HINE 2000 the power of one's tweet, it's power to speak, voice
Ethnography has undergone substantial changes, e.g. From being a holistic description to more focused and bounded studies of particular topics of interest %5B41%5D
A wide diversity of approaches have been used but they all share a fundamental commitment to developing a deep understanding through participation and observation
Hammersley and Atkinson 1995 provide a def of ethnography:
In its most characteristic form it involves the ethnographer participating, overtly or covertly in people's daily lives for an extended period of time, watching what happens, listening to what is said, asking questions - in fact, collecting whatever data are available to throw light on the issues that are the focus of the research (in 2000:41)
Challenge concerning objectivity and validity
But as an example of a qualitative methodology it appeals as it provides rich and complex data on social life and thus lends itself to researching complex and multi-faceted concepts, is certainly less reductive than quantitative approaches
Ethnography is appealing for its depth of description and its lack of reliance on a priori hypotheses.
It offers the promise of getting closer to understanding the ways in which people interpret the world and organise their lives %5B42%5D
Realist vs constructivist
The naturalistic project of documenting a reality external to the researcher has been brought into question. Rather than being the records of objectively observed and pre-existing cultural objects, ethnographies have been reconceived as written and unavoidably constructed accounts of objects created through disciplinary practices and the ethnographer's embodied and reflexive engagement. %5B42%5D
This crisis can be seen as opening possibilities for creative and strategic applications of the methodology: the ethnography of ethnography
This approach involves embracing ethnography as a textual practice and as a lived craft and destabilises the ethnographic reliance on sustained presence in a found field site %5B43%5D
Problems: authenticity of mediated interactions as material for an ethnographic understanding, choice of appropriate sites to study the Internet as both a culture and a cultural object
THREE CRUCIAL AREAS FOR LOOKING AT THE INTERNET ETHOGRAPHICALLY
Can the ethnographer immerse fully using mediated forms of communication
Representational crisis: is ethnographic writing transparent enough in representing the culture?
Ethnography - story-telling institution - the stories were selective, 'textual constructions of reality' %5BAtkinson 1990%5D
Travel played an important part in the construction of an ethnographic authority. Fieldworker and theorist in one person who goes, sees and reports plus does analysis physical displacement if a requirement, conceptual distance needs to ensured too not to make a priori judgements so that the filed site is visited on its own terms %5B45%5D
The importance of travelling and arriving
Arrival stories anchor the description in the intense and authority giving personal expeirence, they set up the intitial positionings of the subjects: the ethnogrpaher, the native and the reader
Travel is such an analysis becomes a signifier of the relationship between the writer and readers of the ethnographic text and the subjects of the research - when the account is produced it introduces a contrast between author and reader: the ethnographer has been where the reader cannot or did not go %5B45%5D positivist approach? Creates a power relationship could the internet that reconfigures the notion of travel and arrival in the ethnographic studies retransform the relationship between the researcher and the reader?
The ethnography of the internet does not necessarily involved physical travel - visiting the internet focuses on experiential rather than physical displacement 'you travel by looking, by reading, by imaging and imagining (Burnett 1996 in 2010:45%5D the way you negotiate access, observe interactions and communicate with participants but anyone can do it, a reader too!
Baym and Correll describe netnography in such a way that again a distance is created between the writer and the reader. The former gains an extensive and sustained experience of the field site that the reader is unlikely to share (besides an analytic distance which mere participants are unable to share) %5B46%5D
Hine 2000:45 Whether physical travel is involved or not, the relationship between ethnographer, reader and research subjects is still inscribed in the ethnographic text. The ethnographer is still uniquely placed to give an account of the field site, based on their experience of it and their interaction with it. Really?
Fieldwork allows the ethnographer to encounter the context - the smells, sounds, sights, emotional tensions, feel which gives them more authority in while constructing the written text
BEING THERE > the authority to interpret - ethnographic authority is not transferable in this one particular case yes but the authority of the reader somehow increases as the access to the community is greater, would that put bigger demands on the ethnographer in terms of the validity and authenticity of the account, no more standing on the verandah, you really need to pull up yourThe reader may wish to interpret and so they can
The authority cannot be transferred to the subjects either as they lack the analytic vision autoethnography?
