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Lifestream, Tweets

Chenée raises one of the challenges of being a virtual ethnographer, which is ensuring an appropriate level of engagement. In her chapter ‘Virtual Ethnography’ in the SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods (2008), Hine discusses the tension between being observing unobtrusively (lurking) and participating. The former -while creating ethical concerns- has the advantage of not disturbing or changing the observed community, but it has been questioned whether lurking gives the level of engagement necessary to ‘develop in-depth understanding’ (Hines, 2008).

With regard to the study mentioned in the Tweet (also from Hines, 2008):

Baym carried out her ethnographic work as an active member of the group in which she was at first a full participant before adopting it as an ethnographic field site. As an ethnographer, she conducted online interviews and surveys, carried out textual analysis of threads of discussion, and was also informed by in-depth knowledge of the soap opera that participants in the group discussed.

In another chapter, ‘Virtual Ethnography: Modes, Varieties, Affordances’, in tThe SAGE Handbook of Online Research Methods (2008), Hines reveals that Baym observed the group of soap opera fans for 3 years.. considerably longer than our mini-netnography for Education and Digital Cultures! Clearly, the understanding gained over a two-week period will be considerably less deep, however, questions regarding presence and level of participation persist. Both moving from either being a lurker or active participant to being a known observer, and managing self-presentation when both an ethnographer and a participant will be ‘tricky’, to say the least!

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Lifestream, Pinned to #mscedc on Pinterest

Source: ethnographymatters.net

Description: Christine Hine recommends that ethnographers focus on the embedded, embodied and everyday Internet. Pic by dannymol on Flickr, CC BY 3.0
By Renha
Pinned to #mscedc on Pinterest

In Ethnography for the Internet embedded, embodied and everyday (2015) Christine Hine reflects (pp. 32-33):

Three particular aspects of the contemporary Internet experience have repeatedly struck me as especially challenging to the development of ethnographic strategies. For development of an ethnographic strategy for the Internet, it has seemed particularly significant that it is embedded in various contextualizing frameworks, institutions, and devices, that the experience of using it is embodied and hence highly personal and that it is everyday , often treated as an unremarkable and mundane infrastructure rather than something that people talk about in itself unless something significant goes wrong. These three “Es”—for shorthand purposes, the E3 Internet— provided a backdrop for thinking about why it is difficult to apply ethnographic principles to the contemporary Internet, and how we might do so successfully.

 

 Hines brings to my attention that a virtual ethnographer has the choice of adopting an embedded, embodied and everyday (E3) perspective or a cyberspatial perspective, wherein the online space is viewed as more self-contained. For the purpose of my upcoming mini-virtual ethnography, a cyberspatial approach seems most apt, in part due to the scale – I also need to narrow my research question so that it fits within this perspective.

Hines, C. (2015). Ethnography for the Internet: Embedded, Embodied and Everyday. Bloomsbury Publishing [e-book]. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ed/detail.action?docID=1873332.

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Lifestream, Liked on YouTube: Netnography – An Instructional Guide

via YouTube

Still concerned about the process of netnography, I found this student video on youtube.com. It provides considerable insight into the process of netnography, outlining the following steps:

1. Planning and entrée

2. Ensuring ethical research

3. Data Collection

4. Data Analysis

5. Providing opportunities for feedback

 

These steps are outlined in greater detail in this Google Presentation.

Important take-aways:

  1. observe the group before you declare your intentions, so as to establish what kind of behaviour is acceptable (and avoid being ‘shunned’);
  2. provide opportunities for feedback, through member checks, after your initial data analysis.
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Lifestream, Liked on YouTube: Netnography: Social Media for Cultural Understanding

via YouTube

A light introduction to Netnography and one of the core readings for the block, Robert Kozinets’ chapter ‘Understanding Culture Online’, from Netnography: doing ethnographic research online. London: Sage. pp. 21-40.

I’ll blog about Kozinets’ chapter at a later point, and link to it here. Whereas the chapter focuses on developing social understandings of online spaces, in the video Kozinets provides a brief introduction to netnography, and describes a case study in which netnography was used as a marketing tool. Key (pragmatic) points for netnographic process (from the video):

-establish research question

-identify potential fields and choose which you will focus on

-observe (swimming in the data)

-analyse for key themes

-(when using netnography for marketing) respond to collected data with marketing strategy.

 

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Lifestream, Liked on YouTube: What is a MOOC?

via YouTube

In Massiveness + Open = New Literacies of Participation (2013), Stewart identified 3 integral components to MOOCs:

“the connectivity of social networking, the facilitation of an acknowledged expert in a field of study and a collection of freely accessible online resources” (McAuley, Stewart, Siemens & Cormier, 2010)

Yet, as Stewart further highlights, the story of MOOCs is often (misleadingly) told through that of online education in general, globalization and networked learning (p. 228), and the original values (autonomy, interaction, exploration, contribution) and characteristics (’emphasizing networked practices, knowledge generation, and many-to-many channels of  communication’) MOOCs subverted or overlooked. The video explores the history, nature and values of MOOCs, as per McAuley, Stewart, Siemens & Cormier’s (2010) research, in more detail.

Reading/watching this research unfold today, with the proliferation of so-called xMOOCs that frequently focus on delivery of information or course content (Stewart, 2013), it seems almost idealistic. Yet, it is true that networked technologies have the capacity (and indeed are, though less frequently) to be used in the way McAuley, Stewart, Siemens & Cormier (2010) propose: a reminder that technology cannot be separated from social practice and context.

Looking forward to observing how networked practices come into play in my MOOC next week..

 

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Lifestream, Liked on YouTube: Success in a MOOC

via YouTube

This short video by Dave Cormier provides advice on how to succeed in a MOOC:

Screenshot from video by Dave Cormier

Since my attendance in an as yet undecided MOOC next week will be for the purposes of conducting a min-visual ethnography rather than complete the MOOC successfully, it is not all totally relevant. However, the steps/phases declare, network, cluster seem to be key to community formation – so something to look out for, and to think about with regard to my own participation.

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Lifestream, Comment on Visual artefact by hwalker

Renee – what lovely feedback: thank you. Like you, I struggled with it though: I couldn’t quite find the right medium to be able to express what I wanted to. And I think your artefact is brilliantly executed!

I couldn’t agree more with your observation about how datafication can impact on relationships. Do you have experience of this yourself?

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