After reading Annette Markham's great forthcoming chapter - Reconsidering Self and Other: The methods, politics, and ethics of representation in Online Ethnography." In N. Denzin and Y. Lincoln (Eds.). Handbook of Qualitative Research. (forthcoming) Online draft here: http://ascend.comm.uic.edu/~amarkham/writing/denzinlincoln.htm I realized I have been wrestling with an interview terminology problem you may just help me to re/solve <with full credit to you, of course>. I am interviewing study participants f-t-f about their everyday uses of the Internet (and other media artifacts) and they everyday participation in other spaces <non-Internet> of community participation. I want to make a distinction between being online, OL, and what - paradoxically, online, is often referred to as Real Life, or RL. Of course, RL is problematic because for lots of people who spend much time on the Net, OL is very real, embodied, important, and connected to other forms of interaction that are either not digitally mediated, or mediated differently (cell phones etc...) Annette, I noticed, in her interviews, uses online versus offline. I thought about that, but when are we ever really offline? Those of us who in one way or another are cathected to myriad diversely mediated worlds. Back to the terminology question - when asking say, about identity in different spaces - offline online, RL OL Is there a different, better binary to invoke to make this distinction? Thanks, Mary --------------- Mary Bryson, Associate Professor and Graduate Coordinator, ECPS, Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia "Queer Women on the Net" project: http://www.queerville.ca "GenTech" project: http://www.shecan.com