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.

Full text

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.
KEYWORDS: ethnographic methods, internet community
Introduction: ‘There is no such thing as non-participant
observation’1
We have been working with a community spawned from the official Internet
website devoted to the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This article
deals primarily with the methodology used to study this community. During
the five and a half years the site was in existence, its real-time, linear, archived
Posting Board – The Bronze – was the community’s main site (see Gatson and
Zweerink, 2000; Zweerink and Gatson, 2002). Herein, we discuss how our
work offers insights into contemporary practices of ethnography. We address
the presumed anonymity of Internet interactions. We are particularly
concerned with the varying levels of actual anonymity which users of online
communications employ, and what this might mean for those who engage in
such communications, as well as for Internet ethnographers.
The social structural issues of The Bronze involved an online site owned by
higher-ups in the television industry and maintained through large-scale
ARTICLE 179
Q
R
Ethnography online: ‘natives’ practising
and inscribing community
Qualitative Research
Copyright © 
SAGE Publications
(London,
Thousand Oaks, CA
and New Delhi)
vol. (): ‒.
DOI: . ⁄ 
SARAH N. GATSON AND AMANDA ZWEERINK
Texas A&M University and Mullen Advertising

advertising budgets, and these commercial realities influenced the size, shape,
and interaction of this community. Although our study is a micro-study of a
particular group of people, it is concerned with the macro-issues of
community as they developed on and through a new medium, the Internet,
with its own structures. Marcus (2000) and Burawoy (1991) offer methods
grounded in a similar concern with micro-macro connections. Burawoy’s
extended case method is tied to Geertz’s assertion that the ‘characteristic
intellectual movement’ of ethnography is ‘a continuous dialectical tacking
between the most local of local detail and the most global of global structure
in such a way as to bring them into simultaneous view (2000a[1983]: 69).
For Burawoy, the goal is to situate contexts within a dialogue between theory
and the field, and the micro-mundane world to the macro-systems that
structure those worlds (1991: 4, 6; see also 2000: 1–6).
Marcus asserts, ‘Empirically following the thread of cultural process itself
impels the move toward multi-sited ethnography’ (2000: 80). Marcus stresses
that ‘Cultural logics . . . are always multiply produced, and any ethnographic
account of these logics finds that they are at least partly constituted within
sites of the so-called system (i.e. modern interlocking institutions of media,
markets, states, industries . . .)’ (2000: 81). The Internet community of
Bronzers was ideally situated to be a part of extending the reach of
ethnography as both practice and theory. The Bronze existed as a community
that, while pushing the physical definitions of such, also typified community
in that it existed at the nexus of legal, political, cultural, spatial, and intimate
and affective ties and boundaries. This ‘Multi-sited research is designed
around chains, paths, threads, conjunctions, or juxtapositions of locations in
which the ethnographer establishes some form of literal, physical presence,
with an explicit, posited logic of association or connection among sites that in
fact defines the argument of the ethnography’ (Marcus, 2000: 90; see also
Hine, 2000: 151).
The particular juxtaposition of media and new technologies and their
reflexive effect on community practices now is ripe for this sort of
ethnographic practice. Internet ethnographies are inherently multi-sited –
even if you as the researcher stay onsite with a particular arena, and never
follow links presented by community members. Although there are Internet
groups/communities that limit communication to one online arena, one site,
the network exchange itself is based on people sited in homes, offices,
classrooms, public spaces, sitting in front of computers, and typing out their
self-presentation from those dispersed sites.
This framework has led us to focus on three ethnographic concepts. They
are Geertz’s ideas of the ‘local’ and the ‘native’, and autoethnography. Each of
these has a distinct relationship to the field site(s), and to ethnographic
practice more generally. These relationships stem from Geertz’s (2000a,
2000b) concepts of ‘native’, ‘experience-near’ and ‘experience-distant’ and
Lionnet’s (1991) ‘autoethnography’ (see Gatson, 2003: 36, 34, 54). For
Qualitative Research 4(2)180

example, participant observation is inherently an ‘experience-near’ concept,
but there are always degrees of insertion to particular local sites. Is it the
experience near to the ethnographer’s own practices, or near to the practices
of others, that the ethnographer must gradually learn, and get closer to? We
can understand this as the always ready analyst versus the observer-in-
action. More problematic are some of the other basic concepts introduced by
Geertz. They are problematic not because they are non-useful concepts, but
rather they are problematic in a generative way. They lead us to question the
straight-forwardness of concepts like ‘local’, ‘local knowledge’, ‘confined’
localities and texts, and most especially ‘native’ (Geertz, 2000a, 2000b).
We will discuss each of these concepts more extensively after giving some
background on the community itself and some of the methodological
concerns involved in inscribing what was a very public community. Our
concern with the issue of anonymity enters here. We provide a brief
discussion of what exactly our particular methods involved, and what The
Bronze was like. We delve into several ‘rules’ or expectations about how
ethnography is done, and how it is done on the Internet. Our final section ends
with what we think is one of the ultimate tasks set for ethnographers. We ask
about its meaning, and its meaningfulness to our practice, our results, and
our narrative.
Methods and ethics
From the spring of 1998 through summer 2001, our main field site was the
linear and archived Posting Board, known as The Bronze, at the official
website for Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS). The Board itself was founded in
March 1997. The field of our research took us beyond this particular Internet
site to other places and spaces of computer-mediated communication (CMC),
as well as to offline sites of community interactions. We continued the
ethnography online and offline through the summer of 2003, after the series
end of BtVS.2
Major concerns of ethnographic research are ethics and privacy consider-
ations (Lofland and Lofland, 1995: 26–30; 33–6; 63–4; see also Fetterman,
1983; Gandy, 1995). These concerns revolve around the possible violation of
trust, the authenticity of human interactions between researcher and
subject, and the desire for privacy and anonymity warring with the desire for
recognition and popularity (see Katovich, 1988). We were both in this
community before we decided to study it. Thus, the problems of trust,
friendship, and community were acute for us from the beginning. At the same
time, our main field site was a completely accessible public area of the
Internet.
It is questionable how anonymous ethnographic sites have ever been. While
most of us would be hard-pressed to locate the particular sites of Geertz
(2000a, 2000b), Kanter (1977), or Burawoy (1979), at the same time, many
Gatson and Zweerink: Ethnography online 181

