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Re: [Air-L] virtual ethnography
by Pearse Stokes 03 Feb '09

03 Feb '09

Hi, Just to respond to a couple of points - "sorry but i don't see how "webnography" as laid out by Puri has anything to do with ethnography; nor does it sit in the same arena as Hine's virtual ethnograhy. Puri's text sits in the realm of market research--the goal (to sell more product) comes before the observation. it's hardly social science. -robert" I agree completely Robert, Puri's "webnography" is most definitely a market research endeavour, but since it is so prolific, and since so many ethnographers may be employed in this arena, I would imagine an awareness of Puri's work would be a good part of a syllabus. "About the "graphy" part of "virtual ethnography", i can't agree with your statement of impossibility." I don't think the 'graphy' part of 'virtual ethnography' is impossible (I don't think I said that did I?) but it's very rare that good virtual ethnography is performed in its complete sense. I don't think it is a very robust method in terms of validity and generalisablity. I hope that clears up my stance on virtual ethnography. Also, if people have any good examples I'd love to read them! Pearse

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RA in Communication and Development
by William Dutton 02 Feb '09

02 Feb '09

Research Assistant in Communication and Development Grade 6: Salary £25,623 - £30,594 p.a. (pro rata) We are a leading international research and policy institute looking for a Research Assistant (RA) to work with a new project team. The project will create and employ an electronic collaboration platform to support an international network of individuals in discussing innovations in regional development and co-producing public events and documents that support regional development goals. Work will be based at the Oxford Internet Institute, but it will involve collaboration with an international team, including project team members in Spain and Canada. The RA will help design and manage the project, facilitate communication within an international team, and conduct research on the design and implications of the collaborative network to be developed. The RA must therefore be bi-lingual in oral and written Spanish and English at a high level. The team will include expertise in information and communication technologies, but interest in, and experience with, Web-based collaboration tools would be desirable. The project will involve action research, but is likely to include in- depth interviews, focus groups, questionnaires and case studies. A background in social research methods, such as case studies, ethnography or other qualitative or quantitative research methods, such as webmetrics, would be highly desirable. Based in the heart of Oxford, this position is available immediately for 12 months in the first instance, with the possibility of renewal thereafter. Applicants wishing to work part-time will also be considered. How to apply: http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/newpositions.cfm Further information, including details of how to apply, may be obtained from Nicola McVay, Administrative Officer, Oxford Internet Institute, 1 St Giles, Oxford OX1 3JS, UK. Tel: +44(0) 1865 212330; email: recruit(a)oii.ox.ac.uk The closing date for applications is 12.00 GMT on Thursday 19 February 2009. Interviews are currently planned for Monday 2 March.

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Re: [Air-L] virtual ethnography
by Pearse Stokes 02 Feb '09

02 Feb '09

Hi, I just thought I'd add the following. Firstly, I'm not sure Miller & Slatter perform any kind of 'virtual ethnography' in the strict sense in 'The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach' and generally I think it's massively dated. The key text from the 90s would be Hine's Virtual Ethnography and Hakken's Cyborgs@Cyberspace. I consider Hine's to be way ahead of its time in terms of the other books that were emerging at the time and actually still pretty current. My problem with Virtual Ethnography is that it commits the cardinal sin of bad ethnography; It takes a preconceived notion and attempts to graft that method onto a new research site. Also, I believe the dichotomy of virtual and real is a false one. Furthermore, it retains the anthropological stance of the researcher, and 'the other'. It places the web firmly 'in there' (inside the box or across a 'network of networks') and I argue that it most definitely does not exist in there and that the term virtual is nothing more than a convenience. 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) Further, if you consult recent articles that claim to perform virtual 'ethnography' generally they perform 'participant observation' without actually 'writing the culture' (the 'graphy' in ethnography). An example would be boyd's 'Why Youth (heart) Social Networking sites' ... an extended period of 'deep And for the most part virtual ethnography is just interviews and qualitative analysis. Which isn't ethnography. I think cyber anthropology is a better direction than virtual ethnography. Anyway, thats just my feed back, Good luck! Message: 1 Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2009 17:25:51 -0600 From: scott(a)scottmacleod.com Subject: Re: [Air-L] virtual ethnography To: air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org, mathias.fuchs(a)creativegames.org.uk Message-ID: <S362488AbZA2XZv/20090129232551Z+60567(a)ams10.chi.affinity.com> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1" Here's a MIT OCW "Ethnography" course - http://tinyurl.com/dg32zg (also http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Science--Technology--and-Society/STS-360Ethnograph ySpring2003/Calendar/index.htm) - but not on virtual ethnography. In a related vein, I'm looking for a "Virtual Ethnography" syllabus from MIT, Cal, Stanford, Cambridge, Ivy League schools, the Sorbonne, University of Munich, University of Chicago, etc. Are there any syllabi out there that you know of on "Virtual Ethnography" vis-a-vis MIT's above? Scott scottmacleod.com

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Call For Submissions -- special issue of SI journal
by Mark D. Johns 02 Feb '09

