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Ethnography Online: ‘Natives’ Practising and Inscribing Community
Abstract
The article is an analysis of the methodology used to study a community spawned from an Internet website devoted to a television serial. In the five and a half years the site was in existence, its real-time, linear, archived Posting Board spawned a community. Herein, we discuss how our work at the site offers insights into significant concepts in the practice of ethnography. In particular, we are concerned with such questions as: How much distance is necessary between the ethnographer and her site/subjects? Is distance necessary? Who is inscribing whom? We also discuss the generative problem of anonymity and how this concern has opened up our perceptions of ourselves and our field site.
... Research into online communities is crucial to understanding portions of society, but is difficult due to the novelty of the field and the ephemeral nature of the medium. Because of the continuous evolution of technologies, platforms for online communities are in constant flux, and social engagement can take place across multiple platforms (Bergstrom, 2011, Gatson andZweerink, 2004). Keeping track of individuals and the groups they engage with is nearly impossible, but following online communities across their many platforms becomes crucial to gaining a complete picture. ...
... Research into online communities is crucial to understanding the social activity of their participants, but is difficult due to its comparative newness and the ephemeral nature of the medium. Due to the constant evolution of technologies, the places where online communities meet may emerge and then disappear, and engagement can take place across many platforms (Bergstrom, 2011, Gatson andZweerink, 2004). Studies have looked at the motives for joining virtual communities, the consequences of doing so , and the practices of knowledge-sharing that take place in them (Aroles, 2015). ...
... On the other hand it's possible that virtual worlds are no more neutral than real-world settings, having instead their own context and politics, and therefore significant effects on how participants negotiate themselves and their identities. Gatson and Zweerink (2004) by comparison claim that online ethnographic research is inherently multi-sited no matter the position of the researcher, as this is the nature of both online communities and personal internet use. In a sense, these worlds are the natural habitat and home of the avatar, with the player's psyche inhabiting and puppeteering these virtual bodies as an outside force. ...
This thesis argues that toxic behaviour practices in the game League of Legends are structural and constructive. Using practice theory I demonstrate that social and play rules within the game are expressed, challenged, and re-created through actions and utterances which have been deemed problematic or otherwise ‘toxic’. In order to achieve this I have conducted an ethnographic study into League of Legends followed by a series of semi-structured interviews. The ethnography demonstrates a novel insight into the game and its community but also serves the purpose of explicating the relationship between League of Legends and Bourdieu’s conceptual model of practice. Informed by this context I discuss the rationale for and perception of disruptive, transgressive, or otherwise ‘toxic’ behaviours, challenging assumptions that they are fundamentally anti-social or destructive and proposing ways in which they contribute to a self-recognising online community. Finally I demonstrate that the formative conditions of play along with toxic play practices combine in League of Legends to create an environment which is problematically gendered.
... Over the past decade, there has been a wealth of academic research, particularly in the social sciences, that has used a range of approaches to online interviewing. These approaches have included virtual discussion/ focus groups (Gatson & Zweerink, 2004;Stewart & Williams, 2005) and one-to-one interviews via e-mail (Bampton & Cowton, 2002;Hinton-Smith, 2006) to gather textual data in naturalistic settings online. Online interviews can be broadly divided into two main categories: synchronous and asynchronous. ...
... Indeed, perhaps the most convincing way of establishing the authenticity of online research conversations may be through considering the extent to which researchers and participants construct credible and consistent stories in the course of their text-based exchanges (Lee, 2006). Gatson and Zweerink (2004) found in their synchronous interviews that the identities portrayed by their participants emphasized the importance of discourse and experience in shaping both the real and the virtual worlds. This intertextual construction of self can be facilitated by online researchers trying to generate an open and honest dialogue with their participants. ...
... Other researchers think that it depends on how the members of the online group/ community perceive their communications with each other (Robson & Robson, 2002). Participants in online discussion groups may consider their communications private, even if that privacy extends to the whole group (Gatson & Zweerink, 2004), although their discussions might be accessible to the public through the Internet. Furthermore, they may not want the information that is shared with other group members to go beyond their own community (Elgesem, 2002). ...
... Over the past decade, there has been a wealth of academic research, particularly in the social sciences, that has used a range of approaches to online interviewing. These approaches have included virtual discussion/ focus groups (Gatson & Zweerink, 2004;Stewart & Williams, 2005) and one-to-one interviews via e-mail (Bampton & Cowton, 2002;Hinton-Smith, 2006) to gather textual data in naturalistic settings online. Online interviews can be broadly divided into two main categories: synchronous and asynchronous. ...
... Indeed, perhaps the most convincing way of establishing the authenticity of online research conversations may be through considering the extent to which researchers and participants construct credible and consistent stories in the course of their text-based exchanges (Lee, 2006). Gatson and Zweerink (2004) found in their synchronous interviews that the identities portrayed by their participants emphasized the importance of discourse and experience in shaping both the real and the virtual worlds. This intertextual construction of self can be facilitated by online researchers trying to generate an open and honest dialogue with their participants. ...
... Other researchers think that it depends on how the members of the online group/ community perceive their communications with each other (Robson & Robson, 2002). Participants in online discussion groups may consider their communications private, even if that privacy extends to the whole group (Gatson & Zweerink, 2004), although their discussions might be accessible to the public through the Internet. Furthermore, they may not want the information that is shared with other group members to go beyond their own community (Elgesem, 2002). ...
... Besides, foreign researchers also pay much attention to this field. Gatson and Zweerink (2004) [1] utilize the ethnographic research method to study a community spawned from an Internet website devoted to a television serial and then interpret the relationship between ethnography and target objects. Laaksonen et al. (2017) [5] examine candidate-candidate online interaction during election campaigning from the perspective of online ethnography. ...
... Besides, foreign researchers also pay much attention to this field. Gatson and Zweerink (2004) [1] utilize the ethnographic research method to study a community spawned from an Internet website devoted to a television serial and then interpret the relationship between ethnography and target objects. Laaksonen et al. (2017) [5] examine candidate-candidate online interaction during election campaigning from the perspective of online ethnography. ...
... The method of the interview changed unintentionally, and the interviewer went from being a mere interviewer to also being an observer and (although not in body) "be" on the field (see also Airoldi, 2018 for online ethnology and digital fields). This method of qualitative data collection was no longer only a semi-structured in-depth online interview, but it involved events, places and identities that, by being taken into account in the transcriptions, could be reconsulted and become part of the analysis (Gatson & Zweerink, 2004). As exciting as it was for the interviewer to suddenly see people's "natural habitat" and have a peek into participants' lives, boundaries were easily crossed (see also Gatson & Zweerink, 2004, on online boundaries). ...
... This method of qualitative data collection was no longer only a semi-structured in-depth online interview, but it involved events, places and identities that, by being taken into account in the transcriptions, could be reconsulted and become part of the analysis (Gatson & Zweerink, 2004). As exciting as it was for the interviewer to suddenly see people's "natural habitat" and have a peek into participants' lives, boundaries were easily crossed (see also Gatson & Zweerink, 2004, on online boundaries). And while this is on the one hand an achievement in terms of gaining access and establishing rapport, it raises the question to what extent such data should be used, and how it can be ensured that people do not show more than they would like to if they gave it a second thought. ...
This article evaluates the use of the popular Mobile Messaging App (MMA) WhatsApp as a way to conduct qualitative research with geographically dispersed samples. Through the use of a case study of Latino expat-wives around the globe, we show how traditional methods of qualitative interviewing were adapted and evolved through the use of this application. Findings suggest that WhatsApp is a valuable tool for conducting qualitative research with specific advantages over other MMAs and VoIPs due to its familiarity amongst the target group and its flexible blending of video, audio, and written forms of communication. Particularly its use on smartphones led to interactions that went beyond regular face-to-face interviews, thus allowing us access normally only gained in ethnography studies. While this can be a gain in terms of building rapport and increase the depth of data collection, it also brings new challenges in terms of ensuring data quality, interpreting non-verbal cues and ensuring high ethical standards.
... Wątpliwości te są kwestionowane już we samej tradycyjnej antropologii (Hayano 1979;Van Maanen 1988Tresch 2001), a stawanie się tubylcem oceniane jest też jako proces o pewnych zaletach (Sperschneider i Bagger 2003), pod warunkiem umiejętnego zachowania "antropologicznego spojrzenia" na badane społeczności (Czarniawska-Joerges 1992). W przypadku etnografi i wirtualnej sytuacja jest znacznie prostsza: ponieważ nie można w ogóle mówić o tubylcach z urodzenia (wszyscy uczestnicy społeczności wirtualnej wychowali się poza nią i przystąpili do niej inicjalnie jako "obcy"), w związku z czym doświadczenie stawania się wirtualnym tubylcem, a także zrozumienie społeczności od środka, mają niezaprzeczalne plusy (Gatson i Zweerink 2004). Przesądza to zapewne o atrakcyjności etnografi i wirtualnej dla wielu badaczy: w netnografi i problem pełnego i pełnoprawnego uczestnictwa w "naturalnym laboratorium", jakim dla antropologów są badane kultury (Angrosino 2007), jest możliwe w znacznie łatwiejszy i mniej kontrowersyjny sposób niż w przypadku badań tradycyjnych. ...