accounts have contained photographs of subjects (see, for example, Hartigan,
1999; Shostak, 1983). Also, some field sites are more inherently ‘knowable’
or ‘known’ than others. Elijah Anderson’s Streetwise (1990) is a field site
where the author lived. Although Anderson engaged in the proper
anonymous description of the field setting, even if the book jacket hadn’t
included a detailed description of where and who Anderson was, it would
have been relatively easy to find out the where and who of his field setting. At
the other end of this continuum of recognizable and findable sites, we
couldn’t find Kendall’s successfully disguised ‘BlueSky’ Internet community,
as she gave all subjects new handles and the site a new name (1999, 2000).
Other Internet sites have not been as well disguised – or disguised at all – and
are as famous as the rather thinly disguised Middletown (Lynd and Lynd,
1956), or undisguised Black Metropolis (Drake and Cayton, 1945) and Slim’s
Table (Duneier, 1992).3
In our own case, the what/where/who has involved from the outset such a
principle of both non-anonymity of the participants, and the ease of locating
the place. This has been both because of the site’s original intent as part of
advertising a show and the developed ethic of the community, in which one is
expected to share authentic aspects of oneself, up to and including name,
gender, age, email address, AIM handle, photographs, and the face-to-face
meeting.4In any case, it would have been difficult for us to disguise this site
and set up a (debatably) appropriate setting of distance in our narrative.5
Our methodology adapted traditional ethnographic methods for what was
at first a largely unseen group of subjects. We became formal participant
observers by discussing our plan of study, and announcing it to the
community, as well as submitting it to the review of the Internal Review
Board regarding Human Subjects at Texas A&M University (see
http://sociweb.tamu.edu/faculty/gatson/consent.html). We have since
engaged in a multi-faceted approach to capturing both the online
development of this group, and its taking multiple ways and varying levels of
community offline and into so-called real life. As a final component of our
ethnographic technique, in addition to our participant observation in the
Internet component of The Bronze community, we have participated in both
small, impromptu face-to-face gatherings (in Kansas City, MO; Chicago, IL;
Hammond/Valparaiso, IN; New Orleans, LA; New York, NY; Washington,
D.C., Austin, Ledbetter, Ft. Worth, and Houston, Texas; London, England;
Toronto, Canada; Los Angeles, Berkeley, El Cerrito, and San Francisco,
California; Seattle, WA; Raleigh, NC; and Boston, MA), as well as the larger,
‘official’ gatherings, which require some level of registration and/or invitation
(but are officially open to all) and are sponsored by members, such as the
annual Posting-Board Party (Los Angeles), Viva Las Buffy (annual Halloween
party, Las Vegas), and Chicagopalooza. Thus, our ethnography includes all
levels of interactions over the Internet and in its face-to-face aspects. We used
a multi-faceted approach to capturing both this group’s online development,
Qualitative Research 4(2)182

and the taking of varying levels of community offline. We spent some part of
each day from spring 1998 through spring 2002 at The Bronze and its
various other online forums. Our field notes were generated by monitoring
The Bronze, and engaging in other computer-mediated communications with
members of The Bronze (e.g. email and America Online Instant Messaging
[AIM]). We also administered online surveys (see http://sociweb.tamu.edu/
faculty/gatson/ gensurvey.html).
The field method of ‘being’ at The Bronze involved reading, posting, lurking,
and scrolling archives at The Bronze itself, following links highlighted by
other Bronzers, Instant Messaging, emailing, and participating in posting
sessions/conversations both live and through responses to archived posts. The
reading and copying and pasting into MSWord meant that our initial field
notes were literal reproductions of field events, rather than more traditional
field notes. Those we would later write about particular experiences in the
online field of The Bronze, as well as the periodic offline participant
observation in which we engaged over the same time period. The Word
documents, notebooks, and notepads we’ve filled with these observations
were (re)constructed in time grabbed in airports, hotel rooms etc. On
occasion, Bronzers jotted their own notes in the margins, or emailed us their
own narratives.
The differing mechanics involved in transitioning from being the
unobserved participant observer (lurker – unless one specifically announced
oneself at the beginning of a particular posting session, or logged onto AIM,
a process which let everyone on one’s BuddyList know that one was online,
somewhere) to the visible fellow member and known ethnographer highlight
both the time/space disjuncture, as well as the ‘meaningful contexts’ of the
continuum of communications involved in being a Bronzer. All of us have
multiple facets to our personalities, and many identities to manage more or
less simultaneously. We as participants could participate in the public forum
of The Bronze, email drafts of field notes to one another, discuss what we are
observing over AIM, conduct an interview over AIM, accept and forward our
surveys as they are filled out from our project website, blanket email –
chatting, sharing news, and making plans for face-to-face gatherings – and
informally chat and have wide-open AIM sessions with various members of
The Bronze. While obviously not actually typing in each format at the exact
same time, the windows-based format allows for virtual and near actual
simultaneity of all of these activities. Although at times overwhelming,
learning to manage this atmosphere has been both a valuable learning
process, as well as a valuable process of asking questions of both our data and
our methods.
In addition to internal Bronze spaces and sub-group characterized places,
the vast majority of Bronzers also participated in other ’net-based
communications technologies, often while simultaneously participating at
The Bronze. This was done through various email lists, AIM and ICQ, and
Gatson and Zweerink: Ethnography online 183

