[Air-L] Virtual Ethnography and CyberAnthropology

Denise N. Rall denrall at yahoo.com
Mon Feb 9 15:51:51 PST 2009


Dear AIR-ers -

This continues as one of the best topics in AIR in recent years (for me, anyway).  I forgot to mention two people who influenced the approach I took in my thesis. 

Such as the one offered by Phil Howard: (In fact I have thanked him personally with 'saving' my thesis - all credit to him and no blame!)

Howard, P. N. (2002). "Network ethnography and the hypermedia organization: new media, new organizations, new methods." New Media & Society 4(4): 550-74.
	
>From his paper: "Social scientists are increasingly interested in innovative organizational forms made possible with new media, known as epistemic communities, knowledge networks, or communities of practice, depending on the discipline. Some organizational forms can be difficult to study qualitatively because human, social, cultural, or symbolic capital is transmitted over significant distances with technologies that do not carry the full range of human expression that an ethnographer or participant observer hopes to experience. Whereas qualitative methods render rich description of human interaction, they can be unwieldy for studying complex formal and informal organizations that operate over great distances and through new media. Whereas social network analysis renders an overarching sketch of interaction, it will fail to capture detail on incommensurate yet meaningful relationships. Using social network analysis to justify case selection for
 ethnography, I propose 'network ethnography' as a synergistic research design for the study of the organizational forms built around new media."

Second great approach was provided by Jo Tacchi, Greg Hearn, and their team. This is specifically a method, and while I haven't read the book, what I know of Tacchi and her colleagues, it's an approach well worth considering if one is framing the research towards action research.

Tacchi, J., G. Hearn, et al. (2004). Ethnographic Action Research: A Method for Implementing and Evaluating New Media Technologies. Information and Communication Technology: Recasting Development. K. Prasad. Delhi, BR Publishing Corporation.

Apologies if these have been mentioned previously, I haven't read the whole string yet.

Denise N. Rall, PhD. Internationalisation Project Officer Southern Cross University, Lismore NSW 2480 AUSTRALIA Office: Room T2.17, +61 (0)2 6620 3577 Mobile 0438 233 344 http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/esm/staff/pages/drall/ Presenter, Internet Research 9.0, 15-18 October 2008, Copenhagen, DK



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