As I mentioned today, here is a marketing guy's take on how to conduct ethnography within the Internet environment. He is currently here at UW and I hear he's somewhat approachable if anyone wants to contact him. He's done some interesting, what I call quasi-ethnogrphy work, gonzo enthnography in exploration of consumers who choose to be "off the grid" at Burning Man as well as ethnographies of fan cultures like the Star Trek Fan Club.
Anyway, here's his framework which I found beneficial, although not extremely enlightening, when I was doing some internet ethnography on punk-themes message boards.
Kozinets, R. V. (2002). The Field Behind the Screen: Using Netnography for Marketing Research in Online Communities. Journal of Marketing Research, 39, 61-72.
I couldn't get at it through Proquest but if anyone is interested I have a printed copy they could copy.
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And here's the blurb on that Fall 2005 class I mentioned:
Introducing a New Course in Internet/New Media Studies for the Fall '05 Semester:
Communication Arts 610: Ethnography and Internet Communities
(This course is also listed in the SLIS and Folklore Studies Program.)
Since the advent of the public Worldwide Web in 1992, the social use of network communication has become a fact of everyday life for millions of individuals. As the "Internet" has exploded in size and scope, communities have formed around everything from music sharing, to pop-culture fandom, to computer gaming, to heath concerns, to political activism. As network technologies have allowed us to form communities across vast geographical space, so too have global ecological and economic interests forced us all to look at the entire planet an integrated community. In this new global communication environment, how can we better understand our identities and places in the world and in the communities that populate it?
This course will explore the application of the methods of ethnographic fieldwork to communities that form through network communication technologies. The course will cover the basic history, methods, and ethics of ethnographic study through readings in anthropology, sociology, folklore studies, literature, and cultural criticism. Then students will enact a series of small and short-term fieldwork activities. Through discussion, the benefits and limitations of these methods for understanding communities will be explored. Finally, the students will be guided in locating and exploring a network based group of individuals that exhibits the characteristics of community. Based on this exploration, A final paper will then explore how those individuals do or do not fulfill the expectations implicit in the term "community."
Taught for the Communication Arts Department and the Communication Technologies Research Cluster by Professor R.G. Howard.
For more information, please see: http://rghoward.com
And look for the forthcoming course Web site at: http://endnear.com/rgh/courses.html
Robert Glenn Howard
Assistant Professor
Department of Communication Arts
& Communication Technologies Research Cluster
University of Wisconsin - Madison
rgh@rghoward.com
http://rghoward.com
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