Whilst reading Hind I’m also checking my friend’s FB updates on the demonstration happening at Wood Lane ahead of Nick Griffin’s participation in Question Time tonight. She has travelled there to be ‘in the field’. I have not. I’m aware the updates I am reading could well be influenced by my friend’s political, social and cultural standpoint but she is gaining the insights she is posting from observing at close quarters and interacting with others at the demonstration.
If updates were being posted by a group of people all at the same demonstration, perhaps via Twitter as was the case with the G20 demonstrations earlier this year, do they form enough of a community to observe and interact with for virtual ethnography? The community is loosely formed and, in the case of posting to Twitter with a particular hashtag, temporal (although other longer lasting networks of communities may exist within and without the Twitter-posting community). The demonstraters are gaining insights from seeing and doing – I am gaining insights from their postings.
With regard to the language of the community, something that strikes me with virtual ethnography is that the language used, particularly in the case of Twitter. The language may well be influenced by text-speak in order to meet the 140 character limit. In some ways this could be perceived as a distortion of the regular language fo the community. How then is it possible to become immersed in the language of the community?
Following the #bbc and #griffin hashtags gains me admission to the community as an observer (I didn’t have to negotiate access) – but as I’m not there can I really communicate with the participants in any real kind of way? Can one conduct virtual ethnography on a group of people who are doing something in real life but reporting it virtually? Does this make one more of a casual observer?