... Jak zwykle w kwestiach etycznych związanych z prowadzeniem badań należy przede wszystkim dołożyć wszelkiej staranności, aby opisywane osoby, zwłaszcza te, które świadomie uczestniczą w badaniu i udzielają informacji, w żaden sposób nie były przez to poszkodowane. Dobrą praktyką jest również utajnianie i maskowanie wypowiedzi niemających charakteru publicznego lub mających miejsce w zamkniętych społecznościach, nawet jeżeli nie mają miejsca pod imieniem i nazwiskiem (Gatson i Zweerink 2004). ...
Prezentowany artykuł ma na celu przybliżenie metody etnografii wirtualnej (netnografii) polskim naukowcom z dyscypliny nauk o organizacji i zarządzaniu. Opisuje podstawowe problemy, na jakie napotykają osoby zajmujące się antropologią organizacji, gdy przystępują do badań online. Dotyczą one kulturowej różnorodności społeczności wirtualnych, niefundamentalnych różnic między etnografią wirtualną a tradycyjną, specyfiki interakcji, „tubylczości”, kłopotów z przeprowadzaniem obserwacji, antropologiczną refleksyjnością, a także tematów zaufania i tożsamości społecznej.
... Badania terenowe typu etnograficznego są autentyczne do stopnia, w którym przypominają działania obcej osoby wchodzącej w kulturowo nieznaną jej społeczność, by stać się czasowo, w sposób nieprzewidywalny, aktywnym uczestnikiem związków pomiędzy jej członkami. Szczególnie w przypadku społeczności wirtualnych, gdzie punktem wyjścia wszystkich ich uczestników jest bycie obcymi (w końcu nikt nie rodzi się internetowym tubylcem), pełnia doświadczeń ze stania się członkiem społeczności jest nieodzowna (Gatson i Zweerink, 2004), zaś mankamenty stania się tubylcem – najczęściej zneutralizowane. Doświadczenie to dotyczy czegoś więcej niż praktycznej kwestii fizycznej dostępności do społeczności 1 : stanie się wikipedystą-autochtonem jest nie tylko sposobem na zaskarbienie sobie zaufania i przyjaźni innych członków społeczności, by byli oni gotowi dzielić się swoimi doświadczeniami i szczerze wyrażać poglądy, lecz również środkiem do zrozumienia tematów, dyskusji i wydarzeń, które są dla tej społeczności istotne. ...
... W konsekwencji powyższego nie jest konieczne stosowanie etyki badań na ludziach, czyli badacz nie zawsze musi się przejmować bezpośrednimi cytatami. Nawet w tradycyjnej etnografii często możliwe jest zidentyfikowanie cytowanych organizacji i osób, więc netnografia nie powinna w dodatkowym stopniu przejmować się standardową ochroną nazwisk i danych osobistych badanych osób (Gatson iZweerink, 2004). Szczególnie jednak w przypadku sytuacji, w których osobiście uczestniczyłem, a zwłaszcza konfliktów, opisanie ich w sposób pozwalający dojść do moich byłych adwersarzy wydaje się nieuczciwe i balansujące na krawędzi osobistej zemsty. ...
Jemielniak, Dariusz (2013) Życie wirtualnych dzikich. Netnografia Wikipedii, największego projektu współtworzonego przez ludzi, Warszawa: Poltext Analiza etnograficzna Wikipedii, badająca relacje władzy, biurokrację, zaufanie, przywództwo, oraz struktury WIkipedii.
... Particularly in the case of a virtual community, where all members start as strangers, the experience of going fully native is indispensable (Gatson & Zweerink, 2004), and at the same time, the disadvantages of going native are largely neutralized. This experience goes far beyond the practical issues of material access: 1 being a fully active Wikipedian was quite likely the only way to gain the trust and friendship of other Wikipedians, so that they would share their insights and honest views, and to be able to discern the topics, discussions, and events that are important to the community. ...
... As a consequence, human-subject research ethics do not have to be applied and a researcher should not be concerned about direct quotations. Even in traditional ethnography, identifying organizations and subjects is often possible, and thus in virtual ethnography there should not be additional concerns beyond the standard protection of the subject's name and personal data (Gatson & Zweerink, 2004). ...
This chapter presents the major internal stakeholders of the Wikimedia movement: the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), the local chapters, and the Wikipedia communities. It describes the power struggles between them and explains their resources as well as cultural and ideological backgrounds. It reveals the drive of the chapters to professionalize their staff and operations as natural, even if at some point they fill the niche already occupied by the WMF. The chapter shows that even though to a common bystander they may seem as if they were on the verge of splitting (“forking”), the high number of disputes is actually typical for open-collaboration communities, as there is no fear of hierarchy to prevent people from freely expressing their opinions.
... Particularly in the case of a virtual community, where all members start as strangers, the experience of going fully native is indispensable (Gatson & Zweerink, 2004), and at the same time, the disadvantages of going native are largely neutralized. This experience goes far beyond the practical issues of material access: 1 being a fully active Wikipedian was quite likely the only way to gain the trust and friendship of other Wikipedians, so that they would share their insights and honest views, and to be able to discern the topics, discussions, and events that are important to the community. ...
... As a consequence, human-subject research ethics do not have to be applied and a researcher should not be concerned about direct quotations. Even in traditional ethnography, identifying organizations and subjects is often possible, and thus in virtual ethnography there should not be additional concerns beyond the standard protection of the subject's name and personal data (Gatson & Zweerink, 2004). ...
This chapter draws on the previous considerations about organization and management in open-collaboration movements to analyze the phenomenon of personal leadership, examining the example of Jimmy Wales, cofounder of Wikipedia. It shows the evolution of his role and the reasons why his influence on the movement could only increase when he stepped down from operational, daily activities and stopped his attempts at direct management. It makes some conclusions about modes of leadership in open-collaboration organizations and suggests that both an authoritative, single-handed style of leadership and a subservient, supportive one can work but must be in line with the leader's level of engagement in the community. The chapter also shows that the lack of formal leadership only makes it more difficult for natural leaders to legitimize their role.
... Particularly in the case of a virtual community, where all members start as strangers, the experience of going fully native is indispensable (Gatson & Zweerink, 2004), and at the same time, the disadvantages of going native are largely neutralized. This experience goes far beyond the practical issues of material access: 1 being a fully active Wikipedian was quite likely the only way to gain the trust and friendship of other Wikipedians, so that they would share their insights and honest views, and to be able to discern the topics, discussions, and events that are important to the community. ...
... As a consequence, human-subject research ethics do not have to be applied and a researcher should not be concerned about direct quotations. Even in traditional ethnography, identifying organizations and subjects is often possible, and thus in virtual ethnography there should not be additional concerns beyond the standard protection of the subject's name and personal data (Gatson & Zweerink, 2004). ...
This chapter gives a short introduction to Wikipedia and the Wikipedia community. After describing the origins and growth of Wikipedia, and providing facts and figures, it examines some of the important rules and behavioral norms used on Wikipedia that determine its social organization. It concludes with a discussion of the informal representation of self among Wikipedians and how they convey those representations to the community through their user pages and actions.
... Wątpliwości te są kwestionowane już we samej tradycyjnej antropologii (Hayano 1979; Van Maanen 1988Tresch 2001), a stawanie się tubylcem oceniane jest też jako proces o pewnych zaletach (Sperschneider i Bagger 2003), pod warunkiem umiejętnego zachowania "antropologicznego spojrzenia" na badane społeczności (Czarniawska-Joerges 1992). W przypadku etnografi i wirtualnej sytuacja jest znacznie prostsza: ponieważ nie można w ogóle mówić o tubylcach z urodzenia (wszyscy uczestnicy społeczności wirtualnej wychowali się poza nią i przystąpili do niej inicjalnie jako "obcy"), w związku z czym doświadczenie stawania się wirtualnym tubylcem, a także zrozumienie społeczności od środka, mają niezaprzeczalne plusy (Gatson i Zweerink 2004). Przesądza to zapewne o atrakcyjności etnografi i wirtualnej dla wielu badaczy: w netnografi i problem pełnego i pełnoprawnego uczestnictwa w "naturalnym laboratorium", jakim dla antropologów są badane kultury (Angrosino 2007), jest możliwe w znacznie łatwiejszy i mniej kontrowersyjny sposób niż w przypadku badań tradycyjnych. ...
... Jak zwykle w kwestiach etycznych związanych z prowadzeniem badań należy przede wszystkim dołożyć wszelkiej staranności, aby opisywane osoby, zwłaszcza te, które świadomie uczestniczą w badaniu i udzielają informacji, w żaden sposób nie były przez to poszkodowane. Dobrą praktyką jest również utajnianie i maskowanie wypowiedzi niemających charakteru publicznego lub mających miejsce w zamkniętych społecznościach, nawet jeżeli nie mają miejsca pod imieniem i nazwiskiem (Gatson i Zweerink 2004). ...
