ETHNOGRAPHY IN THE CYBERSPACE: PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS

Lip-Sam Thi (Ph D)

School of Business Management
College of Business
University Utara Malaysia
[email protected]

Abstract
This paper outlines some of the problems involved in conducting ethnographic research
in the Internet specifically social media such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. With
the advent of Internet and social media, online environments have emerged where
millions of people come together in virtual communities to interact, collaborate, share
and consume information. The emergence of these online communities has
dramatically changed individual engagement and collaboration patterns. It is no longer
sufficient to look at individual or small group activities in the real world as many
individuals have browsed, searched, communicated and collaborated within the
dynamic online social networks. Extending studies from traditional human relationship
in the real world to the virtual world is imperative to better understand human behaviour.
Ranging from simple text-based news groups to virtual multi-users environments, the
Internet has provided new settings and rich sources of information for conducting
ethnography research. However, online ethnography also raises the issues of
managing scale, researcher presence and field relations when doing research in the
virtual world.

INTRODUCTION

Research is increasingly concerned with how the internet operates within our daily lives
especially with the advent of web technologies. Social network sites such as Facebook
and Twitter have provided new platforms for individual to communicate, interact and
collaborate. The Internet and web 2.0 technologies have enabled geographically
disperse individuals to come together and in social spaces creating virtual communities.
People engaged in virtual communications will construct new spaces in such a way that

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is distinct and separate from the real world (Carter, 2004). Today, human relationships
are formed in the virtual world and maintained in similar ways to those in the society and
assimilated into everyday life. Questions often arise are how people are living life in
online or virtual communities? What relationships are being formed online and how are
real life and virtual life interwoven in terms of lived experience? This calls for alternative
research approaches to study relationships online.

THE NATURE OF ETHNOGRAPHY

Ethnography is embedded in an anthropological tradition essentially to examine a

cultural group or phenomena. It offers a naturalistic interpretation and understanding of
human behavior within cultures and communities by providing “thick descriptions” of
intricate social structures, behaviors, symbols and language (Patton, 2002). Thick
descriptions offer ethnographers an opportunity to go beyond mere traces of interaction
and activity, and gain an in-depth understanding of implicit concepts of motivation,
meaning and attitudes that are sometimes different or divergent from explicit behaviors
(Geertz, 1998). Ethnographers gather information by observing, talking with people and
at the same time scrutinizing relevant archives and artifacts to provide answers to their
research questions. This diversity of data collection approaches allowed an
ethnographer to triangulate or cross-check the accuracy of the collected data.

Ethnography has also extended beyond anthropology with the emergence of various
sub-genres of ethnographic research. Although these sub-genres may differ on specific
practices of implementing ethnographic methods, however, most agree that the basic
tenets of ethnography remain the recursive and inductive in depth observation (often
through participant’s observation) of a culture or a community, and formal or informal
open ended interviews designed to understand the perspectives of stakeholders within
the community (Hammersley, 2006).

ETHNOGRAPHY ONLINE

In information studies, ethnography has yet to become a central method, but was used
in many cases to provide understanding of the relationship between technology and

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human (Rotman, Preece, He and Druin, 2012). The development of the internet in the
last few decades has initiated discussions about sub-genre of ethnography online or
virtual ethnography. Virtual ethnography is based on a reflective position that allows the
observation of how people construct, reconstruct and make meanings in this case; the
Internet. Online ethnography has been conducted on sites and services such as blogs,
chatrooms, forums etc. whereby the researcher could not be physically present (Carter,
2004; Hine, 2000). In a way, the Internet and social media have hampered interaction of
researcher and participants. Research’s participation and being physically present in
the ‘field’ are hallmarks and strengths of ethnographic research. However, this could
not be carried out in the case of conducting ethnography in the cyberspace.

Our social world takes place in face-to-face environment as well as in an online

environment. Neglecting any one of these environment may not portray an accurate
picture of our social and cultural norm. Ignoring the impact of the Internet will also mean
the researcher will deprive himself or herself a rich source of information and material
for research. Ethnography analyses human practices in the context of culture, and the
Internet and social networking (SN) are part of our modern culture. This also calls for
rethinking of strategies and ethnographic methods that have the ability to explore the
scope of interpersonal interactions in the virtual world while taking into account the lack
of face-to-face interaction which is the tradition of interpretivist research (Beneito-
Montagut, 2011).