other Bronze-connected posting boards. These areas of participation were
non-geographically based and, indeed, tended to be instruments of bridging
non-virtual space. Yet, each type of communication space also encouraged its
own different communication style, and while topics (and indeed styles) often
seeped back and forth over the boundaries, there was a distinct sense of
maintaining these boundaries in various ways. For example, AIM/ICQ and
email tend to be understood as private communications, and the sharing of
these communications with non-participants without consent is often seen as
a violation. At the same time however, the signaling through public
conversation – such as the request or demand that someone turn on their
AIM, or ‘take it to email’ – of the submerged and more private avenues of
Bronzer communication was common. The arena of The Bronze itself was
conceived as the primary public space of the community,
Margot [Le Faye in response to elusio asking if s/he could quote her re her
comments on wicca for the elusio website.]: elusio: Yes, you can quote me on
anything I say in The Bronze, as long as you attribute the quote to me whenever
you cite it. The Bronze is a public forum, open to anyone who can access the net,
so it’s not like I’m saying anything here that I wouldn’t say in any other public
venue. Enjoy. (Posted at The Bronze, 18 August 1999)
It was common for people to save swatches of conversation and interaction
directly from The Bronze (using the copy and paste commands of a word-
processing program), acknowledging that The Bronze was a public forum.
People often used the saved conversations to quote one’s comments back to
one at a later date, thus one must accept a certain amount of appropriation.
Like Margot Le Faye in the quotation above, members often commented that
as long as credit was given, and because they couldn’t really control who
might lurk and save their comments (as journalists have been wont to do on
this site, as it was the only one where the creator of the show came and made
comments on a fairly regular basis; see, for example, Roberts, 2001), any use
of their words was fair game.
All of the practical tasks of moving from acceptance within the site to
analyzing data and formulating questions and conclusions, ‘thinking topics’,
‘asking questions’, ‘developing analysis’, and ‘writing reports’ are enhanced
by having an Internet and technological base to the project (see Lofland and
Lofland, 1995). This is so from both a perspective of easing the tasks as to
compactness and efficiency, as well as in lending an unexpected insight for
answering some of the main questions of the project. These tasks are often
lent an experience of simultaneity that is not possible in a less technologically
interfaced ethnographic endeavour. The various windows one can have open
on any graphical-user-interface desktop can offer a way to present and
explore various aspects of the self (see Turkle, 1995). In our case, we have
discovered that the various windows and forms of communication available
through them have highlighted the shifting levels of interaction, loyalty,
Qualitative Research 4(2)184

hierarchy, and the different networks of sub-groups within The Bronze, as
well as allowing us to shift more easily from participant to observer.
In inscribing our observations, we could have described the site as ‘Fans of
a horror genre show with a classic monster presentation and challenging
heroine presentation have developed an online community at the show’s
official website.’ On the one hand, the language is rather cumbersome and
would have gotten more so as we discussed the content, text, and subtext of
the show and the community interactions, and on the other, it presents the
casual and scholarly audience with two illusions. First there is the illusion
that the authors are intrepid explorers of a strange subculture with alien
practices that we must make intelligible for the rest of you. Second is the
illusion that when we inscribe The Bronze and Bronzers, we first extricate
ourselves from the experience. This concern with disguise – and ultimately of
exoticism and obscurity (see Geertz, 2000a: 21) – and illusion led us to
consider tenets of classic ethnographic practice and their extensions.
Local natives
At the heart of the investigative techniques of ethnography is a concern with
‘going in’ and/or ‘going deep’. We are supposed to get at the inside story of a
particular segment of the population, and connect it to the larger world.
Linked is an idea of those people we are going to (and later, coming from) as
being exotic, mysterious, and needing both the interpretation and protection
of the researcher(s). These ideas stem from ethnography’s origins in colonial
realities.
How much of a separation between participant and observer must/should/
is it possible for there to be? Is it necessary to be originally distant rather than
near to one’s field site – both in actual geography and in Geertz’s ‘experience-
near’ and ‘experience-distant’ sense (2000b: 57–8)? And, finally, is ethno-
graphy a specialist’s job, or are we all ‘natives’ and thus all natural participant
observers? This particular field site gets at the heart of these issues because of
the sheer normalcy of the initiating activity of this community: the watching
of a television series, and talking about it with others participating in
arguably the same and similar cultures is the generative activity. In that sense,
we will discuss our position as natives, and interrogate that stance vis-a-vis
the more formalized stance of participant observer.
Understanding that it is any number of enculturated and habituated bodies
that come into particular places on the Internet, we should not be surprised to
find people bringing place and identity with them as they simultaneously find
themselves in a new space in which they are creating a new place and perhaps
new identities (see Agnew, 1993: 251–2; Baym, 1995a: 139, 1995b, 2000;
Casey, 1996: 35; Duncan and Ley, 1993: 4, 12; Kendall, 1999: 58; Ley and
Duncan, 1993: 268, 329; Zweerink and Gatson, 2002: 241). Our impetus
was interrogating how a source for advertising a television series and sending
Gatson and Zweerink: Ethnography online 185

in anonymous fan opinions develops into a purposeful and non-anonymity-
based community? We also asked, where is The Bronze located? How has our
ethnographic experience taken us in deep and into a specific place, and at the
same time made us aware of its (and our own) embeddedness in the social
world at large?
The membership of The Bronze is not engaging in ‘virtual’ activities but
rather in grounded ones (see Hine, 2000: 142–5; Markham, 1998: 129).
Thus, Bronzers were not what Mizrach has characterized as ‘ModPrims’, or
modern primitives. Those are people who are purposefully ‘living in a different
time-order or time-value system’ than mainstream society (Mizrach, n.d.). As
such, the ModPrims are people who interact both with (what they consider)
primitive cultural practices, and with the latest in technology. Bronzers did not
consciously adhere to such beliefs as ‘the limitations of the body need not be
obeyed,’ and ‘in cyberspace, people will no longer be “in tune” with their
tangible physicality’ (Mizrach, n.d.). Instead, Bronzers seemed to adhere more
to Star’s notion of embodiment while online: ‘Right now, typing this, my neck
aches and I am curled in an uncomfortable position’ (Star, 1995: 2).
Bronzers have frequently made comments about the greater possibility of
community formation across traditional physical boundary markers such as
race, age, and gender. However, they also frequently engage in descriptions of
the state of their physical presence: ‘I’m just glad to meet some great people
here and engage in the occasional Buffy debate (or, more often, just sit back
and watch)’ (shehawken, 10 May 1999). ‘I prefer to sit here and fume and
participate in the undermining of the network with the Canadian Bootleg
Express’ (MeeB, 25 May 1999). ‘. . . slurps the hot chocolate he made before
he got here, feeling a sense of belonging’ (Jef fK, 5 October 1998). Also, they
frequently describe virtual physical actions they are taking, ‘SS stands up on
the bar and runs the length of it with a can of anti-Bezoar spray. When the
can is finally empty she stops, hands on hips and takes a deep breath. “There.
MUCH better” ’ (Sunnydale Sleuth, 26 May 1999).6
Aycock and Buchignani focus their discussion on the fabrication of
suffering and death performed over computer-mediated communications
equipment, and suggest that since that was a performance, it was ‘virtual’ and
not ‘direct’ and ‘empirical’. Bronzers have been subject to both hoaxes of
various kinds, as well as virtual performances. However, as we have just
separated those two concepts in our inscription, so do Bronzers in general. On
the one hand, in the spring of 2001, after being subjected to several weeks of
personae construction, the garnering of sympathy, and the inducement to
action, Bronzers were informed – through the online investigation tactics of
fellow Bronzers – that an interloper had subjected them to a hoax.7On the
other, we have the virtual performance of Sunnydale Sleuth we excerpted
above.
In both of these experiences, the issues of motive and participation are key.
In the first, we observe not only the hoax, but also the response to it. Bronzers
Qualitative Research 4(2)186

