Online ethnography

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Online ethnography or Virtual ethnography - also called netnography for a decade in the business, marketing and consumer research field (Robert Kozinets 1997) and more recently webnography (Anjali Puri, 2005) - is a new development in the field of Ethnography. Online ethnography is an online research method. It extends the traditional notions of field and ethnographic study from the observation of co-located, face-to-face interactions, to technologically mediated interactions in online networks and communities. In doing so it challenges the traditional notion of a field site as a localized space and moves it into the realm of online or computer-mediated communications and interactions.[1]

Online or virtual ethnography should maintain the values of traditional ethnography through providing a "thick" description through the "immersion" of the researcher in the lives of their subjects. This focus on the subject makes virtual ethnography quite distinct from Web usage mining or social network analysis, although it may use similar techniques to identify or map networks. However, there are differences of opinion. Almost since its inceptions, online ethnographies have been conducted that are purely observational, in which the researcher is a specialized type of lurker. However, other researchers have emphasized a more participative approach, in which the researcher fully participates as a member of the online community. This latter approach is closer to traditional ethnographics standards of participant observation, prolonged engagement, and deep immersion.

The key question for virtual ethnography researcher is "how can ethnography be pursued in technologically mediated settings"? Researchers have attempted to create virtual counterparts for many of the basic ethnographic concepts but whether they can appropriately be applied to technologically mediated interaction is still open (Howard, 2003). For example, if a researcher simply reads some emails or participates in chatrooms, does this represent an ethnography. The key is participation. Can the researcher still be said to have immersed themselves in the life of the community? However, there is debate in the online research community to what extent participation is required, with completely observational articles published as a type of "netnography."

Contents

[edit] Netnography

The term netnography has gained currency within the field of consumer research to refer to ethnographic research conducted on the Internet. It is a qualitative, interpretive research methodology that adapts the traditional, in-person ethnographic research techniques of anthropology to the study of the online cultures and communities formed through computer-mediated communications (“CMC”).

At least four aspects of online, computer-mediated, or virtual, interaction and community formation are distinct from their in-person, real life (“RL”), or face-to-face (“F2F”) counterparts. First is the textual, nonphysical, and social-cue-impoverished context of the online environment. Second is an unprecedented new level of access to the heretofore unobservable behaviors of particular interacting peoples. Third, while traditional interactions are ephemeral as they occur, online social interactions are often automatically saved and archived, creating permanent records. Finally, the social nature of the new medium is unclear as to whether it is a private or public space, or some unique hybrid. Ethnography adapts common participant-observation ethnographic procedures—such as making cultural entrée, gathering and analyzing data, ensuring trustworthy interpretation, conducting member checks, and conducting ethical research—to these computer-mediated contingencies (see Kozinets 2002 for a detailed development of the process).

[edit] Methodology

There are a range of different ways that ethnographers have attempted to study the internet. The methodological approach of virtual ethnography has been broadened and reformulated through new proposals such as digital ethnography, ethnography on/of/through the Internet, connective ethnography, networked ethnography, cyberethnography, netnography, etc. Each of these maintains its own dialogue with the established tradition of ethnography and formulates its relation to this tradition in different ways. There are those who consider that virtual ethnography involves a distinctive methodological approach and those who consider that researching the Internet ethnographically forces us to reflect on fundamental assumptions and concepts of ethnography, but that it doesn't mean a distinctive form of ethnography.[2]

Given the wide range of choices of online communal forms, including blogs, web-rings, chat, SMS, gamespaces, bulletin boards, and mailing lists, researchers should spend the time to match their research questions and interests to appropriate online forum, using the novel resources of online search engines such as Yahoo! and Google groups, before initiating entrée. Before initiating contact as a participant, or beginning formal data collection, the distinctive characteristics of the online communities should be familiar to the netnographer. In a netnography, data takes two forms: data that the researcher directly copies from the computer-mediated communications of online community members, and data that the researcher inscribes. Reflective fieldnotes, in which ethnographers record their observations, are a time-tested and recommended method. However, distinct from traditional ethnography, rigorous netnographies have been conducted using only observation and download, without the researcher writing a single fieldnote.

