On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 5:44 AM, Pawan Singh <pawansinghh@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi, I am Pawan Singh, a PhD. student in Communication at UC, San Diego. I am currently working on a paper that looks at questions of identity construction and performance online by gay men in the Indian context. I am basically looking at some of the user profiles on a popular dating/hook-up site used by gay men to understand how they self-construct identity and form relationships in this space. I understand that the data on these profiles is private even though it's in a public space.
Hi Pawan, Good to see you here. I think your project is extremely interesting and the kind of questions it poses are often faced by a lot of us doing online ethnography; especially when the subjects in your work exist in some kind of digital limbo and will have severe (personal and social repercussions) when it comes to a 'coming out' and facing their sexuality. Given that you are interested in looking at questions of self-construct and digital identity, there are a few ways that I had found useful in doing my own Ph.D. research work, when the subjects (even when I was an insider, or they were friends) were not very cooperative or often just found the research too intrusive in areas that they thought were 'personal'. I hope some of them might help you in circumventing the problem. 1. One of the things to do is draw a sample from personal conversations and communications. If you are able to establish yourself in the paper as an 'insider' it will be possible to look at your conversations (messages, scraps, emails et al) with the community that you are looking at and make your argumentation based on that. Also, it is more highly probable that people you have personally interacted with, might consent more easily to let their 'profiles' be cited. 2. Another thing that works really well is to move beyond the equation of "profile = identity". In the kind of websites that you are looking at, there are many other 'public' instances where similar and sometimes more eloquent information is available. Looking at public forums, discussion groups, travel and visit sections, calendars and events and perhaps some of the more controversial face-offs and fights in the community, which is up in the public archives, might be much more accessible for you and does not require 'personal' confirmation. 3. One of the most obvious ways to move beyond online ethnography is of course to get into a personal physical interview mode. However, given the very closetted nature of homosexual communities in India and your location in the West (hence limited access) might not make this very feasible. 4. It is also possible that a lot of the people within the community that you are looking at, might be expressing themselves through blogs, social networking systems, and other creative spaces. These might be the more vocal and more easily approachable people and might also help in strenghtening your arguments around identity creation, rather than just looking at their dating/hooking -up profiles.
When I chose some profiles using purposive sampling, I contacted the users for their consent. Very few responded while others dismissed the research as hoax. I am investigating how I can go ahead and produce an virtual ethnographic analysis based on this profiles in an ethical fashion. I could change the names of the user profiles but does that suffice?
These are all the things that I have tried and have ended up making a much more interesting (at least to me!) argument about questions of what it means to have a techno-social identity. As somebody else has already mentioned, the question of ethics is tenuous and often subject to interpretation. I think the thing to focus on, in this particular case, is the validity of your sampling and the imperative that your object of analysis has on your project. Is it the only thing that will allow you to make that argument? If so, then there is no escape but persuasion, talking, networking and finding people who will allow you to use their personal profiles. however, if you can locate similar instances in more public spaces, you can then go ahead and use that material from there and see what turns up.
If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. It'll be a great help.
Thanks, Pawan Singh
Good luck with the project. I shall look forward to reading up on it, Warmly, Nishant
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-- Nishant Shah Doctoral Candidate, CSCS, Bangalore. Director (Research), Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore Asia Awards Fellow, 2008-09 # 0-9740074884