decided that while the hoaxer was problematic, the action they were induced
to perform (a collective moment of silence/prayer for a fictional terminally ill
child) demonstrated communal feeling and care. Bronzers told us this, told
each other this; to all of us it was experienced directly. In the second, it is not
a question that Sunnydale Sleuth doesn’t really have a can of anti-Bezoar
spray, nor that she actually stood up on a bar anywhere and used it. However,
it is also not a question – to Bronzers at least – that she wrote those words
intending to induce a feeling of unwelcome in her target, and it is also
arguable that the target felt unwelcome, whether or not the inducement made
him/her leave.
In ‘From the “Native’s” Point of View’, Geertz first says taking people on
their own terms is the point of ethnographic understanding (2000b: 59). He
then presents sets of Javanese as shockingly engaged in ‘astonishing
intellectual vitality’ where ‘the problem of the self . . . was pursued with the
sort of reflexive intensity one could find among ourselves in only the most
recherché settings indeed’ (2000b: 60). This assessment not only involves a
judgment of the ethnographic subjects on other-defined terms. It also implies
a judgment on the ‘destitute’, ‘illiterate’, and ‘common’ people ‘among
ourselves’. In this passage, Geertz seems to be finding something special in the
mundane world of foreigners that he could not find in his own locality.
Our own experience as ethnographers has developed from/into a quite
different perspective. We are ethnographers of micro-worlds with boundaries
far more permeable and commonly understood as ‘imaginary’ that are
simultaneously located in our own macro-world. As two women, United
States citizens, one an academic and one an advertising professional, who
watch television series and discuss them at an Internet site, and develop
connections and friendships therein – we ask ourselves if we have
simultaneously captured (or been captured by) Geertz’s ‘experience-near’ and
‘experience-distant’ concepts (2000b: 58–60). This may depend on whether
the analysis focuses on the personae presented online or the people con-
structing the personae. Of course, this conception of the analysis assumes
that persons are constructing particular online personae, rather than merely
expressing extant personae through CMC. This is an empirical question, and
the variation across persons and communities is not yet even cursorily
mapped.
We are asking also if we are ‘native’ participant observers, and when
participant observation moves from being a description of being (since we all
participate in social life and, unselfconsciously or not, observe its happenings)
to an inscription of ethnography? We can describe ourselves as natives of
several localities and contexts, but are they the classic ‘confined localities’ and
‘confined contexts’ of Geertz’s earlier explications (2000a: 22, 23)? In his
later work, where ‘local knowledge’ is the framing device, Geertz asserts that
the ‘characteristic intellectual movement’ of ethnography is ‘a continuous
dialectical tacking between the most local of local detail and the most global
Gatson and Zweerink: Ethnography online 187

of global structure in such a way as to bring them into simultaneous view
(2000b: 69).
We cannot remove ourselves from these contexts. Kolko and Reid suggest
that ‘the interruptive practices associated with fluid identity relate to the
construction of virtual space, where the fragmented self becomes dispersed,
and that both make difficult the evolution of resilient online personae and
communities’ (Kolko and Reid, 1998: 218). We would argue instead that
fluidity and situation, rather than disruptive fragmentation, characterize
Bronzer subjects, and Bronzer ethnographers.8An example of how this
happens involves the controversy of homosexuality – of characters on BtVS,
and Bronzers themselves:
Malista says:
(Mon May 8 11:44:27 2000 199.174.195.248)
KAM –??? Do you mean sometimes it’s hard to be silent even if you just think of
negative comments in terms of the show as opposed to the Real World? I don’t
have a lot of problem ignoring nasty comments about the show, or aspects of the
show, if I don’t feel like getting into a debate. I understand that others may have
a harder time with that. I do have a hard time keeping silent (if I even try) about
the nastiness that also applies to the Real Time World. If someone says ‘I hate
that Xander became an Ice Cream Truck Guy, and I’m never watching the show
again!’ I can easily sit back and ‘allow’ that person his/her opinion without
needing to make a statement in defense of Ice Cream Truck Guys. Unless I know
for a fact that Ice Cream Truck Guys are discriminated against, beaten up, and
treated like second-class citizens on a daily basis because of their Ice Cream
Truck Guyness, in which case I really do need to say something. . . . I make
separations like that between Show Issues and Real Time World Issues.9
Thus, Malista eloquently outlines the importance of discourse and
experience in shaping both ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ worlds. Malista’s outline
simultaneously places her as Bronzer, general Buffy fan, and member and
critic of the real world, with Bronzer as the link between identities. In that
sense, her Bronzer identity is like our own, autoethnographic.
The process of inscription in this project highlighted the many levels of
participant observation involved in being a community member/research
subject. Aside from the second author, several other members of the field
site/community have had experiences with formalizing their interpretations
of the Bronzing life. Kenickie, Chrissy, and ‘stina have all offered to be
‘junior sociologists’, and fill in their own field notebooks, and turn them over
to us as principal investigators.10 A second insight from our experiences with
inscription has to do with the question, ‘Who’s writing whom?’ At one face-
to-face gathering, Bronzer Claris said of the first author, ‘You’re like the
Internet’s Jane Goodall, and we’re your chimps.’ Another Bronzer has been
inscribing his own autoethnographic take on The Bronze, and has assessed
our project in his official inscription (see Ali, c.1999). Whose inscription
is/becomes paramount? Is inscription the same as interpretation?
Qualitative Research 4(2)188