The article presents the process of institutionalization of ethical codes in the auditing profession. Auditors have always been seen as an important part of the social contract as they provided certification services for the truthfulness and fairness of financial information in the public domain. However, due to scandals at the eve of the twenty-first century, trust in the auditing profession decreased. As a response to these scandals, codes of ethics are being developed; these codes are seen as an important means to restore public trust and credibility in the profession. The article presents the development of the auditing codes of ethics in the US, the UK, and an international organization of accountants. The Polish experience with the code of ethics is also discussed.
... The use of ethnography for the study of virtual spaces has stirred numerous debates (Hakken, 1999;Jacobson, 1999;Miller & Slater, 2000;Beaulieu, 2004) with some doubting the compatibility between the two (Aycock & Buchigani, 1995). Certainly, the turn toward online spaces as fields of empirical exploration has propelled an adaptation of the research methods involving fieldwork investigation and ethnography (Gatson & Zweerink, 2004;Hallett & Barber, 2014;Hine, 2000;Jones, 1998;Robinson & Schultz, 2009;Ruhleder, 2000). Ethnography has been deployed in many areas of investigation in relation to online spaces; this has included research on the construction of identity (Donath, 1999), on online romance (Ben-Ze'ev, 2004), on human relations (Carter, 2005), just to name but a few. ...
... While it may be difficult to think about a shared place for a virtual community (providing that we think of place in material terms), there is certainly not a lack of space (see De Certeau, 1984 on the difference between space and place). Virtual communities have been liberated from the traditional constraints of place (Driskell & Lyon, 2002;Wellman, 2001), as the geographical distance between the members of the virtual community ceases to matter (Carter, 2005;Gatson & Zweerink, 2004;Nieckarz, 2005). Ideas of space can be difficult to conceptualize when it comes to virtual communities. ...
This article seeks to examine how the notions of belonging and nativeness are enacted in virtual communities. It draws from an ethnographically inspired study of the players of a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) that is explored through three key dimensions: space, time, and language. Drawing on concepts developed by Gilles Deleuze and Fe ́lix Guattari, I argue that the notion of nativeness, in the case of virtual communities, is best approached as a performance embedded in the process of becoming. In that sense, one is not but rather becomes a member of a virtual community. This process of becoming entails an exploration of smooth forms of space and the appropriation of a vernacular form of language.
... Digital natives are not born, each member joined it as a stranger. What is most valuable in digital ethnography is the experience of going native and slowly coming to understand a community from within (Gatson & Zweerink, 2004) . Naturally, this experience usually leads to adopting the logic of the researched community, but it is a fair price for reaching otherwise hermetic knowledge. ...
Accepting ethic norms involves naturalization of beliefs, assuming them as unalterable truths. Social sciences have been inscribed with certain standards for years. In the last twenty-five years, the practice of having research projects approved by ethics committees has become institutionalized, in some cases leading to extreme bureaucracy and changing the character of the issue, shifting the weight from the personal moral obligation of the researcher and an issue that requires high flexibility and individualism towards a set of forms to be filled out, pseudo-warrants of the safety of the research subjects. However, Internet research has opened the eyes of the sociologists to new problems and caused reconsideration of some issues of research ethics. This chapter discusses key notions of research ethics in the digital studies context. It shows how internet can be a source of infamy, and warns against improper use of data. It positions the fundamental rules of anonymity, privacy, informed consent, data ownership, as well as data confidentiality in the context of digital social studies.
... Digital natives are not born, each member joined it as a stranger. What is most valuable in digital ethnography is the experience of going native and slowly coming to understand a community from within (Gatson & Zweerink, 2004) . Naturally, this experience usually leads to adopting the logic of the researched community, but it is a fair price for reaching otherwise hermetic knowledge. ...
The chapter presents the idea of Thick Big Data, a methodological approach combining big data sets with thick, ethnographic analysis. It presents different quantitative methods, including Google Correlate, social network analysis (SNA), online polls, culturomics, and data scraping, as well as easy tools to start working with online data. It describes the key differences in performing qualitative studies online, by focusing on the example of digital ethnography. It helps using case studies for digital communities as well. It gives specific guidance on conducting interviews online, and describes how to perform narrative analysis of digital culture. It concludes with describing methods of studying online cultural production, and discusses the notions of remix culture, memes, and trolling.
... Digital natives are not born, each member joined it as a stranger. What is most valuable in digital ethnography is the experience of going native and slowly coming to understand a community from within (Gatson & Zweerink, 2004) . Naturally, this experience usually leads to adopting the logic of the researched community, but it is a fair price for reaching otherwise hermetic knowledge. ...
This chapter discusses three major changes resulting from the emerging communication technologies. It addresses the new forms of shaping relations online. Friendships, intimacy, the rise of weak ties, as well as an increased fluidity of relations are discussed. Next, the chapter addresses the demise of expert knowledge. Starting with McDonaldization of higher education and the rise of anti-intellectual sentiments, the chapter addresses the new trends in democratizing knowledge. While recognizing highly positive aspects of the turn, such as citizen science, Wikipedia, or free/open source movement, it also addresses the darker and more troubling processes, such as anti-scientific sentiments, pseudotheories, and the takeover of knowledge production and distribution by quacks. Finally, the chapter focuses on sharing economy. By problematizing the “sharing” premise, as well as by showing the impact of the ongoing change reaching far beyond economy itself, the chapter introduces the notion of collaborative society, as better covering the social change we witness.
... Digital natives are not born, each member joined it as a stranger. What is most valuable in digital ethnography is the experience of going native and slowly coming to understand a community from within (Gatson & Zweerink, 2004) . Naturally, this experience usually leads to adopting the logic of the researched community, but it is a fair price for reaching otherwise hermetic knowledge. ...
The social sciences are becoming datafied. The questions that have been considered the domain of sociologists, now are answered by data scientists, operating on large datasets, and breaking with the methodological tradition for better or worse. The traditional social sciences, such as sociology or anthropology, are thus under the double threat of becoming marginalized or even irrelevant; both because of the new methods of research, which require more computational skills, and because of the increasing competition from the corporate world, which gains an additional advantage based on data access. However, sociologists and anthropologists still have some important assets, too. Unlike data scientists, they have a long history of doing qualitative research. The more quantified datasets we have, the more difficult it is to interpret them without adding layers of qualitative interpretation. Big Data needs Thick Data. This book presents the available arsenal of new tools for studying the society quantitatively, but also show the new methods of analysis from the qualitative side and encourages their combination. In shows that Big Data can and should be supplemented and interpreted through thick data , as well as cultural analysis, in a novel approach of Thick Big Data.The book is critically important for students and researchers in the social sciences to understand the possibilities of digital analysis, both in the quantitative and qualitative area, and successfully build mixed-methods approaches.
... In addition, perceptions of online communities and researchers are central starting points for reflexivity (e.g. Gatson and Zweerink, 2004). Digital ethnography explores the multi-situatedness of communication technology within society, as well as the many forms of embodied online experiences (e.g. ...
This article contributes to scholarship on digital sociology by addressing the methodological challenge of gaining access to hard-to-reach online communities. We use assemblage theory to argue how collaborative efforts of human participants, digital technologies, techniques, authorities, cultural codes and the human researcher co-determine aspects of gaining access to online subjects. In particular, we analyse how credibility and reflexivity are assembled in an online research context. This is exemplified by our own experiences of researching hackers that dispute surveillance and the social embeddedness of darknet drug market users. In this article, we demonstrate the utility of an assemblage perspective for understanding the complexities involved in negotiating access to hard-to-reach communities in digital spaces.
... Nikt w końcu nie jest cyfrowym tubylcem od urodzenia, wszyscy uczestniczący w danej społeczności przystąpili kiedyś do niej jako obcy. Natomiast samo doświadczenie stawania się tubylcem, umożliwiające bardzo dobre zrozumienie społeczności od środka, jest niezwykle cenne ( Gatson, Zweerink, 2004). Owszem, prowadzi zwykle do akceptacji logiki badanej zbiorowości -ale może to być godziwa cena za pozyskanie inaczej hermetycznej wiedzy. ...
Fragment książki "Socjologia internetu", stanowiącej wprowadzenie do cyfrowych metod badań społecznych, zarówno ilościowych (Big Data, SNA - analiza sieci, kwestionariusze, kulturomika), jak i jakościowych (etnografia, wywiad, storytelling, narracje) i kulturowych (analiza wizualna i treści) z dodatkiem na temat etyki badawczej w badaniach internetu.
... Ερευνητές χρησιμοποιούν το διαδίκτυο ως μέσο πρόσβασης στους ίδιους τους συμμετέχοντες, αλλά και σε συναφείς πληροφορίες και για ορισμένους συμμετέχοντες τουλάχιστον ο ψηφιακός χώρος αποτελεί μια προνομιακή κοινωνική πραγματικότητα και μια σημαντική πηγή της ταυτότητάς τους (Gatson & Zweerink, 2004;Hammersley & Treseder, 2007). Υπάρχουν εικονικές κοινότητες που λειτουργούν στον κυβερνοχώρο και αυτό μπορεί να μελετηθεί εθνογραφικά μόνο μέσω του ίδιου μέσου. ...
