[Air-l] question about interview language for online/offline distinction

Mary Bryson mary.bryson at ubc.ca
Wed Jun 16 13:14:14 PDT 2004


After reading Annette Markham's great forthcoming chapter - Reconsidering
Self and Other:  The
methods, politics, and ethics of representation in Online
Ethnography." In N. Denzin and Y. Lincoln (Eds.).  Handbook of
Qualitative Research.  (forthcoming)
Online draft here:
http://ascend.comm.uic.edu/~amarkham/writing/denzinlincoln.htm

I realized I have been wrestling with an interview terminology problem you
may just help me to re/solve <with full credit to you, of course>.

I am interviewing study participants f-t-f about their everyday uses of the
Internet (and other media artifacts) and they everyday participation in
other spaces <non-Internet> of community participation.

I want to make a distinction between being online, OL, and what -
paradoxically, online, is often referred to as Real Life, or RL. Of course,
RL is problematic because for lots of people who spend much time on the Net,
OL is very real, embodied, important, and connected to other forms of
interaction that are either not digitally mediated, or mediated differently
(cell phones etc...)
Annette, I noticed, in her interviews, uses online versus offline. I thought
about that, but when are we ever really offline? Those of us who in one way
or another are cathected to myriad diversely mediated worlds.

Back to the terminology question - when asking say, about identity in
different spaces - offline online, RL OL

Is there a different, better binary to invoke to make this distinction?

Thanks,

Mary
---------------
Mary Bryson, Associate Professor and Graduate Coordinator, ECPS, Faculty of
Education, University of British Columbia
"Queer Women on the Net" project: http://www.queerville.ca
"GenTech" project: http://www.shecan.com






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