Inside Trading Cultures

The Top Citizen Science (TCS) project Inside Trading Cultures expands the existing FWF research project Trading Cultures. An ethnography of international trade fairs for television programs, music and books with aspects of involving interested citizens in the research process. The main project analyzes the role of international trade fairs and markets for three different media industries (TV, music, books) in a comparative way. By applying ethnographic fieldwork, especially participant observation, annual trade fairs are explored thoroughly. The ethnographic approach is suitable to gain deep and true-to-life insights into the media industry traders mundane and taken for granted practices and routines. By the use of participation and observation in the field, these practices and routines are described in a thick way from the traders inside perspectives. Simultaneously, a critical scientific and analytical distance from the outside is maintained. Since researchers and their perceptions during participant observation are the main element of data collection and analysis, the critical reflection of the methodical procedure is an ever-present core activity of the research process. The project Inside Trading Cultures draws on this importance and both expands and challenges the perceptions and interpretations of ethnographers with those of citizen scientists interested in literature and the trading of books. The main goal of the TCS project is to achieve a multiplicity of perspectives on the practices and routines taking place at business-to-business book trade fairs through the involvement of people with different horizons of knowledge and experience in doing participant observation. Beyond that, participating citizens are provided an exclusive insight into a usually non-accessible area of the everyday culture of international book trade. At the heart of the Inside Trading Cultures project is the fieldwork at Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2017. The fieldwork team is composed of nine citizen scientists and three social scientists. The project is primarily addressed to multipliers in the world of literature and books. That is local booksellers, librarians and teachers from the Greater St. Pölten area. Above, it is also directed at those with a close relation to reading, literature and books, and at people interested in questions of how systems of trading and consuming media and cultural goods operate. That means, also passionate readers or committed pupils are invited to take part in the TCS project.

The project Inside Trading Cultures focused on the Frankfurt Book Fair, the most important trade fair of the publishing industry and a significant social event, in a very special way. The project adopted a new and unique citizen science approach that was designed as an experiment. This approach distinguished itself insofar as the phenomenon of the Frankfurt Book Fair was analysed from a citizen ethnography perspective. This means that in addition to three social scientists, twelve voluntary citizen scientists also participated in the ethnographic fieldwork at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2017. The degree and intensity of the citizen scientists involvement was extraordinarily high. The participation of citizens in field work was designed as an ethnography from different perspectives. The innovation of the approach is the extension and reflection of social scientists perceptions and descriptions of the social reality of the Frankfurt Book Fair with different or additional standpoints. This resulted in a joint publication a book which consists mainly of ten contributions of the involved citizen scientists as independent authors (or, in one case, an interview with a citizen scientist). Based on their observations at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the citizen scientists elaborated on a specific thematic priority of their individual choice. By bringing these components together, the objective of the project which was to describe and analyse the Frankfurt Book Fair from a multitude of perspectives, was achieved. It became clear that the Frankfurt Book Fair has a large number of different worlds which the individual contributions in the book present as the key insights of the project. The contributions provide insights in spatial arrangements of the Book Fair, which are characterised by inclusions and meeting points on the one hand as well as barriers and exclusions on the other. The Frankfurt Book Fair has an extraordinarily strong political dimension which is also accompanied by a high level of media attention. There is a close connection between the Book Fair and the public. Therefore, the dominant presence and role of the television stages of mainly public broadcasters (ARD, ZDF, arte, 3Sat) is analysed. Furthermore and foremost, at the Frankfurt Book Fair rights and licenses are exchanged, personal contacts are made and maintained and trends of the publishing industries as for instance digitization are discussed. All these aspects were observed, recorded and described by the citizen scientists from their own perspective.