Autoethnography
In discussing the life and work – anthropological, fictional, and auto-
biographical – of Zora Neale Hurston, Lionnet describes Hurston as someone
‘being at once a participant in, and an observer of, her culture – [this] would
bring home to her the distorting effects . . . and thus reinforce her skepticism
in the anthropological project, in her assigned role as detached, objective
interpreter and translator’ (1991: 166). As we’ve noted, we ourselves were
already watching television, we were already posting about watching
television, one of us was already deeply engaged in writing fanfiction, and one
of us already deeply engaged in other studies of discourse, community, and
writing sociology.
While these positions could be taken as the classic ‘starting where you are’,
Lionnet argues that a practice position like Hurston’s ‘opens up a space of
resistance between the individual (auto-) and the collective (-ethno-) where
the writing (-graphy) of singularity cannot be foreclosed’ (1991: 175). As two
fans of a show, both authors started from a position of stumbling onto a
communication forum while surfing the net looking for information and/or
paraphernalia related to the show. Also, both authors started from a position
of specialized knowledge about community, narrative, and research.
‘Combining those interests and starting with the assumptions – both common
sense and scholarly – surrounding interpretations of both Internet inter-
action and television watching, we “[made] problematic” in our research
what was problematic in our lives’ (Lofland and Lofland, 1995: 13).
At the same time, this micro/individual position of autoethnography is
taken back to Geertz, Burawoy, and Marcus in that Lionnet describes Hurston
as ‘Comfortable in the knowledge that the whole world is in a Heraclitean flux
of becoming, [she] affirms a principle of eternal change based in her
observation of the radical fluidity of inorganic, organic, social, and cultural
forces’ (1991: 180). This understanding of fluidity sets up the researcher/
writer as ‘dealing with familiar territory, . . . [and one who] does not run the
risk of subjugating the “other” to her self.’ (1991: 181).
So, we were already in our milieu, and initially it was to us a ‘confined’
locality and context. We had to inscribe it, and say we were purposeful and
intrepid entrants into a place colonized by natives. Several authors have
offered how-to works for ethnographic research. While some offer to lead by
example, others offer more straightforward and detailed tasks, of varying
degrees of necessity that the researcher should accomplish to complete the
ethnographic project (see Fetterman, 1983; Kendall, 1999; Saville-Troike,
1997; Scheff, 1988; Weisner, 1997). Lofland and Lofland’s (1995) outline of
practice was our guide in assessing whether or not we had successfully
extended ethnography to online sites.
In our evaluation of where we were in terms of the data site, there were
several things that recommended the Posting Board. First, was the ease of
Gatson and Zweerink: Ethnography online 189

entry and observing. We could lurk for any period of time, learning the
communication style and norms of acceptability, without compromising our
stance as observers. Although we chose full disclosure and participant
observation as our method, we never forgot the advantage of going into lurk
mode. The ease with which we could (if we so chose) stay out of the more
heated discussions that often threatened to splinter the Board was often a
valuable feature of the site. The anonymity factor, as well as the physical
boundaries of the Internet, allowed us to move back and forth from
participant to observer with an ease that being in sight for all interaction does
not afford. As well, at least before we engaged in the extensive travel a certain
level of Bronze participation requires, this Internet site offered the advantage
of being very inexpensive research.
Second, by the time we actually met and decided to be systematic about our
participation at The Bronze, we were both already independently accepted
members of the community. We had each already generated a base of trust in
our insights. Finally, the richness of the site was unparalleled. There are so
many avenues that we can explore, ranging from the individual and
communal uses of television as an artistic and cultural medium, to our
present focus on community formation, as well as several levels of analysis
regarding communication and interaction. The movement of Bronzers
among several sites of simultaneous and parallel communication mediums
based on CMC technology, as well as their moving outward from CMC to face-
to-face and back again, generate such a rich set of field notes, interviews,
surveys, and interactions that we ourselves cannot exhaust its potential.
The ‘getting in’ and ‘getting along’ aspects of the project are related to the
first two aspects (Lofland and Lofland, 1995). For some levels and types of
ethnographic analysis, our site made getting in and getting along non-issues.
As a public site with no registration or passwords required, one could always
lurk, and learn many things about various research questions. How we went
about actually getting in was different from this, as both authors were, as we
said, fully participant in all levels of this site and its community.
In the spring of 1998, one author was already in, and already in an elite
sub-group of the community, before the subject of research was raised
between the two of us.11 The other author was a newer member and, while
having already given up anonymity over email, Instant Messaging, photo
websites, and telephone conversations, had not met anyone face-to-face.
Through these technological media, we scheduled our first lunch, and at that
first meeting began discussing our questions and insights about this
community, and how without it two people living within a few miles of one
another would never have met.
Discussing this experience and the details of how we wanted to conduct our
project with the general membership of the Board, we were enthusiastically
encouraged by the community to conduct the project. Many people expressed
the desire to know more about the parameters of the community and its
Qualitative Research 4(2)190