This PhD research explores the interaction of four teenagers in two literacy spaces. The first literacy space is the multiplayer first person shooter video game Counter Strike: Global Offensive and the second literacy space, is school. Specifically, the dissertation examines (a) the ways Counter Strike: Global Offensive functions as an interactive problem-solving literacy space during gameplay; (b) the out-(digital) literacy practices of the teenagers related to deep expertise on the CS:GO and (c) the notion of metagaming. Additionally, the ethnographic research investigates the stances of the participants in school literacy.
Η παρούσα διδακτορική διατριβή διερευνά τη διεπίδραση τεσσάρων εφήβων σε δύο χώρους γραμματισμού. Ο πρώτος χώρος γραμματισμού είναι το διαδικτυακό πολυχρηστικό βιντεοπαιχνίδι Counter Strike: Global Offensive και ο δεύτερος χώρος είναι το σχολείο. Συγκεκριμένα, η διατριβή εξετάζει (α) τους τρόπους με τους οποίους το Counter Strike: Global Offensive λειτουργεί ως χώρος γραμματισμού και μάθησης για τους εν λόγω έφηβους κατά τη διάρκεια της παιγνίδρασης (β) τις εξωπαιγνιδικές (ψηφιακές) πρακτικές γραμματισμού των εφήβων οι οποίες σχετίζονται με την εμβύθιση των γνώσεων τους για το βιντεοπαιχνίδι και (γ) την έννοια της μεταπαιγνιδοποίησης. Παράλληλα, η παρούσα εργασία εξετάζει τους τρόπους με τους οποίους το σχολείο και πιο συγκεκριμένα η σχολική τάξη, λειτουργεί ως χώρος γραμματισμού για τους συμμετέχοντες της έρευνας και διερευνά τις (αντι)στάσεις των συμμετεχόντων στον σχολικό γραμματισμό.
... Additionally, researchers also examined the interaction within both communities back to the foundation of each anti-sponsor brand community. Cultural immersion in online settings was established by naturalistic observation in the form of "lurking" (Kozinets, 2010) and participant observation (Gatson & Zweerink, 2004). ...
This study investigated social-media-based anti-sponsor-brand communities and their impacts, not only on the sponsoring brand but also on the sponsored club and the sport itself. Guided by balance theory and social identity theory, the authors conducted a qualitative study of 2 distinctive, prototypical Facebook-based anti-sponsor-brand communities of teams from the German Football League (Bundesliga). The results reveal common findings for both cases, including members’ motivation to oppose a sponsor and, at the same time, to protect the sport. However, the communities differ in terms of their members’ relationships to the club. This results in different consequences for the sponsor and club brands, as well as for other actors in the sponsorship network. To managers of clubs, sponsors, and sport-governing bodies, the authors suggest concerted strategies like image campaigns and interaction with anti-sponsor-brand communities as responses to different community motivations.
... When it comes to internet research, such literature is only growing since relatively recently (though rapidly), i.e., since the early 2000s (see Buchanan & Ess, 2008 for a short historical overview). Internet researchers may not necessarily meet the individuals they are writing about face-to-face, yet they commonly encounter and collect information by or about these persons online (Gatson & Zweerink, 2004;Markham & Buchanan, 2012). This is also reflected in early internet research ethics deliberations posing whether digital material needs to be conceptualised as 'representations or people' (White, 2002). ...
This paper reflects on the ethics of internet research on community controversies. Specifically, it focuses on controversies concerning gendered, social interaction in hacking communities. It addresses the question how internet researchers should treat and represent content that individuals controversially discussed online. While many internet sources are likewise technically public, they may yet suggest distinct privacy expectations on the part of involved individuals. In internet research, ethical decision-making regarding which online primary sources may be, e.g., referenced and quoted or require anonymisation is still ambiguous and contested. Instead of generalisable rules, the context dependence of internet research ethics has been frequently stressed. Given this ambiguity, the paper elaborates on ethical decisions and their implications by exploring the case of a controversial hackerspaces.org mailing list debate. In tracing data across different platforms, it analyses the emerging ethico-methodological challenges.
... Przecież nikt nie rodzi się cyfrowym tubylcem, każdy uczestnik społeczności wirtualnej przystąpił do niej kiedyś jako osoba obca. Jednocześnie zdobycie samego doświadczenia dołączania do zbiorowości i przejścia wszystkich etapów uczestnictwa w niej jest bardzo wartościowe badawczo (Gatson i Zweerink 2004). Co prawda może powodować przyjęcie logiki badanej zbiorowości, ale, przy zachowaniu odpowiedniego nastawienia badawczego (Czarniawska-Joerges 1992;Jemielniak 2002) zalety przeważają nad wadami. ...
Celem artykułu jest pokazanie, że badania z zakresu socjologii cyfrowej są ważnym uzupełnieniem większości projektów badań społecznych oraz wprowadzenie systematyzacji pojęciowej. Omawiam różnice znaczeniowe i kategoryzacyjne pojęć. Przedstawiam podstawowe zalety badań ilościowych i Big Data, argumentując, że pełne ich wykorzystanie jest możliwe przede wszystkim dzięki uzupełnieniu badań ilościowych o thick data pochodzące z pogłębionych badań jakościowych. Postuluję, że dostęp do Big Data w większym stopniu wymusza umiejętną triangulację metodyczną i stosowanie etnografi i cyfrowej. Twierdzę również, że socjologia w niedalekiej przyszłości będzie musiała nie tylko uwzględniać badania społeczności internetowych w niemal każdym projekcie badawczym, oraz nie tylko wchłonąć znaczną część warsztatu badawczego z zakresu analizy danych rozwiniętego w naukach ścisłych, ale także wypracować metody łączenia Big Data z etnografią cyfrową.
... Böylelikle, etnografik araştırma, kavramsal derinlikten yoksun, salt bir metodolojik çabadan ibaret olma halinden uzaklaşmış olur. Rock (2001) (Hine, 2000;Hine, 2005;Gatson ve Zweerink, 2004;Kozinets, 2009;Boyd;2015, Binark, 2007Alyanak, 2014;Binark ve Sancaktutan, 2009;Ergül, 2013;Morva, 2014 vd.) oluşmuştur. Robinson ve Schulz (2011, s. 180 (Turkle, 1995;Reid, 1999;Zhao, 2005 vs.) kimlik, etkileşim, anonimlik, benliğin oluşumu ve sunumu gibi temalar 10 İlk jenerasyon, çevrimiçi ortamı anonimlik vurgusu üzerinden genellikle kendine özgü ve çevrimdışı hayattan tamamen bağımsız bir benlik bilincinin ortaya çıktığı bir ortam olarak ele alırken, 1990'ların sonlarından itibaren, etnograflar dijital etnografiyi çevrimdışı geleneksel etnografinin bir uzantısı olarak meşrulaştırma çabasına girişmişlerdir. ...
The Chicago School of Sociology has made important theoretical and methodological contributions to the field of ethnographic studies. The urban monographs of the early Chicago School and the theory of symbolic interactionism are the most recognised of these contributions. The focus of this study is on the following question: What does the Chicago School’s ethnographic legacy in general and in particular its theory of symbolic interactionism mean for the current digital ethnographic studies? Hence, this study (i) discusses the outlines of the literature of the Chicago ethnographic research; (ii) indicates the position of the theory of symbolic interactionism in the school’s tradition of ethnography; (iii) analyses how the theory of symbolic interactionism relates to the digital ethnographic studies.
... In addition, in networks with few joint activities and rare gatherings, multiple investigators can help intensify observations by combining their field notes, feelings, and impressions of the same situation, hereby doubling, tripling, or more the amount of observations. Here, too, multiplying investigators can also be complemented with the use of recording devices, in particular audiovisual, which allow for direct reproductions of multiple sites or multiple points of view (Gatson & Zweerink, 2004). However, teams in ethnography bring their own complications (Erickson & Stull, 1997;Mauthner & Doucet, 2008;Smets et al., 2014). ...
... From this theoretical frame- work is derived the methodological principle according to which online real- ity can be studied as being offline and vice versa. Actually, several virtual ethnographic inquiries imply the observation of the same community, both in their offline and online setting, as well as the submission of face-to-face interviews to online communities' members in order to understand the mean- ings and scopes they assign to them (Gatson and Zweerink 2004;Muñiz and Schau 2005). ...
The aim of this article is to introduce some analytical concepts suitable for ethnographers dealing with social media environments. As a result of the growth of social media, the Internet structure has become a very complex, fluid, and fragmented space. Within this space, it is not always possible to consider the “classical” online community as the privileged field site for the ethnographer, in which s/he immerses him/herself. Differently, taking inspiration from some methodological principles of the Digital Methods paradigm, I suggest that the main task for the ethnographer moving across social media environments should not be exclusively that of identifying an online community to delve into but of mapping the practices through which Internet users and digital devices structure social formations around a focal object (e.g., a brand). In order to support the ethnographer in the mapping of social formations within social media environments, I propose five analytical concepts: community, public, crowd, self...
... In addition, we examined the interaction in both groups back to the foundation of each anti-sponsor-brand community. Cultural immersion in online settings was established by naturalistic observation in the form of "lurking" (Kozinets, 2010) and participant observation (Gatson & Zweerink, 2004). ...
