[Air-L] Blogs for social science research: Dilemmas
Carmel L. Vaisman
carmelv at gmail.com
Thu Aug 12 01:19:31 PDT 2010
Hi Juan.
I dealt with some similar questions in my doctoral dissertation (ethnography
within the Israeli blogosphere). When the same author had more than one blog
or engaged in a playful interaction on another blog, connected on ICQ or met
in bloggers meetings in real life, I often had to "travel" with that to make
meaning of blogging practices. My core methodology was connective
ethnography so I could basically do that, but you seem to require a clearer
boundary to begin with. You should be fine with the methods you chose if
your blogs engage mainly in written discourse. but you might need to check
if there's a back channel, if these bloggers know each other or get to know
each other/form a community that crosses to real life (especially when they
arrive in Montreal) or other online platforms. in that case it will be hard
to analyze the blogs as standalone and you might find yourself in a
connective ethnography too. it depends how deep down the rabbit hole of your
topic are you willing to follow your bloggers?....
Carmel Vaisman
http://www.absolutecarmel.com
Twitter @carmelva
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