[Reading Note] 14th Chapter of Saga Handbook of Online Research by Christine Hine
I read the 14th chapter of Christine Hine’s book the Saga Handbook of Online research Methods: Virtual Ethnography, modes, varieties, affordance.
In this chapter she mainly discussed different methods of virtual Ethnography.
And here is something I like.
1. History of virtual ethnography
tIn the first section, Christine gives a review of development of virtual ethnogphy. It is very interesting that the concept of “cyberspace” is first brought up in fictions. And when those fictions went into ethnography field, ethnographers begin to study social format of these behavior, and appropriate approaches to do ethnographic research.
2.Relation between online and offline.
Relation between online and offline is one of the most important questions in ethnographic research. At first, ethnographers only focus on the “richness and social patterns of internet interaction”. That means ethnographers see the internet as an isolate place where there is only “internet interactions”. But later, ethnographers realized that the “online community” is a place where social reality is also reflected.
3. Ethic and Dilemma of doing virtual ethnography
Christine brought up a dilemma about observing online - whether to participate or to observe. Since if someone only do observe, and others who being observed don’t know themselves being observed. This can be an ethic problem for virtual ethnography. But except for this, it can be very interesting to compare the 2 methods of participating and observing. By participating, researcher can have a better experience in one group. But by observing, without disturbing anyone being observed, researchers are more likely to gain the most real materials.
