Applying Computational Ethnography and Statistics to Vapor Wave: Interview with Tanner Greene (Part 1 of 2)

For my next installment in my Interview Series, I interviewed Tanner Greene. He recently received his doctorate from the University of Virginia for his research on the digital music genre, vapor wave. He primarily used qualitative means but has also taught himself Python to be able to employ quantitative textual analysis into his project. It is a good example of how to integrate qualitative digital ethnographic techniques with quantitative natural language processing.

In this first part, he discusses why he decided to study the vapor wave community and his experiences learning Python to conduct statistical analysis with.

Here is Part 2 of our interview.

Tanner’s interests straddle math and the humanities, spanning digital cultures, user metadata, and a long-dormant statistics ability he wants to revive. In his spare time, Tanner enjoys writing about music, playing video games, and dreaming about learning SQL.

Resources We Referenced:

• Tanner’s LinkedIn Page
• UVA Reveal Augmented Reality Graduate Student Resources
• “UX Research and Business Anthropology as Central within Applied Anthropology”

For more context on my interview series in general, click here.