A methodological evaluation approach based on the combination of two research approaches - ethnography and action research. Here ethnography is used to guide the research process and action research to link the findings back into a project’s ongoing development. The approach has been developed to focus on actual practices of use and interaction with technologies in the wider context of people’s lives and social and cultural structures - what we term "communicative ecologies". Placing users and producers at the centre of the research process is important if useful analytical frameworks are to be developed. For these purposes an ethnographic approach aims to make sense of the complete range of social relationships and processes within which a project is doing its work. This includes:

• The immediate circle of participants - how they are organised, how the project fits into their everyday lives;
• The wider social context of the project: (eg, social divisions within the community, language issues, community economy, social and cultural resources, community power and institutions); and,
• The social structures and processes beyond the locality that nevertheless impacts upon it (e.g., infrastructure, government policies, economic developments).

Ethnography places a project in relevant local and non-local contexts to include those that the project works to impact upon and those that impact upon the project. Action research means that the research process is tightly connected to the activities of a project in three possible ways:

1. Active participation - the people who should benefit from the research participate in defining the aims and direction of the project and in interpreting and drawing conclusions from it;
2. Action-based methods - the activities and experiences of participants generate knowledge alongside, or in combination with, more formal methods; and,
3. Generating action - research is directly aimed at generating short, medium and long-term plans, including business plans; ideas for new initiatives; solving problems; targeting sectors of the user constituency; finding new resources or partners.

In theory, the beauty of such an approach is the potential it holds for ensuring that a project adapts itself to locally defined needs and is therefore unable in a sense to not be effective. At the same time, if real needs are really being met, sustainability should be less of an issue for projects. Using a participatory approach all stakeholders, including members of local user communities should be involved at every step, helping to ensure the relevance of projects and generating a degree of ownership and involvement that will help to ensure a project's future.

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Email from Clemencia Rodriguez to The Communication Initiative, February 8 2006 and Evaluating Community Based Media Initiatives: An Ethnographic Action Research Approach [PDF] by Jo Tacchi, Don Slater and Peter Lewis - paper for OURMedia III conference, Barranquilla, Colombia, May 19-21 2003.