Social networks such as Facebook have become a fundamental venue for positive sport-related interaction. However, social media provide also a perfect platform for negative communication and anti-brand communities which are forming around common aversions toward a specific brand (Hollenbeck and Zinkhan 2006). Emerging research suggests negative consequences of anti-brand communities opposing a sport team, both for the team itself and for its sponsors (Hickman and Lawrence 2010). While most anti-brand communities in sport build around a disliked team, some oppose a sponsor or investor of the team. Research on image transfers (Meenaghan 2001) and balance theory (Dalakas and Levin 2005) provides a suitable theoretical framework for a rationale of interrelationships between the anti-brand community and the team.
... In addition, we examined the interaction in both groups back to the foundation of each anti-sponsor-brand community. Cultural immersion in online settings was established by naturalistic observation in the form of "lurking" (Kozinets, 2010) and participant observation (Gatson & Zweerink, 2004). ...
The Internet has given rise to anti-brand communities which are forming around common aversions toward brands. We illuminate this phenomenon in the context of social networking sites and consider effects on sponsorships of the opposed brand. Therefore, we conduct a mixed method study of Facebook-organized anti-brand communities using the brand FC Bayern Muenchen and its main sponsor Deutsche Telekom. Our findings reveal that community membership negatively influences both attitude and purchase intention toward the sponsor of the anti-brand. Consequently, we establish the relevance of anti-brand communities for both the brand and their sponsors and derive marketing implications.
... In addition, we examined the interaction in both groups back to the foundation of each anti-sponsor-brand community. Cultural immersion in online settings was established by naturalistic observation in the form of "lurking" (Kozinets, 2010) and participant observation (Gatson & Zweerink, 2004). ...
... It is a qualitative account, gathered by an organizational ethnographer (Hammersley and Atkinson, 1995;Schwartzman, 1993;Kostera, 2007;Krzyworzeka and Krzyworzeka, 2012), and relies on participative inquiry (Denzin and Lincoln, 2007;Van Maanen, 1988: the researcher was immersed in the studied culture and "went native" during the process of the study. Such an approach is one of the strategies deemed to be legitimate for anthropological projects (Sperschneider and Bagger, 2003;Gatson and Zweerink, 2004;Van Maanen, 1988. Although in traditional qualitative studies, this approach is criticized by some authors as being risky (Leach, 1982, p. 124;Walsh, 2004;Lobo, 1990), in some approaches, such as action research and performative studies of cultures, it is considered to be superior to a non-participatory or disengaged approach (Reason, 1988;Jemielniak, 2002Jemielniak, , 2006Greenwood and Levin, 1998). ...
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to show the limits of a-hierarchical organization in the Wikimedia movement governance model. Wikimedia governance, as well as the dynamic transformations it is currently undergoing, remains to be covered by the literature on organization and management studies; yet, they exemplify the problems with the “organization of the future,” which is highly idealized throughout the management literature.
Design/methodology/approach
– The research design relies on an ethnographic, long-term, participative study of the Wikipedia community at large. The methods used rely mainly on discourse analysis and interviews. The study benefits from the unique participant immersion of the researcher (who spent six years participating in the studied community, making over five edits each day on average, and being elected to several positions of highest trust within the organization).
Findings
– The findings show that the open, participative, and democratic character of the organization, which in theory is oriented toward sustainable solidarity, as well as the semi-anonymous character of some of the members’ identities, makes the community more empowered yet more belligerent. Also, the entirely open and flat governance model makes it more difficult to establish a stable leadership consensus.
Research limitations/implications
– Research is limited due to its methodological design, as it relies on in-depth qualitative case studies, rather than wider analysis. Further quantitative research is needed to confirm the findings on a bigger scale and in other open collaboration organizations.
Practical implications
– The findings show that participative organizational design, especially in open collaboration projects, have adverse effects in leading to overly confrontational and quarrelsome organizational culture, which not only makes decision making more difficult, but also deters people less used to debating and conflict.
Social implications
– The social implications of the findings suggest that even in highly democratized structures, some minimal forms of leadership, and governance are useful to facilitate the decision-making processes.
Originality/value
– This paper extends the understanding of organizational dynamics and governance in open collaboration organizations, and exposes the shortcomings of this model, which are an inevitable trade-off for its indisputable benefits.
... (Flicker, Haans & Skinner 2004). Yleisistä tutkimuseettisistä syistä kuitenkin hahmot, ryhmät ja itse palvelin on anonymisoitu (Gatson & Zweerink 2004). ...
Artikkelissa tarkastelemme strategisten käytäntöjen rakennetta ja funktioita World of Warcraft -verkkoroolipelissä. Hyödyntäen pelin ns. raidiyhteisöjen parissa tehtyä kenttätutkimusta osoitamme, että selkeitä käytäntötasoja voidaan erottaa kolme, ja niillä kullakin on oma tehtävänsä yhteisöjen toiminnassa ja pysyvyy- dessä. Pelaajien erilainen sitoutuneisuus viitekehyksiinsä vaikuttaa siihen, miten käytäntöjä sovelletaan. Artikkeli myös liittää esittelemänsä strategiatutkimuksel- liset tulokset pelitutkimuksen viitekehykseen, tarjoten sillan entistä laajemmalle johtamisen analyysille peleissä.
... In addition, in networks with few joint activities and rare gatherings, multiple investigators can help intensify observations by combining their field notes, feelings and impressions of the same situation, hereby doubling, tripling, or more, the amount of observations. Here, too, multiplying investigators can also be complemented with the use of recording devices, in particular audio-visual, which allow for direct reproductions of multiple sites or multiple points of view (Gatson & Zweerink, 2004). ...
A general interest in the study of social practices has been spreading across a diversity of disciplines in organization and management research, relying mostly on rich ethnographic accounts of units or teams. What is often called the practice-turn, however, has not reached research on interorganizational networks. This is mainly due to methodological issues that call, in the end, for a mixed-method approach. This article addresses this issue by proposing a research design that balances well-established social network analysis with a set of techniques of organizational ethnography that fit with the specifics of interorganizational networks. In what we call network ethnography, qualitative and quantitative data are collected and analyzed in a parallel fashion. Ultimately, the design implies convergence during data interpretation, hereby offering platforms of reflection for each method toward new data collection and analysis. We discuss implications for mixed-method literature, research on interorganizational networks, and organizational ethnography.
... Researchers who use online means of accessing informants and participants are often tapping into existing networks of social actors who maintain 'virtual' communities through sustained interaction by digital means. It is clear that, for some participants at least, this is a prime social reality, and a major source of identity (Gatson and Zweerink 2004;Hammersley and Treseder 2007). ...
... Standards of authenticity should be seen as situationally negotiated and sustained (Hine 2000) by researchers facilitating open and honest dialogues with their participants (Busher and James 2012). Gatson and Zweerink (2004) found that the identities portrayed by their participants emphasized the importance of discourse and experience in shaping both the real and virtual worlds. People's actions happen not only in physical places but in spaces containing multiple locations in hybrid online/face-to-face worlds (Busher and James 2015). ...
... The ways in which people are prepared to present themselves in conversations and actions is crucial in the conduct of research (Gatson and Zweerink, 2004: 191). Drawing on Goffman (1969), Hardey (2002) argues that in the 'presentation of self' on-line text makes invisible the bodily presence as well as outward acts of movement, posture and emotional expression that are important elements in determining how individuals see themselves and how they are perceived by others. ...
At the heart of any research project lies the trustworthiness with which its findings might be viewed. In which ever paradigm researchers choose to locate their work, they try to ensure the trustworthiness or credibility of its outcomes by enacting it within a rigorous framework that addresses the epistemological complexities of a study's methodological process and intellectual focus. At the core of this framework lie the ethics of research. These are of particular importance for people engaged in research and practice in education and the social sciences who deal with human subjects in various forms. The screw is tightened further when the methodology used for a study is qualitative and the study uses the web as a medium for the investigation. In studies that explore people's narratives it is essential to be confident that the people responding to semi or unstructured interview schedules are whom they claim they are. Impersonation would invalidate a study. This is particularly difficult to detect behind the smoked-glass of the web interface. For the participants in such research, too, the ethical dilemmas are considerable since every message that is sent on email carries a unique identifier that links it to the site from which it is sent and to the person who owns that site. Should such information inadvertently filter into the data sets of a research project, then that person's privacy will be easily breached. This paper considers some of the ethical dilemmas involved in on-line qualitative research, drawing on examples from some studies to discuss how such dilemmas might be addressed in an effort to construct the unattainable but pursue the utopian: fully ethical research.
... In face-to-face interviews the success of the interaction is often a matter of 'personal affinities,' (Kivits, 2005:38). This affects the ways in which participants are prepared to present themselves in their conversations and actions, and is crucial to the conduct of research (Gatson and Zweerink, 2004: 191). One of the problems researchers encounter when using face-to-face interviews is that the outcomes of conversations can be distorted because people interpret the social characteristics of the other, such as age, race, gender and organisational status, to shape their responses to fit whatever pattern of sense making seems to be being required of them (Sproull and Kiesler, 1986, Mann and Stewart 2000). ...
... The complexity of self, identity and perspective occurs in face-to-face research as well as online research and affects how participants present themselves in conversations and actions in the conduct of research (Gatson and Zweerink, 2004: 191). This is particularly evident in email interviewing, where it is not always possible for the researcher to verify the identity of the participants. ...