As with grounded theory, data collection should continue as long as new insights are being generated. For purposes of precision, some netnographers may wish to closely track the amount of text collected and read, and the number of distinct participants. Software solutions can expedite coding, content analysis, data linking, data display, and theory-building functions and new forms of analysis are constantly being developed by a variety of firms (such as MotiveQuest and Neilsen BuzzMetrics).

Distinct from data mining, netnography as a method emphasizes the cultural contextualizing of online data. This often proves to be challenging in the social-cues-impoverished online context. Because netnography is based primarily upon the observation of textual discourse, ensuring trustworthy interpretations requires a different approach than the balancing of discourse and observed behavior that occurs during in-person ethnography. Although the online landscape mediates social representation and renders problematic the issue of informant identity, netnography seems perfectly amenable to treating behavior or the social act as the ultimate unit of analysis, rather than the individual person.

[edit] Ethics

Research ethics may be one of the most important differences between traditional ethnography and netnography. Ethical concerns over netnography turn on contentious and still largely unsettled concerns about whether online forums are to be considered a private or a public site, and about what constitutes informed consent in cyberspace (see Paccagnella 1997)? In a major departure from traditional methods, netnography uses cultural information that is not given specifically, and in confidence, to the researcher. The consumers who originally created the data do not necessarily intend or welcome its use in research representations.

[edit] Advantages and Limitations

Compared to surveys, experiments, focus groups, and personal interviews, netnography is a far less obtrusive method. It is conducted using observations in a context that is not fabricated by the researcher. Netnography also is less costly and timelier than focus groups and personal interviews. It is a naturalistic and unobtrusive technique—a nearly unprecedented combination.

The limitations of netnography draw from its more narrow focus on online communities, its inability to offer the full and rich detail of lived human experience, the need for researcher interpretive skill, and the lack of informant identifiers present in the online context that leads to difficulty generalizing results to groups outside the online community sample. Researchers wishing to generalize the findings of a netnography of a particular online group to other groups must apply careful evaluations of similarity and consider using multiple methods for research triangulation. Netnography is still a relatively new method, and awaits further development and refinement at the hands of a new generation of Internet-savvy ethnographic researchers.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Virtual Ethnography: a methodological focus of the Virtual Knowledge Studio.
  2. ^ Domínguez, Daniel; Beaulieu, Anne; Estalella, Adolfo; Gómez, Edgar; Schnettler, Bernt & Read, Rosie (2007). Virtual Ethnography. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 8(3), http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs-texte/3-07/07-3-E1-e.htm.

[edit] Further reading

  • Dicks, Bella; Bruce Mason & Amanda Coffey et al. (2005), written at London, Qualitative Research and Hypermedia: Ethnography for the Digital Age, Sage Publications, ISBN 0761960988
  • Hine, Christine M. (2000), written at London, Virtual Ethnography, Sage Publications, ISBN 0761958959
  • Greive, Gregory. (1995) “Imagining a Virtual Religious Community: Neo-pagans on The Internet,” Chicago Anthropology Exchange 7 (Winter): 98-132.
  • Kozinets, Robert V. (2002), “The Field Behind the Screen: Using Netnography for Marketing Research in Online Communities,” Journal of Marketing Research, 39 (February), 61-72.
  • Kozinets, Robert V. (1999), “E-Tribalized Marketing? The Strategic Implications of Virtual Communities of Consumption,” European Management Journal, 17 (3), 252-264.
  • Markham, Anette (1998), Life Online: Researching Real Experience in Virtual Space, AltaMira Press, ISBN 0761990313
  • Mann, Chris & Fiona Steward (2000), written at London, Internet Communication and Qualitative Research: A Handbook for Researching Online, Sage Publications, ISBN 0761966277
  • Paccagnella, Luciano (1997), "Getting the Seats of Your Pants Dirty: Strategies for Ethnographic Research on Virtual Communities", Journal of Computer-Mediated Communications 3 (June) Available online at http://ww.ascusc.org/jcmc/.

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