interactions. Thus, getting in, asking questions, and designing our test survey
website, proved to be relatively easy beyond the point of lurking. As we
continued our lunches and discussions we also began analyzing the
differences among our various kinds of communication practices among the
membership of the Posting Board.
What we began to discover about ‘getting along’ was that the facelessness of
the Internet portion of the research was a valuable tool, especially during the
more heated moments of interaction and those times when the majority of
the posting portion of the community took up verbal arms against one
another. As any researcher who has conducted a project in the presence of
her subjects knows, the management of presence and presentation can be
crucial to the quality and range of information elicited, and the overall
success of the project. It is certainly true that this management of presence is
perhaps even more crucial in the process of constructing the proper style of
posts to become a recognized member, and a member who can interact with
the largest range of membership in a text-based community. At the same time,
the lack of necessity of masking particular forms of emotion and body
language can make getting along easier. Also, if one needs to get up and walk
away from an encounter, both the anonymous-faceless aspect of the Internet
interaction, and the structure of this particular Board and others like it can
have the effect of deliberation and what one Bronzer dubbed ‘reading for
comprehension’. At The Bronze, one was encouraged to limit oneself to four
posts per hour, and the accepted norm was that people take at least 10
minutes to reply to posts addressed to them. One had archives of seven days at
a time to sift through, and decide to what one wished to respond.
However, the intensity of the necessary boundary and border maintenance
in a freely accessible area of the Internet also highlights the difficulties of
getting along. While there was often little need for negotiation of literal space
in this community (at least if one stuck to the virtual space of The Bronze
itself), there was an almost daily need for negotiating the bounds of conduct
and preventing frivolous invaders from taking over the space and turning it to
their own standards. As part of the process of becoming a member, one often
had to demonstrate one’s willingness to defend the community from in-
appropriate encroachment. We often did so, occasionally signalling ourselves
as resident experts to counter claims of invaders (Bezoars) who engaged in
commentary about the ‘lameness’ of people who were so ‘pathetic’ as to
believe they are creating and interacting in a viable and legitimate
community.
While reasserting our presence as researchers, we found that this never
compromised the community’s willingness to be our subjects as well as our co-
members. Indeed, it was rather often the case that when new researchers have
shown up, or indicated their survey interests, members of The Bronze took it
upon themselves to highlight the lengthy, ongoing nature of our projects, and
to forward many requests for information from other researchers our way.
Gatson and Zweerink: Ethnography online 191

Thus, our ethnography was (and is) far more of a public endeavor than we
expected it to be. Also, while we see ourselves as inscribers of The Bronze, we
are hardly THE inscribers of The Bronze. We have seen our own posting
handles (SarahNicole and willa, respectively) and offline faces show up in
formal academic projects of other Bronzers (Ali, c.1999; Tuszynski, 2003; see
also Grollmus, 2003), as well as across the range of less formal but
photographic and inscribed observations of Bronzers who write about their
experiences on easily accessible websites (see for example Claris’ site,
www.NoDignity.com, and Chrissy’s, www.themusesbitch.net; Tuszynski,
2000). Some of these inscriptions developed into ongoing offline conversations
and online dialogues about the meanings of community in general, and being
a Bronzer in particular.
Are we then natives or participant observers? How do we have to deal with
the ultimate task the ethnographer as classically rendered has – the getting
out stage?
Natives getting out of the field site?
We have been most interested in finding ways to portray the reality of the
Board to those who aren’t involved with it. We wanted to tell the story of what
we were finding: an example of people coming together online in a way that
actually strengthened their offline social skills, rather than turning them into
the antisocial beings often portrayed by other media (see for example the
episode ‘I Robot, You Jane’, of Buffy the Vampire Slayer).
What we’ve seen in our own experience has changed over the years we’ve
been doing it. Just like any other newbie, we found it incredibly difficult to
become recognized members of the community. The first two months one of
us posted, December 1997 and January 1998, she found the Board members
paid her very little attention. Unless she spoke directly to someone, she was
not spoken to. Eventually she was able to make a couple of friends, and was
tapped by Buffy13 to join the Club Formally Known as Silver Slayers Unite
(CFKASSU). Since she had to post frequently as part of her ‘initiation’, she was
able to gain more face time with the members and soon had a small group of
friends. But she still wasn’t part of a group, and by that we mean she wasn’t
a member of one of the cliques that were causing territory strife on the Board
at the time.
That all changed when she goaded her husband into making the nine-hour-
each-way car trip to Chicago for the first Chicagopalooza in March of 1998.
She was nervous about meeting these strangers from the Internet, and she
and her husband didn’t tell any of their family or friends why they were
making the trip. They had read all the stories about stalkers and rapists and
such lurking in chat rooms. A strange thing happened, though. The moment
she walked into the party and met Bookish Girl, she was immediately
accepted into her circle. And it wasn’t just any circle. Her friends were the
Qualitative Research 4(2)192

most elite (and she was soon to find, elitist) clique on the Board. They all had
secret ties to people who worked on Buffy, and they seemed to rule the posting
time known as Coffee Clubbers with an iron fist. For her to be accepted into
this group opened all sorts of opportunities for studying the community, even
though at the time she had yet to meet the first author and get involved in
becoming an ethnographer.
After Chicagopalooza, all of a sudden perfect strangers were posting to her,
and she showed up on shout-out lists of posters of whom she had never heard.
If she missed a day on the Board, her ‘group’ would send out search parties for
her. She and her husband were invited to all sorts of small Board gatherings.
Her entire existence in The Bronze had changed over a single weekend. And it
had all changed again by October of 1998. The next large Bronze gathering
was held in Las Vegas over Halloween – Viva Las Buffy. Somewhere close to
150 people came to that party, including all the members of the clique with
which she had been associating. But something strange happened. Ccool had
made a new friend in New York City, where she lived, and Seraphim had
come to the party, too. All of a sudden the new girl was the flavor of the
month. She learned, however, that the community was in the middle of a big
change, and that soon there wouldn’t just be one ruling clique.
The Bronze Posting Board was so complex that it’s been difficult for us to tell
its story. One of the reasons for this is its constant state of flux. Using the
second author’s own experience as an example, we saw someone go from
being a nobody to a member of the ‘cool’ crowd to a somewhat more marginal
Bronzer in a matter of months. It was also a regular occurrence for people to
disappear from the community all together. By the end there were many
subgroups, several who trumpeted that status by naming the group and
posting about it. And yet, The Bronze remained a strong and defensible
community.
As autoethnographic native participant observers, we have both con-
ceptually and concretely connected with what Lionnet notes in Hurston’s life
as ‘a chain of destabilizing experiences that undermine forever her sense of
belonging to a specific place’ (1991: 183). These dislocations ‘[distance]
herself forever from the illusory possibility of an unexamined and un-
mediated participation in the network of relations that constitute culture.’
Thus her writing ‘simultaneously demystifies the writing of both the self
(auto) and the culture (ethno) because it involves both the individual and her
cultural contexts in a dialogue that transcends all possibility of reducing one
to the other’ (1991: 188).
We have felt a similar set of dislocations and demystifications. When we
started our endeavor, we lived five minutes away from each other, but it was
The Bronze that got us together. Since then, we have each completed major
stages in our careers, and moved cross-country more than once, and no
longer meet face-to-face at least once a week. We thus found ourselves with
The Bronze as an anchor as well as a field site. It came to represent a stable yet
Gatson and Zweerink: Ethnography online 193

