[Air-L] virtual ethnography

[laetitia le chatton]

Hello,

Regarding the discussion, I may precise now that I am looking for an  
ethnography which could help me to understand the architecture  
resulting from people conversations.That is, I cannot postulate any "  
networks of interactions"  (network model is not virgin but has a long  
tradition in military, economical fields!). If it exists, it might be  
an aspect of my findings but it cannot be part of the method for sure.

Rhiannon recalled that an ethnography is not a-normative by nature.  
Yes but I went to that discipline after post-structuralist overal  
reevalution while ethnographers were wondering about their own  
practices...

Besides Alexa Färber  in http://www.diffusion.ens.fr/index.php?res=conf&idconf=355 
  suggests to split in two the fieldnotes with both the  informers  
observations and the state of research practices. We may therefore add  
to the "visual part" a "graph part" where we aknowledge this latter  
use?? I still think that maps may help us to understand this  
architecture of signs and marks let by the community....

Regards,
Laetitia

I add to this mail the reading list that has been exchanged till now.


Christensen, N.B. (2003) /Inuit in Cyberspace: Embedding Offline  
Identities Online/.  Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press.

Correll, S. (1995) The Ethnography of an Electronic Bar.  /Journal of  
Contemporary Ethnography/,/ /24 (3), p.270-299.

Hine, C. (2000) /Virtual Ethnography/.  London: Sage.

Jones, Steve (1998)(ed.)  /Doing Internet Research: Critical Issues  
and Methods for Examining the Net/, ed. S.G. Jones.  London: Sage.

Mann, C. and Stewart, F. (eds.) (2000) /Internet Communication and  
Qualitative Research: A Handbook for Researching Online/.  London: Sage.

Markham, A.N. (2003) The Internet as Research Context.  In / 
Qualitative Research Practice/, eds. C. Seale, J.F. Gubrium, G. Gobo  
and D. Silverman.  London: Sage.

Miller, D. and Slater, D. (eds.) (2000) /The Internet: An Ethnographic  
Approach/.  Oxford: Berg.

Schaap, F. (2002) /The Words That Took Us There: Ethnography In A  
Virtual Reality/.  Amsterdam: Askant.

For interviewing, I would start with this comprehensive volume, if your
library has it:

Gubrium, Jaber, & Holstein, James (2001).  Handbook of Interview  
Research.
London: Sage.

Creswell, John (2008). Research Design: Qualitative, quantitative, and  
mixed
method approaches. London: Sage.

Cresswell, John (2006).  Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design:  
Choosing
among five methods. London: Sage.

Wittel, A. (2000). Ethnography on the Move: From Field to Net to  
Internet. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung, 1 (1). Retrieved 08 May
2003 from http://qualitative-research.net/fqs-texte/1-00/1-00wittel-e.htm

Burton, L., & Goldsmith, D. (2002). The Medium is the Message: using  
online focus groups to study online learning. Connecticut
Distance Learning Consortium, New Britain, CT, USA,  http://www.ctdlc.org/Evaluation/mediumpaper.pdf 
.
	
Rezabek, R. J. (2000). Online focus groups: Electronic discussions for  
research. Forum Qualitative: Qualitative Social
Research [Online Journal], 1(1), http://qualitative-research.net/fqs.

More recently Virtual Ethnography or Netnography or webnography, are  
performed primarily in the commercial arena, with Puri's Web of  
Insight as a sort of handbook (available here: http://lk.nielsen.com/documents/WebofInsightsPaperMay07.pdf)

http://inthegameworkshop.blogspot.com/

Emerson, Fretz and Shaw (1995). Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

(a how-to text)

Hammersley and Atkinson (1995). Ethnography. London: Routledge.

(both a concept and a practical methods text)


Robben and Sluka (eds) (2007). Ethnographic Fieldwork: An
Anthropological Reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

(a great collection of ethnographies, as well as essays about the the
problems of ethnographic fieldwork)

Anne Beaulieu, "Mediating  ethnography: objectivity  and the makings
of ethnographies on the internet," Social Epistemology 18 (2004):
139-164.

Burrell, Jenna. Forthcoming. The Fieldsite as Heterogeneous Network.
Field Methods.

Leander, Kevin M. and Kelly M. McKim, "Tracing the Everyday 'Sitings'
of Adolescents on the Internet: a strategic adaptation of ethnography
across online and offline spaces," Education, Communication &
Information 3, no. 2 (2003): 211-240.

Star, Susan Leigh. 1999. The Ethnography of Infrastructure. American
Behavioral Scientist 43, no. 3: 377.

<http://www.socialnetresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/ess-chap31_internetresearchethics.pdf 
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