... Researchers who use online means of accessing informants and participants are often tapping into existing networks of social actors who maintain 'virtual' communities through sustained interaction by digital means. It is clear that, for some participants at least, this is a prime social reality, and a major source of identity (Gatson and Zweerink 2004;Hammersley and Treseder 2007). ...
Cet article propose de nouvelles perspectives sur les expériences vécues par les enseignants du supérieur, à distance et en présentiel, en période de crise sanitaire transnationale. En conséquence, cette étude ethnographique longitudinale étudie et présente une perspective émique en appui sur 17 mois d’observation des participants d’une population particulière — des étudiants en business management du premier cycle, apprenant en ligne et en présentiel dans une université de sciences appliquées située à Berlin — afin de conceptualiser les processus de réflexion des enseignants en appliquant des analyses thématiques. Cette combinaison permet la création d’une ethnographie riche ou, comme Geertz (1973) l’appelle, d’une « thick description », qui ne se limite pas uniquement à l’apprentissage en ligne. Ainsi, l’importance de cette étude réside dans sa contribution à une meilleure compréhension de la manière dont les crises transnationales ont modifié et remodelé le rôle des enseignants dans l’enseignement supérieur, qui visent néanmoins à internationaliser les études de leurs apprenants en repensant leurs approches pédagogiques en période de mobilité physique limitée. Cet article se concentre donc davantage sur les moyens, comme l’influence personnelle de l’enseignant, l’ouverture internationale ou encore l’incarnation de l’internationalisation, par lesquels les enseignants du supérieur construisent et comprennent leurs réalités vécues, et moins sur le nombre d’occurrences mesurables (Cunliffe, 2008). Enfin, donner un sens aux « thick descriptions » construites par les enseignants ne reproduit pas la sphère d’étude d’avant la crise, mais façonne plutôt un environnement en évolution rapide, contemporain, instantané et multidimensionnel résultant d’une accessibilité permanente (Bob, Bradshaw, Twining & Walsh, 2010 ; Gatson & Zweernik, 2004). Selon cette compréhension ontologique, cette recherche ethnographique interprétative analyse les enseignants dans leur contexte naturel, spécifique à la crise, en fonction de la façon dont ils construisent leurs réalités vécues, et, donc, dont ils donnent différentes significations à leurs interactions dans des contextes distincts (Denzin & Lincoln, 2003 ; Kromer, 2018).
This paper focuses on the figure of the flâneur and sets out to explore how the practice of flânerie might offer social researchers a different way of engaging with digital worlds. It is articulated around two main interests: the relationship of the flâneur to digital worlds and the theoretical and methodological implications of envisioning the practice of flânerie as a way of engaging with digital worlds. This paper contends that flânerie could inform and creatively enrich our practices as social researchers in two ways: enabling us to approach differently the exploration of digital worlds and leading us to investigate phenomena that might have remained concealed through more conventional methodologies. Flânerie, we argue, offers the possibility of a more open and explorative approach to digital research. Our paper outlines implications of positioning flânerie as a methodological practice and reflects on potential of flânerie in the exploration of digital worlds.
Resumen. Este artículo analiza las denuncias de apropiaciones culturales derivadas del uso indebido de diseños tradicionales por parte de organizaciones y personas indígenas a través de los medios de comunicación, sobre todo en las redes sociales. A partir de un trabajo de campo multisituado realizado en Panamá, Guatemala y en las redes sociales, estudiamos dos casos: 1) la apropiación por parte de empresas panameñas y multinacionales del arte textil guna protegido por leyes nacionales sui generis de propiedad intelectual y 2) las demandas de protección de los tejidos mayas por parte del Movimiento Nacional de Tejedoras Ruchajixik ri qana'ojbäl de Guatemala. Gracias a nuestro trabajo de campo online y offline, reflexionamos sobre las dificultades y las oportunidades que nos ofrecen la articulación de la etnografía digital y el trabajo de campo clásico para entender la comunicación indígena en contextos marcados por el conflicto en torno a la propiedad de los conocimientos y las expresiones tradicionales.
Abstract. This article focuses on analyzing allegations of cultural appropriation arising from the misuse of traditional designs by indigenous organizations and individuals through the media, especially on social media. Based on a multi-situated field work carried out in Panama, Guatemala and on social networks, it aims to study two cases: 1) the appropriation of Guna textile art, protected by national sui generis intellectual property laws, by Panamanian and multinational companies, and, 2) the demands for protection of Mayan textiles by the National Movement of Weavers Ruchajixik ri qana'ojbäl of Guatemala. Thanks to our online and offline fieldwork, this article reflects on the difficulties and opportunities offered by digital ethnography and classic fieldwork for understanding indigenous communication in contexts marked by conflict over the ownership of traditional knowledge and expressions.
Hackathons are techno-creative events during which participants get together in a physical location. They may be hosted by civic communities, corporations or public institutions. Working individually or in teams, usually for several days, participants develop projects such as hardware or software prototypes. Based on a digital ethnography of two events in the Netherlands and Denmark, this article investigates project development practices at hackathons. In particular, it analyses how participants organized their project work and which technologies were used in support of their creative endeavours. Hackathons are increasingly competitive rather than collaborative events, involving time pressure, inducements such as prizes, and requiring efficient skills utilization. I argue that this facilitates the following tendencies: Firstly, strategic effort is put into final presentations. Projects need to be convincingly presented, and persuasively pitching an idea becomes crucial. Secondly, there is only limited time for personal learning, since participants’ existing skills need to be efficiently applied if a team wants to stay competitive. This encourages division of labour within groups: a tendency which seems especially problematic given that IT skills biases are often expressed in terms of gender. Thirdly, participants are more inclined to use technologies that are proprietary but appear ‘open enough’. In light of this observation and by drawing on the concept of technology as resource and opportunity, I discuss the techno-political implications of utilized technologies. With this analysis, I aim at contributing to the critical debate on hackathons as productive but likewise ideologically significant fields of ‘hacking cultures’.
Existing literature on the affordances of Internet platforms rarely examines the complex and recursive relationships between the actions of volunteer moderators and the behaviour of end users. Building on existing studies of Internet communities, affordances and ‘public goods’, this article uses an ethnographic approach to analyse two subreddits, r/paleo and r/nootropics, on the social news site reddit. It elaborates on work by Massanari to illustrate how the moderators of forums with an epistemic focus utilise the affordances at their disposal with the aim of mediating trust and establishing a paradigm for constructive discourse. End users respond to these attempts in unpredictable and unforeseen ways, indicating the interpretive flexibility of affordances. The concept of ‘platform dialectics’ is invoked as an overarching description of this phenomenon.
This chapter addresses the challenge of relating the public/private distinction to online environments and the implications of this for research. The chapter examines the significance of the distinction between the public and private for social science research and the varying strategies that researchers have developed for categorising online data in relation to this conceptual opposition. Tracing the distinction between perceived and technical approaches to the publicness/privateness of online environments and content, the chapter suggests that scholars pay attention to the expression of privacy in their research settings and marks out a distinction between explicit/implicit markers of privacy that can be recruited when approaching online environments.
Over the past decade, researchers from different academic disciplines have paid increasing attention to the productivity of online environments. The ethical underpinnings of research in such settings, however, remain contested and often controversial. As traditional debates have been reignited by the need to respond to the particular characteristics of technologically-mediated environments, researchers have entered anew key debates regarding the moral, legal and regulative aspects of research ethics. A growing trend in this work has been towards the promotion of localized and contextualized research ethics - the suggestion that the decisions we make should be informed by the nature of the environments we study and the habits/expectations of participants within them. Despite such moves, the relationship between the empirical, theoretical and methodological aspects of Internet research ethics remains underexplored. Drawing from ongoing sociological research into the practices of media cultures online, this book provides a timely and distinctive response to this need. This book explores the relationship between the production of ethical stances in two different contexts: The ethical manoeuvring of participants within online media-fan communities and the ethical decision-making of the author as Internet researcher, manoeuvring, as it were, in the academic community. In doing so, the book outlines a reflexive framework for exploring research ethics at different levels of analysis; the empirical settings of research; the theoretical perspectives which inform the researcher's objectification of the research settings; and the methodological issues and practical decisions that constitute the activity as research. The analysis of these different levels develops a way of thinking about ethical practice in terms of stabilizing and destabilizing moves within and between research and researched communities. The analysis emphasizes the continuities and discontinuities between both research practice and online media-fan activity, and social activity in on and offline environments. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012. All rights reserved.
In this chapter we examine how a variety of research approaches can be applied to the study of cross-blog interactions. Cross-blog interactions can be challenging to study because of they often require the researcher to reconsider traditional notions of temporality, discourse space, and conversation. Further, in many instances they are neither static nor well defined; defining the beginning and end of a discussion as well as locating all components of the discussion can be difficult. For this reason, we advocate a blend of six approaches (social network analysis, content analysis, discourse analysis, conversation analysis, narrative analysis, and ethnography). For each, we discuss strengths and limitations and provide examples of how the approach may be used to help fully capture the complexity of these interactions. Additionally we discuss web-based tools that are helpful when engaged in this type of research.