movable community to which we still belong beyond the ending of Buffy the
Vampire Slayer and which taught us about our selves as it taught us about our
culture. But it was not just as field site or community or self that it taught us.
It taught us about ethnography as well.
Lionnet includes a vignette from Hurston’s life that resonates with our
experience as Bronzer ethnographers. She described posting comments about
theater company members and their community in which she worked ‘on the
call-board’. She noted that ‘The results stayed strictly mine less than a week
because members of the cast began to call me aside and tell me things to put
in about others. . . . It was just my handwriting, mostly’ (1991: 192). This
story resonates not only because The Bronze was largely expressed in terms of
text that we participated in creating and then appropriated for ethnographic
purposes. Also, as we read The Bronze and Bronzers, they read us. They
demanded a level of accessibility to our written and published work, and we
gave it to them, sometimes at the draft stage and they returned it with editorial
comments.
Geertz writes, ‘anthropological writings are themselves interpretations, and
second and third order ones to boot. (By definition, only a ‘native’ makes first
order ones: it’s his culture)’ (2000a: 15). Further, he states that ‘The
ethnographer “inscribes” social discourse; he writes it down. In so doing, he
turns it from a passing event, which exists only in its own moment of
occurrence, into an account, which exists in its inscriptions and can be
reconsulted’ (2000a: 19). Not only can they be reconsulted; they are also
‘essentially contestable’ (2000a: 29). Ours are contestable not only by other
scholars in the field but by the subjects themselves (see Rosenau, 1992:
79–80).
In our first published article about The Bronze, we discussed the political
discourse in the community, and cited Godeater’s posting of a manifesto
(Gatson and Zweerink, 2000: 125). We inscribed it as a joking presentation,
but also as one that contained a core of serious commentary about how The
Bronze did or should function. When we went to the annual Halloween
gathering in 2000, we brought requested copies of the offprints of that
article. We showed it to Godeater, who after being reminded just what we
were doing, read his immortalized words, guffawed, and stated, ‘I was so
f_____g drunk when I wrote that!’
What these narratives of being in The Bronze demonstrate to us is that
however important ‘getting out’ is for the classic inscription task of the ethno-
grapher, our awareness of the commentaries of Geertz, Lionnet, Burawoy and
Marcus coupled with our actual experiences have shown us something as
important. As native sociologists, we can never leave our field. Or rather, we
can conceptually disconnect and step back from it (and truly, we could
physically make these moves) from it, but we are always in it. Whether it is
because we are television watchers who comment on our watching or
because we are sociological practitioners whose choice of analysis is our own
Qualitative Research 4(2)194

culture and to some degree our own experiences in it, we don’t anticipate
completely leaving at all. We both compartmentalize and shift our awareness
and our foci, but we do not think this is simply a function of the Internet
setting that is at the forefront of our practice at this moment.
The first author came to The Bronze as a fan first, one in the midst of a
comparative historical project on race, citizenship and community, and legal
discourse and texts. She has since bridged those interests through her
experiences as a Bronzer ethnographer. These have been extended into
Internet and non-Internet, ethnographic and non-ethnographic (or, perhaps
ethnographic, given Lionnet’s discussion) analyses of gender and citizenship,
multiracial identity, the youth culture intersection of technology and drugs,
and back to race, citizenship and community and legal discourse. The second
author came to the project in the midst of participating in The Bronze and a
typical fan-administered site called Haven for the FBI’s Most Unwanted,
dedicated to another television series, The X-Files, as well as beginning to write
fanfiction for both fan communities. She has since bridged that initial
experience through The Bronze and immersed herself in the sociological
literature. She has extended both her fanfiction and ethnography to other fan
communities, delving into the controversies of slash fiction.12
Thus, our ethnographic practice, it seems, never ends. The Bronze may be
closed, but there is no closure (see Hine, 2000: 145–6, 150–4) – not because
‘there is so little convergence between the researcher’s life and the subject’s
life [and] there is no physical entry into or exit from the community’ (Howard,
2001: 565). Rather, it is because it has been part and parcel of who we are
and what we do on many levels. Separating those levels conceptually and
analytically has been useful. The most useful lessons have occurred when we
reconnect the levels and recognize our native positions for what they are,
‘attuned to specific historical and political positionings and permanent par-
tialities [that do not] abandon the search for potent connections’ (Haraway,
1991: 1).
Although Aycock and Buchignani cite Geertz in asserting ‘The direct
application of traditional ethnographic analysis is problematic in the analysis
of computer cultures’, we have not found it so (1995: 185; see also Howard,
2001: 557, 559–602). Aycock and Buchignani ask the question, ‘What is the
relationship between the realities grounded in the empiricism of directly lived
experience and virtual realities generated online?’ (Howard, 2001; see also
Danet, 1998; Markham, 1998: 115–20, 129–40).13 We have discussed some
of our experiences, highlighting the contours of this community’s practices
and locations. These are connections between these participant observations
and their inscriptions – ours of the community, and the community’s upon
us. As Smith observed:
There is no such thing as non-participant observation. The detached observer is
also at work in making what she observes. Her detachment is a specific
Gatson and Zweerink: Ethnography online 195