02 Feb '09

Symbolic Interaction, a peer-reviewed journal published quarterly by the University of California Press, invites submissions for a special issue dedicated to the application of symbolic interactionism to internet research. Erving Goffman's concept of "the presentation of self" has become foundational to much scholarly understanding of online identity in chat, email, game environments, blogs, and social networks. Yet other aspects of the rich tradition of symbolic interaction -- including other concepts developed by Goffman -- have been largely ignored by internet researchers. For this special issue, we welcome a broad range of approaches to studying computer-mediated interactions between individuals and within communities online, that utilize other lines of thought by Goffman, or the works of George H. Mead, Charles Cooley, Herbert Blumer, James Carey, Carl Couch, Norman Denzin or other theorists in the interactionist tradition. Definitions of the social situation, negotiation of meanings, social processes, framing, and other interactionist principles are possible theoretical foundations. Qualitative studies will be privileged in the evaluation of submissions, as well as those reflecting recent theoretical developments in symbolic interaction theory. Topics may include online communities, virtual environments, games, social networking sites and any other forms of computer-mediated communication. Papers that are supplemented by online materials are encouraged, and space will be made available on the journal’s website (http://is.gd/gQ4Z) for authors to place links, examples, illustrations, or further discussion of the published texts. Please send submissions electronically to mjohns(a)luther.edu Deadline for submissions is August 1, 2009.

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Research on multiple CMC environments
by Murray Turoff 02 Feb '09

02 Feb '09

This study from 1981 is worth reviewing for comparing four or five different forms of CMC including electronic mail. RR#16 Studies of computer mediated communications systems : a synthesis of the findings n.d. Starr Roxanne Hiltz, Elaine B. Kerr http://library.njit.edu/archives/cccc-materials/ This study resulted from an NSF sponsored workshop on Computer Mediated Communications. Those who contributed to the material besides teh authors were: There were 15 persons that contributed besides the authors. Thel study of many different early groups using EIES is RR#15 The impact of a computerized conferencing system on scientific research communities Jan. 1981 Starr Roxanne Hiltz Note that many of these groups had tailored communication structures for their particular application and as a result many of these were studies of different CMC systems such as the following three: TOPICS, a standards setting system with unanmus voting and anonymity to move a standard forward by 40 participants, a review of 5000 research reports on hepatitis research by a group of 12 researchers to determine resulting information for practitioners. Roxanne published a separate book on these studies. A few related papers Hiltz, S. R., & Turoff, Murray, (1981), The Evolution of User Behavior in a Computerized Conferencing System, Communications of the ACM, Volume 24, Number 11, November. Turoff, Murray and Hiltz, S. R., (1982), The Electronic Journal: A Progress Report, invited paper presented to the Association of American Publishers, New York, September 1979; published in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 33, 4 (July), 195-202. Turoff, Murray and Hiltz, S. R., (1982), Computer Support for Group versus Individual Decisions. IEEE Transactions on Communications, Special Issue on Office Automation, Com-30, 1 (January): 82-90. (There were lots of experiments by us and others o different communication structures to support decision analysis. Some complete experiments in reports at the njit library site. Turoff, Murray, (1990), Computer Mediated Communication Requirements for Group Support, Journal of Organizational Computing, Volume 1, Number 1. (this was an attempt to summarize all the different design choices for designing different CMC systems. There is more in recent literature such as the fact that the software engineers in IEEE (Systems man and cybernetics) have at last recognized the concept of building human roles into the CMC software for different applications. There was also some of the same concept of role software in some of the early hypertext systems. Message: 2 Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2009 10:29:34 +1100 (EST) From: Christopher Lueg <christopher.lueg(a)utas.edu.au> Subject: Re: [Air-L] Research on multiple CMC environments To: air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org, alice.marwick(a)nyu.edu Message-ID: <alpine.LRH.1.00.0901291027580.3929(a)leven.comp.utas.edu.au> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed On Wed, 28 Jan 2009, Alice E. Marwick wrote: > I'm looking for research on the interaction of different types of CMC - > e.g. how chat, email, IM, social networking, virtual worlds, blogging, > SMS, mobile etc. are used together as part of a communication > environment by users. Most studies I've found concentrate on a single > aspect; I'm looking for work on the use of two or more types of CMC by > the same users.

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'Human error' halts Google search
by Robert Ackland 01 Feb '09

01 Feb '09

From The Australian newspaper (online): "PEOPLE using the internet search page Google were stunned to see erroneous messages reporting that every site turned up in their results might be harmful." http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24991997-12377,00.html I don't know how widespread this problem was (possibly only affected Australia?) but I was one of the people affected by this. I wouldn't say that I was stunned. It was more a sense of frustration that my late-night attempt to get linux running properly on my brand-new laptop was made even more painful by my having to cut-and-paste URLs to pages containing potential solutions into another tab, because Google (and StopBadware.org) had erroneously identified the site as potentially hosting malware. It was also a sense of concern that my life is increasingly so contingent on the Google search infrastructure (without the help of those online forums, the new laptop was essentially an expensive paperweight). OK, I acknowledge that I could have used another search engine. Also, at least I could still search, even if it was made more inconvenient. I also acknowledge that the problem was fixed within an hour. But I think it is somewhat troubling that the increasingly important service of online search can be compromised (even just for an hour) by a research project. This might be a bit of a stretch, but what if water or electricity services were inadvertently cut or restricted because of a research project focusing on "consumer complaints". -- ------------------------------------- Dr Robert Ackland Fellow and Masters Coordinator Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute The Australian National University e-mail: robert.ackland(a)anu.edu.au homepage: http://adsri.anu.edu.au/people/robert.php project: http://voson.anu.edu.au ph./fax: +61 2 6125 0312/+61 2 6125 2992 mail: Coombs Building, 9 Canberra, ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA Information about the Master of Social Research (Social Science of the Internet specialisation): http://adsri.anu.edu.au/study/msr.php -------------------------------------