This article presents the results of a qualitative study, in which postings in virtual communities were content analyzed to capture the lived experience of western women residing in compounds in the Arab world. In spite of their growing number and unique characteristics, the life and struggles of these women has not been studied. Four major themes emerged: challenges, perceived benefits, available support systems and coping strategies. These themes are discussed and illustrated.
This artide examines the method of virtual ethnography - or "netnography" - as used by scholars of organization and management studies. It describes the main problems organizational anthropologists may face when conducting research online. The issues discussed indude cultural heterogeneity of virtual communities, the non-fundamental differences of virtual ethnography and ethnography, specifics of interactions, nativity, problems of observation, trouble with anthropological reflexivity, as well as the topics of trust and identity enactment.
Students and recent graduates of counseling and human services programs will consider The Counselor’s Companion an indispensible tool to enhance professional practice, knowledge, and skill.
This book brings into focus the technologically augmented nature of global online communities, advancing research methods that reveal the imprint of emergent social forms and characterise digital frontiers of social engagement. Drawing on insights from across the social sciences, it presents a case study of people with passions for reptiles and amphibians to illustrate for next generation researchers how to conduct community research in the real world. Richly illustrated with ethnographic research, together with extensive survey and interview material drawn from around the world, Research Methods and Global Online Communities explores the changing nature of communities that form around common interests and are embedded in a digital architecture rather than place. In doing so, this book transcends the digital dualism of online/offline models of community and engages with debates on the social impacts of the internet and the adaptive nature of community. As such, it will appeal to social scientists interested in innovative approaches to characterising digital communities through mixed-methods research practice.
Field-workers encounter numerous personal and professional hazards in contract research. A few potentially hazardous situations include entrance into the field, role conflicts, fieldwork in the inner city, ethnographic reports, and dissemination of findings. Job stress and burnout pose an additional problem. Urban fieldwork in particular forces an ethnographer to confront the realities of guilty knowledge—confidential knowledge of illegal activities—and dirty hands—a situation from which one can not emerge innocent of wrongdoing. Developing moral decision-making guidelines is imperative if one is to deal effectively with these problems. The risk-benefit approach, the respect-for-persons ethic, and basic pragmatism must all be used as guidelines in the field. Other hazards range from fieldwork conducted at an accelerated pace, to reporting in a highly political atmosphere. Many of these pressures affect one's judgment while in the field—whether in the streets of the inner city or in plush conference rooms ...
For a growing cohort of Americans Internet tools have become a significant conduit of their social life and work life. The surveys of the Pew Internet & American Life Project in year 2000 show that more than 52 million Americans went online each day and there are significant differences in use between men and women, young and old, those of different races and ethnic groups, and those of different socio-economic status. A user typology can be built around two variables: the length of time a person has used the Internet and the frequency with which she or he logs on from home. We contend that use of e-mail helps people build their social networks by extending and maintaining friend and family relationships.
In undertaking an ethnography of communication in a particular locale, the first task is to define at least tentatively the speech community to be studied, attempt to gain some understanding of its social organization and other salient aspects of the culture, and formulate possible hypotheses concerning the diverse ways these sociocultural phenomena might relate to patterns of communication. It is crucial that the ethnographic description of other groups be approached not in terms of preconceived categories and processes, but with openness to discovery of the way native speakers perceive and structure their communicative experiences; in the case of ethnographers working in their own speech communities, the development of objectivity and relativity is essential, and at the same time difficult.
lienating for some, yet most intimate and real for others, emerging communications technologies are creating a varied array of cyberspace experiences. Nowhere are the new and old more intertwined, as familiar narratives of the past and radical visions of the future inform our attempts to assess the impact of cyberspace on self and society. Amidst the dizzying pace of technological innovation, Annette N. Markham embarks on a unique, ethnographic approach to understanding internet users by immersing herself in on-line reality. The result is an engrossing narrative as well as a theoretically engaging journey. A cast of characters, the reflexive author among them, emerge from Markham's interviews and research to depict the complexity and diversity of internet realities. While cyberspace is hyped as a disembodied cultural arena where physical reality can be transcended, Markham finds that to understand how people experience the internet, she must learn how to be embodied there_a process of acculturation and immersion which is not so different from other anthropological projects of cross-cultural understanding. Both new and not-so-new, cyberspace provides a context in which we can ask new sorts of questions about all cultural experience.
List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi Names and Transcriptions xiii Abbreviations xv Introduction 3 Detroit 9 Three Neighborhoods 11 The Localness of Race 13 White People or Whiteness? 16 Structure of the Book 19 1. History of the 'Hood 24 "Disgrace to the Race" 26 The Color Line 37 Riots and Race 50 Franklin School 69 2. "A Hundred Shades of White" 83 "Hillbillies" 88 "That White and Black Shit" 107 The Wicker Chair and the Baseball Game 128 3. Eluding the R-Word 145 The "Fact" of Whiteness 151 Encounters 158 "Gentrifier" 168 "History" 191 4. Between "All Black" and "All White" 209 Statements 214 "White Enclave" 224 "Racist" 245 Curriculum 263 Conclusion 278 Notes 28S Index 347
Usenet distributes thousands of topically-oriented discussion groups, reaching millions of readers world-wide. Newsgroup participants often create distinctive sub-cultures, which have been all but ignored in scholarly work on computer networks and computer-mediated communication. I illustrate how Usenet discourse can operate as a culture-creating force, and how practice theory can be used to approach Usenet cultures, with a deep analysis of one message in the group ‘rec.arts.tv.soaps.’ This group, which discusses television soap operas, is one of the most prolific on Usenet. The use of a single message demonstrates the potential of all Usenet talk as a locus of cultural meaning. The specific claims I make about such meanings in rec.arts.tv.soaps are grounded in my ethnographic research on this group over the last two years.
"At last world.com meets ethnography.eudora. This book shows how ethnography can have a global reach and a global relevance, its humanistic and direct methods actually made more not less relevant by recent developments in global culture and economy. Globalisation is not a singular, unilinear process, fatalistically unfolding towards inevitable ends: it entails gaps, contradictions, counter-tendencies, and marked unevenness. And just as capital flows more freely around the globe, so do human ideas and imaginings, glimpses of other possible futures. These elements all interact in really existing sites, situations and localities, not in outer space or near-earth orbit. Unprefigurably, they are taken up into all kinds of local meanings-makings by active humans struggling and creating with conditions on the ground, so producing new kinds of meanings and identities, themselves up for export on the world market. This book, conceptually rich, empirically concrete, shows how global neo-liberalism spawns a grounded globalisation, ethnographically observable, out of which is emerging the mosaic of a new kind of global civil society. As this book so richly shows, tracing the lineaments of these possibilities and changes is the special province of ethnography."--Paul Willis, author of Learning to Labor and editor of the journal Ethnography
"The authors of Global Ethnography bring globalization 'down to earth' and show us how it impacts the everyday lives of Kerala nurses, U.S. homeless recyclers, Irish software programmers, Hungarian welfare recipients, Brazilian feminists, and a host of other protagonists in a global postmodern world. This is superb ethnography -- refreshing and vivid descriptions grounded in historical and social contexts with important theoretical implications."--Louise Lamphere, President of the American Anthropological Association
"The global inhabits and constitutes specific structuration of the political, economic, cultural, and subjective. How to study this is a challenge. Global Ethnography makes an enormous contribution to this effort."--Saskia Sassen, author of Globalization and Its Discontents
"This fascinating volume will quickly find its place in fieldwork courses, but it should also be read by transnationalists and students of the political economy, economic sociologists, methodologists of all stripes--and doubting macrosociologists."--Herbert J. Gans, Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology, Columbia University
"Not only matches the originality and quality of Ethnography Unbound, but raises the ante by literally expanding the methodological and analytical repertory of ethnographic sociology to address the theoretical and logistical challenges of a globalized discipline and social world."--Judith Stacey, author of In the Name of the Family: Rethinking Family Values in the Postmodern Age
"In the best traditions of radical Berkeley scholarship, Burawoy's collective recaptures the ground(s) of an engaged sociology embedded in the culturalpolitics of the global without losing the ethnographer's magic--the local touch."--Nancy Scheper-Hughes, author of Death without Weeping
The article is a sociologically informed approach to understanding the author’s own place and identity. Questions of personal identity serve to highlight larger insights about a crucial reality in the United States. The author engages a standpoint at the crux of America’s racial dilemma, combined with a specialization in research on race and ethnicity. First, the interactive and overlapping set of methodologies within which her own narrative of identity fits is discussed. These data are systematically collected and analyzed field notes, historical documents, and the embedded interactions from within a larger culture of literature, scholarship, and popular understandings. The body of the article consists of three examples that she characterizes as confronting her Blackness, confronting her multiracialness, and confronting her Whiteness.
