations
The five strengths we identified in the previous section point to some of
the unique and valuable contributions autoethnography can make to
popular culture studies. Even though we are enthusiastic about the
potential of autoethnography, we also acknowledge that it is no panacea.
Some autoethnography is poorly conceived or executed; other projects are
pursued without consideration of impact or ethics; and still some research
goals are not well-suited for autoethnographic inquiry. In response to these
concerns, we conclude this article by offering some basic criteria for
evaluating autoethnography as well as a review of some potential risks
associated with the methodology, including ethical concerns. As we
illustrate with these criteria, engaging autoethnographic research involves
consistent and ongoing personal reflection about how our work might
impact others.
Evaluation. Two essential qualities should be present in all
autoethnography projects. First, any work labeled “autoethnography”
should include personal experience and demonstrate, through thoughtful
analysis, why the experience is meaningful and culturally significant. An
essay that does not use or describe the importance of personal experience
in a cultural context should not be considered an autoethnography.
Second, this personal experience must be reflexively considered through
the use of extant theory, other scholarly writings about the topic, fieldwork
observations, analysis of artifacts (e.g., photographs), and/or involvement
with others (e.g., interviews). If many of these elements are not evident,
then a project should also not be considered an autoethnography (Adams
and Manning).
Beyond these core two criteria, evaluation of autoethnography depends
on the research orientation. For example, those using a social-scientific
orientation should be concerned about evaluative criteria such as the
soundness of data collection (Chang), the development of good research
206 Jimmie Manning and Tony E. Adams
questions (Manning and Kunkel, Researching), and the validity and
transferability of the data (Burnard; Philaretou and Allen).
Autoethnographers who approach autoethnography from an interpretive-
humanistic, critical, or creative-artistic orientation are not going to be as
concerned about those criteria. Rather, researchers working within these
orientations are going to be focused more on providing coherent stories
with details that help readers clearly envision a setting, the people and
feelings involved, and the actions that occurred (Bochner “Criteria”).
Those approaching autoethnography from a creative-artistic orientation
must especially consider the aesthetic aspects of the research text,
including the use of narrative voice, development of characters/people,
and dramatic tension or emotional resonance. However, creative-artistic
autoethnographers might also find themselves subject to some of the
critiques that accompany different art forms, e.g., creative writing ability
(Gingrich-Philbrook).
As a final note, good autoethnographies are interesting. Although the
stories included in an autoethnography do not have to be fantastic,
unusual, or even particularly unique—in fact, some of the best
autoethnographies happen when the researcher reflects on seemingly
mundane practices—there must be some interesting sense-making or
theoretical development in the text. Good autoethnography happens when
the researcher has something deeper to say about an experience, and that
something deeper should go beyond simply pointing out how personal
experience aligns with or defies a theory or common research finding. The
autoethnographic work also needs to teach, inspire, and/or inform. Asking
why an experience or story is important, what it might suggest about
social interaction and cultural life, and what it suggests about ourselves is
valuable for ensuring the worth of an autoethnography. These questions
can often be answered or explored through theoretical reflection,
examining the existing research about a topic, and/or by talking with
others as part of the project.
Popular Culture Studies and Autoethnography 207
Risks. Before taking on an autoethnographic project—and especially
before publishing or presenting it—considering what risks might result
from the research is important. Risks include sharing vulnerable, private,
and possibly controversial personal experiences; being exposed to
unnecessary judgment; and receiving accusations of offense and betrayal
from others (e.g., family members, friends, students) who feel as though
their privacy has been violated, that the autoethnographer shared too much
personal information, and/or that particular information is not accurate and
truthful (Ellis, “Telling Secrets”). For autoethnographers, these criticisms
can feel like highly personal attacks that can call into question the validity
of shared accounts, motivate anxiety, and generate emotional pain
(Chatham-Carpenter). Although autoethnographers often recognize the
importance of telling stories, sharing personal experiences, and
humanizing research, it is also important to frequently consider the
potential risks of sharing these experiences. That includes both risks to the
self and risks to others.
Ethics. “Relational ethics” is a key ethical concern relevant to all
autoethnographic research (Ellis, “Telling Secrets”). Relational ethics
means considering all of the people who might be implicated in your
account (e.g., family members, friends, students), possibly seeking their
approval for what you say or suggest about them, doing your best to
ensure that others are not harmed by your representations, and thinking
about the possible consequences of your autoethnographic texts on their
lives. Many textual strategies can be used to address relational ethics,
including using pseudonyms (e.g., Anonymous SF), fictionalizing an
experience (e.g., Angrosino), creating composite characters (e.g., Ellis,
Ethnographic I), or through collaborating with others in ways that increase
anonymity regarding whose particular story is associated with whom (e.g.,
Adams and Holman Jones). In the process of doing autoethnography, it
might also help to seek feedback from others, recognizing that seeking
208 Jimmie Manning and Tony E. Adams
feedback is different from asking or needing others to approve the account
(Adams and Manning).
