Just to chime in - stuff that has already been said in different ways ... Ethnography is not complete until we look at multiple angles - online, offline, local, global, private, public, individual, group and look at how contexts shift notions of space, place, community, networks, cultures and so on... This is why talking of just "virtual" or "cyber" ethnography as removed from offline everyday life is problematic (and this discussion thread has rehearsed that over and over) Having said that - perhaps what needs to be clearly articulated is the starting point - the point of entry. When talking of community to my NGO activist collaborators online social networks and "virtual community" sometimes becomes irrelevant and even frivolous and - yet some of the processes of community formation and collective organization in such groups resembles what those who inhabit online/offline intersections. I would not understand this if I restricted myself to just studying online/offline intersections of just doing fully "cyber" ethnographies... radhika ------ http://personal.bgsu.edu/~radhik