Transcript presentation slides

Virtual Ethnography Revisited
Christine Hine
Department of Sociology
University of Surrey
Virtual Ethnography Revisited
Why do virtual ethnography?
How do you do virtual ethnography?
A recent project, and some emerging
themes of importance
Virtual presence in real worlds
Ethics and engagement
Immersion in communication ecologies
Why do virtual ethnography?
• Ethnography as a way of understanding
social life as lived and experienced
• Participating, observing, questioning,
achieving richness and depth
• Mediated interactions are increasingly an
embedded part of contemporary social life
• If the people you study move some
aspects of their life onto the Internet, then
so must you
What is virtual ethnography?
A set of principles……
1. Investigate the ways in which use of the
Internet becomes socially meaningful
2. View the Internet as both culture and
cultural artefact
3. Expect to need to be mobile both virtually
and physically
4. Follow connections instead of being
confined to field sites
What is virtual ethnography?
5. Don’t take boundaries, especially
between the “virtual” and the “real”, for
granted
6. Expect a process of intermittent
engagement, rather than long term
immersion
7.Expect to develop a partial view, based on
strategic relevance to particular research
questions
What is virtual ethnography?
8. Use your engagement with mediated
interaction to add an important reflexive
dimension
9. Carry out ethnography of, in and through
the virtual
10. Undertake adaptive ethnography which
suits itself to the conditions in which it
finds itself
Ethnography in a trans-virtual world
• Information and communication
technologies in contemporary science
• Databases, web-based information
resources, large institutions, online forums
and mailing lists, traditional literature,
publicity materials and official reports……
• A trans-virtual world – an emerging virtual
culture that is thoroughly rooted in the
offline and can only fully be understood
through trans-virtual ethnography
Ethnography in a trans-virtual world
• Information and communication
technologies in contemporary science
• Databases, web-based information
resources, large institutions, online forums
and mailing lists, traditional literature,
publicity materials and official reports……
• A trans-virtual world – an emerging virtual
culture that is thoroughly rooted in the
offline and can only fully be understood
through trans-virtual ethnography
Trans-virtual ethnography
• Take virtual environments seriously as
places where social life gets done.
• But….not everything that is important is
visible online
• Learn about the varying textures of social
life, as enacted in virtual forums, and as
virtual activities are embedded in real life
activities and institutions
Emerging themes and issues
• Developing appropriate researcher
presence
• Ethics and engagement
• Immersion in communication ecologies
Virtual presence in real worlds
• Contacting people by email for face-toface interviews
• An opportunity to explore use of email as a
routine means of communication
• A chance to begin developing appropriate
presence, through signature, web site,
online publications
• Face-to-face interviews as a chance to
explore different sets of connections, and
to pursue issues in depth
Ethics and engagement
• Observing mailing lists as covert
observation
• Variable significance of messages to their
authors – sometimes asking permission to
quote is appropriate
• Asking permission is an engagement with
the field, which can lead to surprising and
useful research relationships
• Overt methods can give access to a
broader perspective on lists
At 05:43 AM 12/17/2003, you wrote:
>Hi,
>mind being cited in this regard? I'd like to include your entire
>message in my piece, as it illustrates so well the kinds of concerns
>(which characters to portray, quality of image etc) that surround this
>type of innovation.
>
>I hope you'll say yes to this unusual request.
Sure, you are welcome to use the message. I went back and looked at
the message thread, I assume you saw there were several follow up
messages, some concerned this was inappropriate for Taxacom and some of
a more humorous bent. I still probably have the image if you care.
Boy, it is interesting to see how times change.
BTW, I took at you paper on Systematics as Cyberscience. Very
interesting. You might want to take a look at the project I am
currently working on (Digimorph.org) as a way some of us are approaching
the idea of digitizing specimens. This is a long way from a flatbed
scanner! Our 3D specimens are, of course, not perfect digital replicas,
soft tissue is relatively anonymous and no surface colors appear. But
significant internal morphology is far more visible that in museum
specimens themselves.
Ethics and engagement
• Observing mailing lists as covert
observation
• Variable significance of messages to their
authors – sometimes asking permission to
quote is appropriate
• Asking permission is an engagement with
the field, which can lead to surprising and
useful research relationships
• Overt methods can give access to a
broader perspective on lists
Overt methods on mailing lists
How important is this list for a practicing systematist today?
Would you miss it? What would taxonomy be like without it?
How far do the kinds of issues discussed on the Taxacom list
reflect the concerns of the discipline more broadly? Is there
an excessive focus on particular kinds of issues? Do others get
missed out?
Have you posted messages to the list, either to start a topic or
respond to one? What was your experience like - did you find it
helpful, enjoyable, or neither?
How many of the people who contribute to the list do you know
from other contexts? Have you met many of them face-to-face?
What other lists do you belong to? How does this list differ?
I'd be particularly interested to hear from anyone who never or
rarely sends messages to the list, but still finds it useful what benefit do you get from the list? Do you know colleagues
in taxonomy who don't subscribe to the list, and do they miss
out?
Overt methods on mailing lists
• Answers have led me into issues of
– Selective reading practices
– Self-censorship and awareness of “the community is
watching”
– Gender issues in interpretation of posting practices
– Prevalence of private email between list members
– Lists as learning environments, and the value of
lurking
….but still only from 2% of the list
membership
Immersion in
communication ecologies
• Ethnographic research methods as a way
of exploring the varying textures of
contemporary social life as enacted
through complex communication ecologies
• Amenability to particular media and
methods tells us valuable things about the
texture of social life
• Questioning appropriate methods is a way
of staying alive to the taken-for-granted
qualities of communications media
Take home messages
• Technologies are potent but variably
interpreted figures for researchers and
research subjects
• Virtual methods are powerful
(indispensible?) routes to understanding
contemporary society
• Immersion in communication ecologies is
a route to a reflexively informed
understanding
Virtual Methods
• The web site:
www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/virtualmethods/vmesrc.htm
• The mailing list:
virtual-methods
To join, visit www.jiscmail.ac.uk
• The book
Virtual Methods: Issues in Social Research
on the Internet. Forthcoming: Berg, April 2005