In some cases, autoethnographers try to de-identify people within a
story, but doing so can be difficult. If people are not directly named they
may still be identifiable by others who are familiar with the author’s story
(Bolen and Adams; Ellis, “Emotional”). Others who may not even be
mentioned in a text may be affected as well. For example, as we wrote in
another essay,
If I (Tony) use autoethnography to examine personal experiences
of familial homophobia, it may be difficult to disguise family
members, especially if I come from a small family; these members,
and even readers, may be able to identify these people in my life.
When I (Jimmie) use autoethnography to talk about alcoholism in
my family, it often requires pointing to my father’s abusive or
irresponsible behaviors, vulnerable moments experienced by my
mother or other family members, disputes my family has about
what did or did not happen, as well as the responses of non-
immediate family members and community members. In other
words, my account implicates not just me but also my mother,
brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, close family friends,
teachers, and co-workers. (Adams and Manning)
Recognizing that we may implicate family members should not suggest
that we should not tell our story or that doing so is unethical. Instead, we
pledge to do our best to consider who our representations might affect and
how we need to acknowledge and/or protect others.
Beyond these concerns, it is also important to consider that some
autoethnographers, especially those who do social-scientific or
interpretive-humanistic inquiry, might need to adhere to requirements
espoused by research ethics review boards. For autoethnography, this is
commonly informed consent for interviews (Tullis). However, other
Popular Culture Studies and Autoethnography 209
autoethnographers, especially creative-artistic autoethnographers, will
probably consider review board requirements to be irrelevant and
unimportant, particularly because artists such as painters, dancers,
musicians, and life writers do not need to worry about these requirements
in order to paint, dance, play music, or write about their lives.
Conclusion
In this article, we have provided an overview of autoethnography and its
orientations, reviewed past examples of popular culture scholarship that
uses autoethnographic methods, and identified several strengths of using
autoethnography to study popular culture. This overview demonstrates
that the interdisciplinary field of popular culture studies has much to gain
from autoethnographic research. Recently, media scholar Alexander
Dhoest wrote, “a collection of autoethnographical essays by researchers
would be helpful to establish broader patterns in (self-understandings of)
contemporary media uses” (41). In reviewing the contents of this special
issue, we believe that Dhoest’s observation was correct. The essays
included here illuminate self-understandings about media use as well as
numerous other ways in which popular culture informs, challenges,
interacts with, and constitutes everyday life.
If, as Herrmann astutely notes, “Popular culture helps us define who
we are, what we believe, and influences whom we befriend” (“Daniel
Amos,” 7), then we need a method that can provide rich and nuanced
examinations of how popular culture shapes our personal and cultural
identities, inquires into researchers’ popular culture use, and allows
researchers to discuss how they make sense of their relationships to
popular culture theories, texts, events, and celebrities. It is our hope that
the articles in this collection, along with this essay, connect the broader
cultural texts, artifacts, ideas, and events that we collectively refer to as
popular culture with the personal experiences of everyday life.
210 Jimmie Manning and Tony E. Adams
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Guest Editorial Board
Amy Aldridge Sanford, Texas A&M University Corpus Christi
Bryant Keith Alexander, Loyola Marymount University
Mona Arrendondo, Seward County Community College
Ahmet Atay, College of Wooster
Keith Berry, University of South Florida
Art Bochner, University of South Florida
Derek Bolen, Angelo State University
Robin Boylorn, University of Alabama
Bernadette Calafell, University of Denver
Brad Carrera, Northern Illinois University
Ebony Carter-Jones, Independent Scholar
Devika Chawla, Ohio University
Kathy Denker, Ball State University
Patrick Dillon, University of Memphis
Jennifer C. Dunn, Dominican University
Aisha Durham, University of South Florida
Shinsuke Eguchi, University of New Mexico
Carolyn Ellis, University of South Florida
Sandra L. Faulkner, Bowling Green State University
Elissa Foster, DePaul University
Ragan Fox, California State University Long Beach
222 Jimmie Manning and Tony E. Adams
Craig Gingrich-Philbrook, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Rachel Griffin, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Andrea Guzman, Northern Illinois University
Janice Hamlet, Northern Illinois University
Andrew Herrmann, East Tennessee State University
Amber Johnson, Saint Louis University
Malynda Johnson, University of Mount Union
Rebecca Johnson, Northern Illinois University
Mary Anna Kidd, University of Texas at Tyler
Amy Kilgard, San Francisco State University
Christopher McRae, University of South Florida
Michaela D. E. Meyer, Christopher Newport University
W. Benjamin Myers, University of South Carolina Upstate
Cheryl Nicholas, Pennsylvania State University Berks
Sonny Nordmarken, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Chris Patti, Appalachian State University
Sandra Pensoneau-Conway, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Shayne Pepper, Northeastern Illinois University
Chris Poulos, University of North Carolina Greensboro
David Purnell, Mercer University
Tasha Rennels, Augustana College
Desirée Rowe, Towson University
Rachel Silverman, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
Danielle M. Stern, Christopher Newport University
Lisa Tillmann, Rollins College
Satoshi Toyosaki, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Jillian Tullis, University of San Diego
Robert Wilson, Northern Kentucky University
Jonathan Wyatt, University of Edinburgh
Stephanie Young, University of Southern Indiana
Jason Zingsheim, Governors State University
