Applying ethnography to a documentary podcast: A case study of rural women in Andalusia, Spain

This article reflects on the use of a mixed qualitative and quantitative methodology, based on ethnography, to carry out the thematic and narrative approach to creating a documentary podcast series about rural women in Andalusia. It shows the ethnographic method applied to a case study, demonstrating its usefulness in the creation of a sound documentary. The methodology includes participant observation in focus groups and a semantic analysis (latent Dirichlet allocation [LDA] model) of transcripts from sixteen interviews with the women who are the protagonists of the documentary. The conclusions generated by the analysis indicate the concepts, values and sentiments of rural Andalusian women together with the concern for various issues of the rural world and rural life. The analysis has served to prioritize the themes, tone and values of the documentary project and has helped to create the different episodes of the documentary podcast related to the prominent themes and sentiments. An experimental technique is applied, and the results could be used in the future as a support tool for creators and researchers in the sound and anthropological fields.