1) extending & supplementing perspectives for documenting and describing "communities" or "affinity groups" - especially when they span material world and digital spaces;
2) illustrating possibilities for web texts as ethnography;
3) reconsidering questions surrounding researchers' identity/stance and issues associated with validity, authenticity, and ethics - with emphasis on the particular forms questions/issues take when conducting ethnographic research on affinity spaces/hyperlives (re-visiting and complicating on-going discussions surrounding traditional ethnography/auto-ethnography/ "going native": defining appropriate researcher identities + purposes, "validity"; the "field", ethics and etc ).
1. Extends & supplements perspectives for
documenting and describing "community" or "groups";
Our perspective does not consider “online life” or communities as separate from the material-world lives that engender them. We embrace and extend
perspectives of ethnographers such as (need a list here= Kendall, Livingstone, boyd, Ito, and others) who cast online/offline experiences as seamlessly interconnected; afterall, no one is ever ENTIRELY online. In
keeping with practices developed by "multimodal ethnographers" (Robinson and Schultz, 2009), we look at
the continuities and separations of online/offline activities & friendships, and the identities they engender as integral features of hyperlife – ways
of being in the contemporary world that seamlessly integrate digital
technologies immediacy, connectivity, and interactivity into the social fabric
of everyday living.
The aspects of
an affinity group which are the focus of our study center on activities, interests, styles of relating = an ethos, more than a the "space" where those activities take place (though place contextualizes and shapes what we do). For example, a group of fan fiction writers, while much of the group's identity/activity is mediated through the online spaces where
individuals with hyperlives spend time and connect to interests for that group. It is not the space, per se, but the life patterns - discourses/identity structures - surrounding the particular focused interest and the spaces where that interest places out which we
seek to document.
For
separate argument: we do not view emerging
technologies as the province of youth (discussion of how our work opens up much of new literacy studies focused on technology & education). Rather, we see it as variously "realized" (represented) through an array of perspectives associated
with particular sets of interconnected hyperlives (fan fic communities, Facebook friends/groups, sets of Tumblr followers, NaNoWriMo participants). Necessarily require
documentation of online + material world connections
2. Reconsiders questions surrounding
researchers' identity/stance and issues associated with validity,
authenticity, and ethics
Ethnographic
perspective. Ethnography has previously
posed positions for researchers as “observers” or “natives”, with traditional
ethnographies posed at the end of creating “objective,” scientifically gathered
observations which are then theorized so as to represent the perspectives
(write the culture) of the group under study.
At the other end we have autoethnography and “going native” perspectives
where community members (or ethnographers so immersed in the culture they are
studying that the lose their distance and”see” as natives) which contribute “authentic”,
insider information.
Re-writes
the sub-text of the assumption that the ethnographer “inhabits a kind of
in-between world, simultaneously native and strangers (Hine, 5). Our perspective allows that the ethnographer,
as in auto-ethnography, is fully a native to the life-world s/he documents in
that s/he has an extensive history within that life-world prior to deciding to “study”
it. This perspective also assumes
ethnographer, like all members of humanity, as products of multiple experiences
aquired in different communities and underpinned by sometimes radically
different worldviews. With social
constructionism, it assumes that it is in part this identification with and
investment in multiple, often conflicting assumptions - about the way the world
is, what is valuble, what is fair, and how we know things – that allows us to see
the world in new ways. Through
conversations and interactions – often
with others but also with ourselves – juxtapositions, reiterations, and
restatements of (conflicting) ideas which are assumed true becomes something
new. It is a fundamental assumption that trained ethnographers are capable of reflecting
on their own (multipply conflicted) experiences and ideas, as well as those of
others. Through these reflections –
organized by the various methodologies of ethnographic practice – worldviews can
become “strange” and available for theorization.
Much
has been written about the advantages of each perspective, both for gatheraing
and for analyzing data. Won’t resolve
this debate. Rather
our work will extend and adapt a perspective characteristic of ethnographic practice from
the form’s outset: participatory or insider (auto)ethnography. Separate from PAR, with features of classic
and autoethnography. Similar to
postmodern ethnography (Schapp, name others?) – different from Kendall, Gee = who joined
groups for the purpose of studying them, or whose joining was associated with
their research agenda. We are doing ethnographyies written by insiders. Similar to teacher
action research = member of classroom; different since teacher has a distinct
role within the classroom which separates her from the majority of the
members.
Participatory
ethnography – composed by longstanding member of the community through approaches
to data collection, representation, and analysis which engage direct input with
other members of the community. Cite
Participatory ethnography methodology by Gubrium + Harper.
Offers
new perspective on debates surrounding validity, authenticity, and ethics.
Validity. Aligns with standards for ethics
developed for qualitative study, while heightening possibilites for extrinsic
assessment of validity in the sense that representations by community members
become data in and of themselves – and can be subject to analyses for
discursive features by READERS.
Authenticity. (define as acurately representing
one of the many points of view ascribed to within the group perspective a
theory claims to represent) = postmodern critique => always a possibility in
any research that findings represent projections of researcher’s theoretical assumptions,
choices for research practice , and covert (a priori) worldbviews. When participants are both community members
and researchers – their theorization of their community in and of itself is
representative of the community’s ethos in ways that “outsiders” theories can
never be. While they may not be “correct”
in terms of how the community under study interacts with and is understood by
individuals OUTSIDE the community, but by definition, in that they are
representations and theories crafted by community members – they represent
community ethos. And again= these
representations offer DATa for additional researchers to theorize from
different perspectives.
Ethics. Re-assigns responsibility for “self
representation”. Does not resolve
problems of “speaking for others” (since only SOME group members will “speak”
3. Illustrates possibilities
for web texts as ethnography
- Reasons
for persistence of ethnographic books
- essay as the proper form for ethnography (Behar, 20)
- habit, Hine
- nature of ethnographic argument, Dicks et al, Gubrium + Harper;
- academic expectations;
- ethnographic training/bias (Boellstorf, 29)
- Reasons
for making presenting web texts as ethnography
- Schapp => power to evoke ; arguments associated with postmodern ethnography (connected to discussion of what ethnography does=purpose)
- More effective form for representing participant perspectives without "saying" them; allows participants to self-represent in a larger range of forms
- allows for more interactive reading by reader (fewer words = less articulated conclusions=> more room to experience the data = see Pink?)
- documents connections between the identity of the researcher and the kind of ethnography researchers produce
- different modes offer different kinds of "analytic" processes, offer different "windows" on ethos of hyperlives
Discussion of representation as a kind of anlaysis
No comments:
Post a Comment