TYPES OF ETHNOGRAPHY

Sanday (1979) categorized ethnography into three schools of thoughts namely the
holistic, semiotic and behavioural. The holistic school suggests that the ethnographic
research should ‘go native’ and ‘live among the subjects’ of study in order to empathise
while immersing in the social grouping being observed. The ethnographer has to
become a blank slate and acts like a sponge, soaking up language and culture of the
people in order to fully understand their social and cultural practices.

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On the other hand, Clifford Geertz (1998) argued that an ethnographer does not need to
empathise with the subject. Rather, the ethnographer has to search and analyze
symbolic norms such as words, images, institutions and behaviour which form the group
culture. Harvey and Myers (1995) argued that ‘thick describing’ the situation and its
context could identify the web of significance which people weave within the cultural
context. In other words, culture can be described and analysed without having to
empathise with the people.

From the perspectives of semiotic and behavioural approaches, virtual ethnography

seems applicable by interpreting and gaining meanings out of languages, culture and
norms, that ethnographer does not need to empathise with his or her subjects.

EVALUATING VIRTUAL ETHNOGRAPHY

Klein and Myers (1999) proposed a set of guidelines for the evaluation of interpretative
studies that include case studies and ethnographies in information systems (IS). Myers
(1999) had highlighted a few of these aspects that are used as guidelines to evaluate
ethnographies conducted in the field of IS.

Firstly, the ethnographer must convince the reviewers and readers that his or her
findings are new and worth of the research. Secondly, the ethnographic research needs
to offer rich insights into the subject matter. Thirdly, a significant amount of material has
to be collected because the ethnographer needs to be in the field for a reasonable
length of time conducting fieldwork. Fourth, ethnographic studies provide the subject
matter set in its social and cultural context and expressed in multiple viewpoints that
include dilemmas, frustrations, routines, relationships that are part of everyday life
(Grills, 1998). Fifth, sufficient information about the research methodology being
presented could help reviewers to evaluate the validity of the findings and to know what
the research did and how he did it (Myers, 1999). All these aspects can help
researchers and reviewers to evaluate the quality of a virtual ethnographic study.

CHALLENGES OF VIRTUAL ETHNOGRAPHY

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The ubiquity and pervasiveness of the Internet, Web 2.0, Web 3.0 and other emerging
new technologies posed various challenges to conducting ethnography online.
Frameworks developed by anthropology may also be in crisis because the notions of
society, the self and traditional culture distinctions are being challenged by the advent of
the Internet and usage of social media tools at workplace, public place and home. The
traditional ethnography writing is based on extended, empirical fieldwork of ‘being
there’, ‘going everywhere’ with the social subject that entails both immersion and
intimacy with the subjects to experience and share their social world (Cowlishaw, 2007).
Nonetheless, a number of discussions about the appropriateness of virtual ethnography
for the study of the Internet and the impact of social network have been presented (e.g.
Beaulieu 2004; Beneito-Montagut, 2011, Rotnam et al., 2012).

Some researchers have perceived online environment by nature as hostile, impersonal

and shallow and yields little valid data (Carter, 2005). In any ethnography, it is critical to
know who the participants are and their locality. In the case of social network,
individuals can take on multiple identities and be in anywhere at anytime. If the
ethnographer is unaware of these identities, it could result in only telling part of the story
and creating a false impression. The issues of trustworthiness and authenticity of data
obtained from online sources are also being questioned if the researcher is not able to
participate and observe the subjects in the virtual world settings.

Calhoun (1991), argued that the Internet itself has formed a barrier to ethnographic
approach since the meaning of community has been illusory enacted on the Internet.
Computer-meditated communication using social media tools is actually not rich enough
to sustain a meaningful social relationship without taking into account physical
interactions between individuals in a community.

Another issue arises for conducting virtual ethnography is that the researcher usually
chooses a specific site as if physical boundaries could be applied to the Internet
(Schaap, 2002). It is important to note that communication and interactions among
individuals never develop in one setting alone. Research that focuses on specific sites

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such as chat rooms and more recently on specific communities or social networks such
as Facebook, Twitter or other blogospheres provides limited understanding of everyday
life and the various intersections between different sites and uses (Beneito-Montagut,
2011). Moreover, individuals in modern society use a myriads of social interaction tools
such as emails, web 2.0 tools and other applications at the same time to interact and
communicate. They also juggle across devices such as mobile phone, tablet computer
and across places namely work place, home and public place in the process of
interacting with one another.

