Hopefully, these ideas were also conveyed in the prospectus, since they are part of the rationale for our text. This is a somewhat more detailed form - in writing - of what I "gushed" through at the beginning of yesterday's meeting.
Beginning in the nineties ethnographers began to document "digital cultures". The problem was - it was not clear how to: 1) frame the field of study, 2) what constituted participant/observation in that field, and 3) how best to conduct (particularly in terms of ethics and what constitutes data) and "write up" or create ethnographic texts ((particularly in terms of authority, validity, and "transcription" of events).
Framing the field.
There is not consensus - nor does there need to be - on what constitutes the field of study in terms of ethnographies of "the internet," "digitial communities," or "online culture." Unlike Samoa or the Trobriand Islands cultures and peoples associated with these "fields" are spatially dispersed and (in a very real sense) culturally dispersed = so that the concept to make their study cohere as a field does not simply translate to place or ethnicity. Digital ethnographers have variously solved this problem by studying groups/phenomena associated with internet cultures as text/textual constructions, a place in and of itself (like the Trobriand Islands); and as a distinct culture defined by participants' use.
The Internet" as textual construction: Hine's study of web sites, discussion boards, media reporting, and other digital, often ephemeral textual manifestations surrounding Louise Woodward's accusation/trial/subsequent release; in our talk we pointed out how this nodule of "reality" surrounding a highly publicized even was similar to the "reality space" currently surrounding Trayvon Martin's murder and Zimmerman's trial that many of us are currently spending time in.
Online spaces as "real" places/cultures. Tom Boellstorff's study of Second Life is an example of this approach to framing "online" studies. He participated on Second life as an anthropologist-character and conducted his study entirely online through that character's interactions with other characters on Second Life); and Lori Kendall''s
Digital culture as postmodern ethnographies in and of themselves (spaces which "evoke" cultural experience in ways parallel to the ways ethnographic texts allow readers to experience/"know" the cultures they read about). Frank Schapp, proposes this definition of the field for online MOOs, (Multi User Domains =Object Oriented - which I explained as Massive Multiplayer Online RPGs that are/were entirely played out in terms of text. That is - they are similar to World of War Craft, and the Sims in that players are in a simulated world - but there is/was only text to "represent" both the world and the characters.) His argument is made compelling in many ways because MOOs (like traditional ethnographies) were entirely made of text - and because the purpose of that text is to "evoke" or simulate a culture.
Digital cultures as interconnected and inseparable from material world cultures. These definitions are most relevant to approaches I see our studies as taking. They fall within the approach set up in Leander (one of our first readings) and taken by ethnographers including Lori Kendall, Nancy Baym, and David Hakken, and the work in Ito et al's collection on digital youth.
How our project defines "the field"
Our projects defines the field somewhat differently than each of these approaches. Our studies clearly fall most comfortably into the "connective" category,. At the same time, we spent some time talking about how our definitions of culture, group, and space (the field) we will study differ from the ways these other studies have defined them.
Some factors to define our fields:
The "place" of the field is located in the individual - rather than either online or offline "places". Because, in some sense, we define the "field" as located within the individual sensibility of the participant, our definition of "connective ethnography" assumes that experiences in both digital and material spaces are mutually constituitive (that they make and are made by each other) and the fact that once individuals have accumulated experiences in mediated spaces - they inevitably interpret all subsequent experience in terms of understandings that seamlessly place immediate and mediated experience within cultural forms, interpretive rues and dispositions derived from both "cultures". We therefore document participants' dual (simultaneous) presence in spaces and the factors that shape (and are shaped by) that dual presence as if it were continuous.
Field of identity for participants is defined in terms of members of Kean University, particularly "college-age" students typical of teaching universities. In particular our focus was different from Ito et al, and many other literacy studies of "the net generation" in that it does not frame digital culture or our window on digital culture in terms of "youth" - a concept that is more useful for studying literacies for "traditional", middle class students at research universities than for understanding literate practice of the many nontraditional, working class students at teaching universities. In particular, just as we do not see digital culture as separate or isolated from everyday life, we do not see the practices in those spaces as belonging to or created by youth culture. This is not to say that 'youth' may not use/participate in digital cultures in age/generationally specific ways - rather it is to focus on practices associated with college-age students - where "college-age" is defined in terms of students who attend working class universities.
Field for relationships considered in our study is grounded in material world interaction. We define the field of relationship in terms of friendship/shared classroom /shared interest /(cultural) connections originating in the material world as opposed to digital spaces.
For example, in Robyn, Maria & Luis' studies, participants were friends BEFORE coming to the digital space - and in some sense joined or FORMED the digital space BECAUSE of the material world connection. In the study of the creative nonfiction class, the digital community (if there really is one) derives from a material world "requirement", Within Joe's study, as in Luis', the field is defined in terms of the perspective of a particular circle of friends within a MUCH larger community. (I'm not sure of the rationale for this one with respect to Mark's study).
We will keep working on this.
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