constituent of its ongoing social organization. She stands in a determinate
active relation to what goes on and that structures her interpretive work. . . .
The method then is one that attempts to take up the very ways in which we are
and can become members as a resource for methodical description. (Dorothy
Smith, 1990: 87, 88, 92)
Also, we are subject to the power of our subjects. Although the first author
especially has a heightened aura of legitimate power more traditional to the
classic Western ethnographer, the realities of the Internet make it possible for
the subjects studied to far more easily turn the gaze and the inscription back
upon the ethnographers. Further, the fact remains that if we had never met,
the second author could have written her own non-academically-flavored
story – perhaps as a more traditionally understood autobiographical or
journalistic interpretation of her own becoming a Bronzer (see for example
Seabrook, 1997) – without the participation of the first author.
NOTES
1. Dorothy Smith, 1990: 87.
2. See Hine’s discussion on adaptive ethnography (2000: 155–6).
3. See for example the several accounts of the LambdaMoo multiple-user
dungeon community in Cherny (1999), Rheingold (2000[1993]), and Turkle
(1995).
4. This is not to say that if there were aspects one wished to keep private that
Bronzers would not accommodate them. The gender of one poster, although
known by several Bronzers, was successfully kept out of circulation through
several years of interaction and several derivative websites offering other
information about Bronzers. See the Association of Internet Researchers’ ‘Ethical
decision-making and Internet research’ for a discussion on how various Internet
venues establish their own ethical expectations (2002: 4–5).
5. Around the same time that we were making the decision to formally study The
Bronze, Nikki Stafford’s book, Bite Me! An Unofficial Guide to the World of Buffy the
Vampire Slayer, was published. It contained a section on the first Posting Board
Party, and included photographs of Bronzers, captioned with both their Bronze
posting names and their actual names. This book has been updated, and its 2002
edition contains even more easily identifiable information about several individual
Bronzers, as well as thoroughly identifying information about The Bronze as a
website, and some interviews with members (2002: 113–56). Also, the site was
well advertised, and well-trolled by journalists. One of the issues in the
community was the way in which the Official BtVS magazine advertised the
annual Posting Board Party as a fan convention, throwing open the invitation to
all ‘Buffy fans’, rather than to the Bronzers who originated the party. The Posting
Board Party Committee struggled with the boundaries of the community versus
the party, which evolved into a charity event sponsored by a not-for-profit
corporation, PBP Inc.
6. ‘Bezoar’ is the consensus term, taken from the name of a monster from the Buffy
episode ‘Bad Eggs’, for unwanted interlopers or consistent misbehavers.
7. See Gatson and Zweerink (2003) for a detailed discussion of this particular
interloper’s actions.
Qualitative Research 4(2)196

8. We do not mean to argue here that The Bronze or we ourselves have not
experienced disruption or fragmentation, but we don’t think these experiences
have much to do with the issues of ‘virtual space’. Also, although an imagined
‘third space’, The Bronze is usually experienced and practiced simultaneously
alongside work or home, and sometimes both (see Howard et al., 2001: 3–4).
9. Over the course of two seasons, the major character Willow Rosenberg (Alyson
Hannigan) went from being a heterosexual woman with a stable male-female
relationship, to a lesbian-identified woman in a developing and stable female-
female relationship. The Bronze was several times inundated with ‘I’m never
watching again!’ kind of commentary that in turn flowed into discussions of how
realistic such a portrayal was, how appropriate it was, and whether or not such
‘issue’-oriented plot devices or character developments should be explored on
BtVS.
10. Kenickie was, in fact, an undergraduate sociology major at a British university
throughout most of the research.
11. The second author was considered a member of Coffee Clubbers, those posters
who posted during the workday in North American timezones, a group that was
considered as hard to break into. Also, she was a member of Buf fyatrics, one of the
few clubs with a strictly bounded membership – one had to be sponsored to join,
and was then given a password to the online newsletter.
12. Slash fiction refers to romantic links between characters, such as Mulder/Scully
or Willow/Xander, the fanfic sets the second author tended to write. Controversy
often surrounds slash fic, but it increases with gay-themed fic, such as the
Kirk/Spock fiction discussed by Bacon-Smith (1991). Even more controversial is
the increasing development of Real-Person Slash which doesn’t involve
characters but rather actual celebrities, such as the members of ‘boybands’ like
*Nsync. While slash always carries a sexual/romantic connotation, currently it is
understood as dealing with gay-themed relationships.
13. Howard’s discussion of the lack of appropriateness for straight ethnography in
online settings does not hinge upon ‘real’ versus ‘virtual’ per se, but more
specifically on a physical ideal of the field site, suggesting that most online sites are
both non-physically bounded in any way, and ‘difficult to set . . . in a larger social
context’ (2001:565). We find it neither difficult nor non-ethnographic to study a
community either primarily online, or in both online and offline settings. Issues of
spatial and place mergers and separations, if that is the experience of the field site
and its members, are crucial to understanding these sites (see Hine, 2000: 149).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to thank Harris M. Berger, Joseph Kotarba, the members of the
Texas A&M University Ethnography/Theory Group and the Center for Humanities
Research for research discussions and collegial support (especially Giovanna Del
Negro, Tazim Jamal, Mary Bucholz, Kathryn Henderson, Barbara Finlay, and Joseph O.
Jewell), and members of The Bronze community for comments and suggestions.
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SARAH N. GATSON is an assistant professor of sociology. In addition to her work on
Internet community, she is a collaborator on a project looking at the impact of CMC as
it intertwines with Rave and Drug-using subcultures. Her other research interests
include the social construction of race, gender, class, community and citizenship at the
nexus of law and culture; the construction of multiracial identity; and the meaning
and practice of community and citizenship.
Address: Sarah N. Gatson, Department of Sociology, Mail Stop #4351, Texas A&M
University, TAMUS 4351, College Station, TX 77843–4351, USA. [email:
gatson@neo.tamu.edu]
AMANDA ZWEERINK is a Senior Account Executive at Mullen Advertising. She is
also one of four co-founders and editor/writer for the online ‘zine, popgurls
(www.popgurls.com).
Qualitative Research 4(2)200