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Offering data, bibliography, discussion on corporate & institutional blogging
by Cornelius Puschmann 01 Feb '09

01 Feb '09

Dear colleagues, I have recently completed my PhD in English Linguistics at the University of Düsseldorf, Germany, with a dissertation on corporate blogging (full title: "The corporate blog as an emerging genre of computer-mediated communication"). My focus was on linguistic pragmatics, but I would describe my work as strongly interdisciplinary. In the course of my research I have created a fully POS-tagged corpus (8 mio tokens) of company blog texts, most of them from U.S. companies. The corpus is stored in a MySQL database and could be exported to XML without serious difficulties. *Would any of you be interested in the dataset and perhaps in the bibliography that I have assembled? * In a nascent field such as blog research I believe that everyone benefits from sharing data. I'm also an advocate of the Open Access & Open Data movement ( http://www.berlin6.org/?page_id=73 ) and therefore a strong supporter of openly sharing research results. Not all of the corpus data was actually used in the thesis, largely because I focused more on theoretical issues in the end, but I think it could still be quite useful. In case you are interested in my findings, do not hesitate to contact me. If you are also looking into blogging, specifically in corporate or organizational contexts, do let me know so we can have a chat at IR 10. Best from Düsseldorf, Dr. des. Cornelius Puschmann, M.A. Department of English Language and Linguistics / University of Düsseldorf, Germany University Library Center (hbz), Cologne, Germany +49 211 8115927 (office) +49 211 13956684 (home) +49 176 81178067 (mobile) www.elanguage.net

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virtual ethnography/primary texts
by nativebuddha 01 Feb '09

01 Feb '09

so...back to maybe more traditional ethnography texts: 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) -robert

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Re: [Air-L] virtual ethnography
by andrea baker 01 Feb '09

01 Feb '09

Manuel, hi-- What type of "maps" are you using? Do you mean drawings of connections between people, similar to what Moreno called "sociograms" or perhaps a more modern version developed by Valdis Krebs? Did you design your own system for mapping the relationships people described to you in words? Perhaps you are talking more about where and how people entered an online community and where they went next or how they created a shared space, as you call it. In any case, please let us know when your paper is available in English. It sounds fascinating. cheers, andee Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2009 23:51:35 +0100 From: manuel.boutet(a)free.fr Subject: Re: [Air-L] virtual ethnography To: air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org Message-ID: <1233442295.4984d5f7d0718(a)imp.free.fr> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Selon Pearse Stokes <pearsestokes(a)gmail.com>: > Further, if you consult recent articles that claim to perform virtual > 'ethnography' generally they perform 'participant observation' without > actually 'writing the culture' (the 'graphy' in ethnography). An example > would be boyd's 'Why Youth (heart) Social Networking sites' ... an > extended period of 'deep And for the most part virtual ethnography is > just interviews and qualitative analysis. Which isn't ethnography. About the "graphy" part of "virtual ethnography", i can't agree with your statement of impossibility. But i agree about the issue, and above all if you mean it literally, if by "graphy" you mean "visual". I see it as an open question today, a state of art, and our responsability to go further. For exemple, more than the quantitative / qualitative debate or articulation, it seems to me more fruitful to think about the role of museography when qualitative methods where created, and about the extended use by "ancient" anthroplogists of maps, plans, and other sketchs and drawings, as they were too in the "travel diary" tradition. For exemple, to achieve a better description of the ties in the Internet network - writing is very poor to account for their complexity; i found usefull to use some tools to map them. These maps were built to complement descriptions. It's a necessity, because, even when you describe precisely how participants find their way, without a map it's not clear for the reader how such "short views" (participants views are "shorts", they are "for practical matters") could build together a "shared space" or "social webspace". My point is, i really believe in virtual ethnography, because social sciences really need these accounts about the ways people not only "act" but find their ways out there. (Actually, i can send my recently publish paper about that very question, but in French. English conterparts are not ready yet.) Regards, Manuel Boutet Centre Maurice Halbwachs (CMH) http://www.cmh.ens.fr/ http://manuel.boutet.free.fr

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A new "new media index"
by Steve Jones 31 Jan '09

31 Jan '09

The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism has a new "New Media Index." Details are at http://journalism.org/node/14356. The methodology is described here: http://www.journalism.org/commentary_backgrounder/new_media_index_methodolo… . Sj

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