Ethography acts to construct an analytic space in which only the ethnographer is really there. Ethnographers exist alone in an analytic space which preserves their authority claim %5B46-7%5D
According to Turner, 'the field' can be conceived of as a space - better an attitude - which far from being neutral or inert, is itself the product of 'disciplinary technologies' (1998:13 in 2000:47)
Attempts may be made to cede this space (coauthorship) but it is the etnogrpaher's right to grant or withhold access %5B47%5D I think the internet has much more influence in this respect and somehow shifts the boundaries of power in this respect!
The necessity of lived experience and participation for full understnading - the ethnographer is not simply a voyer or a disengaged observer, but is also to some extent a participant, sharing some of the concerns, emotions and commitments of the research subjects.
Hammersley and Atkinson (1995) highlight the interactive aspect of ethnographic research. Otherwise the perceptions might be superficial. This requires an open attitidue, and no a priori assumptions, letting oneself be taken by surprise showing face-to-face interaction is vital
Being a cultural lurker would leave the setting undisturbed but would also leave their interpretations of it undisturbed by trial and practice %5B47%5D a bit of paradox and a very fine line to keep the balance
To lurk in an online setting is to relinquish claims to the kind of ethnographic authority that comes from exposing the emergent analysis to challenge through interaction - Byam (1995) and Correll (1995) both say that observation AND interaction are essential
Can I engage in one-to-one conversations with the community members to validate the data (either online of offline) - it might create a kind of assymetry; if not, can the interactions be viewed as authentic since the details cannot be confirmed - assuming that authenticity is correspondence between the identity performed in interactions with the ethnographer and that performed elsewhere both online and offline %5B49%5D a different approach is instead of bringing some external criterion for judging whether it is safe to believe what informants say to come to understand how it is that informants judge autheniticty
It would be more fruitful to place authenticity in cyberspace as a topic at the heart of the analysis rather than a problem to solve %5B49%5D
Interaction is available if what's going on within the internet is assumed to be social interaction
Defs: Interaction can be thought of as entailing a copresence of the parties involved, and a rapid exchange or perspectives which leads to a shared achievement of understnading bn those involved %5B50%5D
Spoken interaction is ephemeral (unless transcribed) and local
Text could be thought of as a temporally shiften and packaged form of interaction %5B50%5D
Texts are mobile and available outside the immediate circumstances in which tehy are produced and so production and consumption might be separated - readers might be unable to ask authors what they meant and so more interpretive work is done by the readers
If the Internet is perceived as a collection of texts, the process of using it is a process of reading and writing texts and the ethnographer's job is to develop an understnading of the meanings which underlie and are enacted trhough these textual practices. %5B50%5D
In case of #eltchat the Wednesday sessions are interactive, most contributions get acknowledged by answers, mentions and retweets. Some of it might be studied as texts but as dynamic texts as the blog on which the summary is features has a comment facility so a follow-up interaction is made possible.
Hine %5B2000:51%5D says that some of the WWW consists of largely static texts which might be interlinked but viewed individually they make available no obvious way in which the ethnographer might interact. She says this might seem to mean that the WWW is not available for enthographic enquiry as at this point the technology does not seem to promote interactions any more Social Web 2.0 makes it available, beyond interlinking, comments, tweets, share button increase linkability, automatic pingbacks
The new features of social web perhaps promote the texts as potentially playing a more important role than the initially secondary one as a cultural product
Hammersley and Atkinson (1995) perceiving texts as less authentic than oral interaction = 'romantic legacy'
Texts are an important part of life in many of the settings which ethnographers now address and to ignore them would be to produce a partial account %5B51%5D they should be treated as culturally situated cultural artefacts %5B51%5D the community produces the texts themselve in form of transcripts and summaries which are highly valued as a resource which can be indefintely refrred to - mods take care to rpeserve the volatile twitter conversations by backing up tweets (Twapperkeeper), saving transcripts straight away after the session and posting summaries in a few places tehya re talking about putting them togetehr as an e-book it seesm the interaction is a starting point for developing a resource for future reference participants keep referring back to those texts
Viewing texts ethnogrpahically entails tying those texts to particular circumstances of production and consumption. The text becomes ethnographically and socially meaningful once we have cultural contexts in which to situate it interesting to compare the transcript and the exchange itself and experience the differences in perception even though the content of the text is the same ... Participanting in the twitter chat is like experienceing smells - eyes darting from one tweet to another, checking links while trying to follow the development of the exchange etc
Viewing newsgroup contribution as textual not only as interactive can provide valuable insights. A textual focus places emphasis on the ways in which contributions are justified and rendered authoritative and on the identities which authors construct and perform through their postings %5B53%5D
Textualised record of interaction - the original text is made available for readers to develop their own interpretation %5B53%5D which democratises academic interaction (potter 1996) and which gives more authority to the reader? Mentioned earlier
Making the interpretation of text ethnographically visible - Hammersley and Atkinson (1995) users leave no visible marks on technologies comments on blogs???