Many online environments are presented on a matrix-like structure that could be hyper-
linked to other sites instantaneously. Individual could make friends and be connected by
reciprocal comments and through topical discussions in multiple-sites online. As
ethnography aims to provide systematic understanding of a culture or phenomenon, it is
necessary to observe interactions at various layers and websites. Hence, the size and
scope of the online environment make virtual ethnography a complex endeavor.
Therefore, defining the setting in an online ethnography research is a critical issue
(Garcia, Standlee and Cui, 2009). Virtual ethnography tries to fit the traditional or ‘real
world setting’ onto the Internet and recongnise vast differences which exist between
‘virtual setting’ and ‘real world’. Observation and participation in just one layer or website
in virtual ethnographic research will provide a fragmented idea of how individual
communicate, collaborate and interact in the Internet. Wilson and Peterson (2002) also
heighted the high costs of conducting multi-sited virtual ethnography and the uncertainty
that comes with moving fields and monitoring changing actors across fieldwork.

Virtual ethnography has inclined to have over representation of textual content over
other types of material gathered online (Cowlishaw, 2007). The Internet and web 2.0
technologies provide the researcher with very different sets of data in the form of text,
sounds, videos, pictures. Research and theory have to consider multimedia data rather
than over-emphasis on textual data (Beneito-Montagut, 2011).

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High pace of technology changes have also resulted in new online settings, features
and new applications being developed and changing rapidly. For example, Friendster
and Internet Relay Chat (IRC) which are very popular not long ago have become
obsolete. Interface changes in social network sites also cause a shift in the content and
also alter the research context which the ethnographer has no control given some of the
social network sites are commercial and proprietary (Rotman et al., 2012).

In order to achieve reflective, critical and precise descriptions of the Internet and social
network sites, researcher tends to speed up to follow the ‘fast moving’ objects of
analysis and ‘slow down’ to understand them (Beneito-Montagut, 2011). New features
and capability of Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies have resulted in research
telling us about a specific technology rather than telling us about the meanings of
communications and social interactions online.

Ethical dilemmas also arise because participants are distributed geographically which
makes it difficult to apply ethical practices. Attitudes differ throughout the world
concerning online privacy. It is even more challenging if there is a large number of
online users interacting online and anonymity caused by accessibility of the Internet
where textual fragments and other digital content can be easily retrieved, modified and
forwarded.

PROPECTS

Web technologies have grown rapidly with four out five Internet users visiting social
network sites and blogs. Across 10 major global economies, these applications have
reach over three-quarter of active internet users (Nielson, 2011). Individual time spend
online for communication, sharing and soliciting information has increased
tremendously. The Internet is liberating and facilitating the generation of a rich field of
data suggesting future research directions (Hine 2000; Schaap, 2002; Carter 2005).

The Internet is a cheap-and-easy way to reach the world (Paccagnella, 1997). The very
existence of the Internet and its easy accessibility make it a very attractive ‘sites’ to

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conduct fieldwork. Hakken (1999) argued that virtual ethnographic methods are well
suited to study the virtual world. The multiple identities and dynamism of the virtual
communities have started to shift the focus away from studying conventional community
by researchers.

Hine (2000) opined that virtual ethnographers have the advantage on the fact that they
no longer have to struggle to leave or ‘to get away’ and can pursue their fieldwork from
their offices. He highlighted fieldwork will be characterized by ‘switching’ roles and
lurking around, intermingling fieldwork with multiple layers and social network sites.
According to Hine (2008), virtual ethnography is a process of intermittent engagement,
rather than long term immersion and necessarily partial, leaving aside these
communities in the ethnographic sense.

Virtual ethnography can also move out of ‘visits’ to online sites and into everyday life of
the subjects, including leisure and friendship and other dimensions of life because this
‘everyday life’ constitutes the habitus that makes online participation both possible and
meaningful (Driscoll and Gregg, 2010).

CONCLUSION

Virtual ethnography has limitations and issues that need to be examined in order to
develop this approach for more meaningful research. The new online landscape is also
defined by its wide scope, size and constant change (Rotman et al., 2012).
Furthermore, the boundary between real and virtual is blurred as people use all types of
media available on hand to communicate. Communication systems on the Internet also
produce a wide variety of multimedia data other than text. All these require an
ethnographic approach which is able to provide tools to capture the complex social
interactions online to provide in-depth and rich details for research.

In the meantime, researchers have adopted an expanded ethnography as an

appropriate methodology to examine online social interactions (e.g. Kinnevy and Enosh,
2002; Beaulieu, 2004; Beneito-Montagut, 2011; Rotman et al., 2012). The features of

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expanded ethnography include using quantitative approaches to complement
ethnographic studies.
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