In this article, the author presents findings based on her research on BlueSky, an online interactive textbased forum. She discusses BlueSky participants' online performances of gendered and raced identities. Participants interpret their own and others' identities within the context of expectations and assumptions derived from offline U.S. culture, as well as from their membership in various computer-related subcultures. Given the predominance of white men on BlueSky, such identity interpretations also rely on expectations concerning masculinity and whiteness. The author explores BlueSky participants' understandings of themselves as “nerds” and considers the implications of this nerd identity for their relationship to hegemonic masculinity, especially to expectations of heterosexuality. Analyzing online identity performances in this way provides information pertaining not just to online interaction but to a better understanding of the social construction of gendered and raced identities more generally.
From the Publisher:Conversation and Community: Discourse in a Social MUD is an examination of the Speech community in an Internet "virtual community". Based on ethnographic research on a community of users of a MUD. or "multi-user dimension", the book describes a closeknit community united in features of their language use, shared history, and relationships to other online communities. Routines, conventional vocabulary, and abbreviations, syntactic and semantic phenomena, and special turn-taking and repair strategies distinguish the MUD community's register. Discussion of methods and ethics for online research are included.
From the Publisher:Alienating for some, yet most intimate and real for others, emerging communications technologies are creating a varied array of cyberspace experiences. Nowhere are the new and old more intertwined, as familiar narratives of the past and radical visions of the future inform our attempts to assess the impact of cyberspace on self and society. Amid the dizzying pace of technological innovation, Annette N. Markham embarks on a unique, ethnographic approach to understanding Internet users by immersing herself in online reality. The result is an engrossing narrative as well as a theoretically engaging journey. A cast of characters, the self-reflexive author among them, emerge from Markham's interviews and research to depict the complexity and diversity of Internet realities.
While cyberspace is hyped as a disembodied cultural arena where physical reality can be transcended, Markham finds that to understand how people experience the Internet, she must learn how to be embodied there--a process of acculturation and immersion which is not so different from other anthropological projects of cross-cultural understanding. Both new and not-so-new, cyberspace provides a context in which we can ask new sorts of questions about all cultural experience.
Ethnography through Thick and Thin, George E. Marcus. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998. 275 pp.
From introduction: "Daddy is saying `Holy moly!' to his computer again!" "Those words have become a family code for the way my virtual community has infiltrated our real world. My seven-year-old daughter knows that her father congregates with a family of invisible friends who seem to gather in his computer. Sometimes he talks to them, even if nobody else can see them. And she knows that these invisible friends sometimes show up in the flesh, materializing from the next block or the other side of the planet. "Since the summer of 1985, for an average of two hours a day, seven days a week, I've been plugging my personal computer into my telephone and making contact with the WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link)--a computer conferencing system that enables people around the world to carry on public conversations and exchange private electronic mail (e-mail). The idea of a community accessible only via my computer screen sounded cold to me at first, but I learned quickly that people can feel passionately about e-mail and computer conferences. I've become one of them. I care about these people I met through my computer, and I care deeply about the future of the medium that enables us to assemble. "I'm not alone in this emotional attachment to an apparently bloodless technological ritual. Millions of people on every continent also participate in the computer-mediated social groups known as virtual communities, and this population is growing fast. Finding the WELL was like discovering a cozy little world that had been flourishing without me, hidden within the walls of my house; an entire cast of characters welcomed me to the troupe with great merriment as soon as I found the secret door. Like others who fell into the WELL, I soon discovered that I was audience, performer, and scriptwriter, along with my companions, in an ongoing improvisation. A full-scale subculture was growing on the other side of my telephone jack, and they invited me to help create something new."
Since the 1930s, industrial sociologists have tried to answer the question, Why do workers not work harder? Michael Burawoy spent ten months as a machine operator in a Chicago factory trying to answer different but equally important questions: Why do workers work as hard as they do? Why do workers routinely consent to their own exploitation? Manufacturing Consent, the result of Burawoy's research, combines rich ethnographical description with an original Marxist theory of the capitalist labor process. Manufacturing Consent is unique among studies of this kind because Burawoy has been able to analyze his own experiences in relation to those of Donald Roy, who studied the same factory thirty years earlier. Burawoy traces the technical, political, and ideological changes in factory life to the transformations of the market relations of the plant (it is now part of a multinational corporation) and to broader movements, since World War II, in industrial relations.
Colección de estudios etnográficos surgidos de un seminario de sociología sobre observación participante, conducido por Michael Burawoy e iniciado en otoño de 1988 en el campus de Berkeley de la Universidad de California. Los diez trabajos aparecen distribuidos en cinco secciones, bautizadas con los títulos de Nuevos movimientos sociales, Reorganizando el espacio laboral, Nuevos inmigrantes, Del salón de clases a la comunidad e Investigando a los investigadores, pero más allá de sus sujetos específicos de estudio, comparten tres características comunes: el marco geográfico urbano del estado de California, sobre todo la llamada Area de la Bahía de San Francisco; el empleo de la observación participante como herramienta metodológica y la exploración de cómo son "puestos en escena" la resistencia y el poder en situaciones sociales invadidas por los sistemas económico y político.
Manual para la investigación cualitativa en ciencias sociales, en el que se presentan -paso a paso- técnicas para recoger, enfocar y analizar datos cualitativos.
Sherry Turkle is rapidly becoming the sociologist of the Internet, and that's beginning to seem like a good thing. While her first outing, The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, made groundless assertions and seemed to be carried along more by her affection for certain theories than by a careful look at our current situation, Life on the Screen is a balanced and nuanced look at some of the ways that cyberculture helps us comment upon real life (what the cybercrowd sometimes calls RL). Instead of giving in to any one theory on construction of identity, Turkle looks at the way various netizens have used the Internet, and especially MUDs (Multi-User Dimensions), to learn more about the possibilities available in apprehending the world. One of the most interesting sections deals with gender, a topic prone to rash and partisan pronouncements. Taking as her motto William James's maxim "Philosophy is the art of imagining alternatives," Turkle shows how playing with gender in cyberspace can shape a person's real-life understanding of gender. Especially telling are the examples of the man who finds it easier to be assertive when playing a woman, because he believes male assertiveness is now frowned upon while female assertiveness is considered hip, and the woman who has the opposite response, believing that it is easier to be aggressive when she plays a male, because as a woman she would be considered "bitchy." Without taking sides, Turkle points out how both have expanded their emotional range. Other topics, such as artificial life, receive an equally calm and sage response, and the first-person accounts from many Internet users provide compelling reading and good source material for readers to draw their own conclusions.
Social scientists are increasingly interested in the new organizational forms known as epistemic communities, knowledge networks, or communities of practice, depending on the discipline. These forms are made possible by new communication technologies, but they can be difficult to study qualitatively, often because their human, social, cultural, or symbolic capital is transmitted over significant distances with technologies that do not carry the full range of human expressions that a researcher using participant observation or ethnography hopes to experience. Qualitative methods are desirable for rendering rich data on human interaction but alone are ill equipped for studying community life conducted in diverse formal and informal organizations and over many new media. Social network analysis is desirable for rendering an overarching sketch of social interaction but alone is ill equipped for giving detail on incommensurate yet meaningful relationships. I propose `network ethnography' as a synergistic research design that synthesizes these two methods, using the strengths of each to make up for the weaknesses of the other. Network ethnography uses social network analysis to justify case selection for ethnography, facilitating the qualitative study of the varied organizational forms of knowledge networks.
Social scientists are increasingly interested in new organizational forms -- labeled epistemic communities, knowledge networks, or communities of practice depending on the discipline. These new organizational forms are made possible by new communication technologies, but they can be difficult to study qualitatively, often because their human, social, cultural or symbolic capital is transmitted over significant distances with technologies that do not carry the full range of human expressions that a researcher using participant observation or ethnography hopes to experience. Qualitative methods are desirable for rendering rich data on human interaction, but alone are ill equipped for studying community life conducted in diverse formal and informal organizations and over many new media. Social network analysis is desirable for rendering an overarching sketch of social interaction, but alone is ill equipped for giving detail on incommensurate yet meaningful relationships. I propose `Network Ethnography' as a synergistic research design that synthesizes these two methods, using the strengths of each to make up for the weaknesses of the other. Network ethnography uses social network analysis to justify case selection for ethnography, facilitating the qualitative study of the varied organizational forms of knowledge networks.
and members of The Bronze community for comments and suggestions
- Jewell
Jewell), and members of The Bronze community for comments and suggestions.
Representing Space: Space, Scale and Culture in Social Science
- R E F E R E N C E S Agnew
R E F E R E N C E S Agnew, J. (1993) 'Representing Space: Space, Scale and Culture in Social Science', in J. Duncan and D. Ley (eds) Place/Culture/Representation, pp. 251–71.
Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular MythThe Emergence of Community in CMC
- Thousand Oaks
- Ca
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Bacon-Smith, C. (1991) Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Baym, N.K. (1995a) 'The Emergence of Community in CMC', in S.G. Jones (ed.) CyberSociety: Computer-mediated Communication and Community, pp. 138–63.
From Practice to Culture on Usenet The Cultures of Computing Tune In, Log On: Soaps, Fandom, and Online Community
- Thousand Oaks
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Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Baym, N.K. (1995b) 'From Practice to Culture on Usenet', in S.L. Star (ed.) The Cultures of Computing, pp. 29–52. Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers/The Sociological Review. Baym, N.K. (2000) Tune In, Log On: Soaps, Fandom, and Online Community. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.