Another response to ethnographic invisibility of interpretive and embodied work is to incorporate a reflexive understnading - reflexivity can therefore be a strategic response tot he silence of web surfers and lurkers as well as a way of acquiring and examining the socialised competences
An ethnographer of the Internet cannot hope to understnad the practice of all users but through their own practices can develop an undersntading of what it is to be a user %5B54%5D
It's useful to find out just how hard it is to become competent : it 's a ground for reflexive exploration of what it is ti the use the internet, as a mean to deeper engagement and conversation with other users, a way of developing an enriched reading of the practices which lead to the production and consumption of internet artefacts %5B55%5D
The processes through which field sites are found and materials collected become ethnographic materials in themselves %5B55%5D
There might be various criticisms of reflexivity but 'in short we need continually to interrogate and find strange the process of representation as we engage in it. This kind of reflexivity is the ethnogrpaher of the text %5Bwoolgar 1991 in 2000: 57 e.g by comapring my own interpretaive and representational practices with those of my informats
The making of ethnographic objects
The field is often seen as a place one goes to and come comes back from, reinforcing the idea that culture is something which exists in and is bounded by physical space %5B58%5D The ethnographer being the only link between the two and also separating cultural sites 'ours' and 'theirs'
The world seen through ethnographic eyes becomes a 'mosaic of unique and distinct cultures' (Hastrup and Olwig 1997 in 2000:58)
With growing prevalence of migration, the implied notion of bounded cultures requires re-examination
Because of that there is much more pentration and intelinking bn various cultures and inter-visibility, which shifts the balance of authority - the ethnographer is not the only one that can see acrocc cultures %5B59%5D
Two responses to the issue of growing interconnectedness:
Holism - Aim for a richer, deeper and more holistic notion of the articulation of diverse cutlural fragments within particular locations - holism seems not to ackonwledge the partiality and selectivity of any ethnogrpahic description; how can it be holistic if the boundaries are unstable? %5B59%5D
Multi-dimensional approach - the internet is a separate cultural sphere, sustained contextual studies of the ways in which the Internet is articulated into and transforms offline relationships.
Hine is drawn away from holism and towards connectivity as an organising principle - this way she remains agnostic about the most suitable site for exploring the Internet
Hastrup and Olwig suggest that a new sensitivity to the ways in which place is performed and practised is required - field is seens as a 'field of relations' not a 'site' you might start from a particular place but would follow connections which were made meaningful from that setting - ethnographic sensitivity would focus on the ways in which particular places were made meaningful and visible - ethnography becomes a process of following connections %5B60%5D
Marcus: in lieu of bounded sites follow people things, metaphors, narratives, biographies and conflicts, an approach that reqyures the ethnogprapher to embrace uncertainty as they will never quite know when one is in the field. The engagement from sustained immersion is partly replaced by the sensitivity of the ethnographer to mobility across a hetergenous landscape and the differential engagements which this enables and requires %5B60%5D
Castells introduces a variation by regarding space as the space of flows which emphasises connections rather than location Flows of people, information, money, circualte bn nodes which form a network of associations increasingly independent of specific local contexts %5B60%5D field site > field flow organised around tracing connections
Online ethnogrpahies despatialise notions of community and focus on cultural process rather than physical space, which might happen at the expense of minimising connections with offline life. To avoid this we need to turn from boundaries to networks and connections
Connective ethnogrpahy turns the attention from 'being there' to 'getting there' %5B62%5D when, where and how is the internet instead of what is the internet?
Connectivity is not only formed via hertextual links but also borrowing of materials and images from other sites and other media, by the authorship and readership of sites, by the portrayals of the Internet in other media
Connection could as well be the juxtaposition of elements in a narrative the array of apges thrown up by a search engine or a set of hyperlinks on a web page as an instance of communication between two people.
Connective ethnography explores what those links are, how they are performed and what transfmations occur en route in a snowballing apparoach
In the light of a diversity of internet sites, a holistic understanding of the Internet seems a futile undertaking; however hard the ethnographer works, they will only ever partially experience the Internet 2000:63
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