http://digitalculture-ed.net/saraht/2009/11/11/virtual-ethnography/

This week I have been focused on producing the virtual ethnography. The aim of the ethnography was to determine how far a group of people who regularly meet online can be seen to be an ‘online community’. However more processes than that product have unfolded.

First of all, I am surprised at how ‘sucked in’, or [...]]]>

This week I have been focused on producing the virtual ethnography. The aim of the ethnography was to determine how far a group of people who regularly meet online can be seen to be an ‘online community’. However more processes than that product have unfolded.

First of all, I am surprised at how ‘sucked in’, or should I say ‘involved’, I became in the goings on of the group. This is partly because I spent so much time on the site, looking at their photos and reading their comments. However, what also played a part in my becoming involved in the group, albeit in a silent – lurking way, was getting to know the group members via the content and style of their comments. I found myself really quite liking ‘Lump of Hesitation’.  She, I assume she is a she, is the conciliatory voice on the site. She attempts to soften the harder edges of other group members. I have to say that her tag does not do her justice, which I find quite frustrating. I want to know what she looks like.

But listen to all this – ‘Lump of Hesitation’ could be a man; could be more than one man; could be more than one woman; could be a teenager. I don’t know – I am making assumptions from purely mediated cues – the text of the posts and the tag. And even so, I have become sucked in. So, where is my academic objectivity? Where is the cut off point between online and offline? Between real life and cyberspace? I have breached it, if it was ever there. And that is, for me at least, one of the major ‘learning outcomes’ of this module – to break through the boundaries in my own head that made me dismiss the online in relation to the offline. My ‘outsider’ status is weakening, slowly, but evidently, and  now I find myself to be one of those people who talk about ‘applications’ – (but not yet ‘apps’ – I haven’t gone that far). Interesting times.

This week has been taken up with working on the virtual ethnography. It has kept me away from the lifestream, to a certain extent.

Reading Hine (2000), along with Jen’s feedback, has helped me understand a little more clearly why I am writing these weekly reflections.  I was not sure why I had to write the [...]]]>

This week has been taken up with working on the virtual ethnography. It has kept me away from the lifestream, to a certain extent.

Reading Hine (2000), along with Jen’s feedback, has helped me understand a little more clearly why I am writing these weekly reflections.  I was not sure why I had to write the reflections, apart from it being something that I had been asked to do, so it was a fairly instrumental task for me.  (I understand reflection and the value of it, but I was not quite clear why I was being asked to reflect on why I had chosen certain feeds to go into the lifestream as I had already written about them in the notes.) However, Hine’s point about reflection, albeit in an ethnographic context, has helped me come to a deeper understanding of the process that I am engaged in. She states that ‘an ethnographer of  the Internet cannot hope to understand the practices of all users, but through their own practices can develop an understanding of what it is to be a user.’ (2000, p 54). It is the reflection on one’s own actions that is the key for me here. By writing this reflection I am developing an understanding of what it is to be a user in a digital environment, but I had to read this before I could join the dots and realise that that is what I have been doing, but maybe not quite achieving in the content of the reflections.

Hine goes on to challenge the notion that an ethnographer should, in order to maintain observer status,  avoid becoming too familiar with the work of their  own informants (2000, p  54). However,  becoming increasingly  familiar with digital environments can result in the development of the proficiency to encounter and produce digital artefacts (Hine, 2000, p  55). This has been my experience. As I encounter more digital artefacts, listen to and read the voices that make up the Internet,  I feel I am moving into the Internet’s  ‘communities of practice’. As I endeavour to incorporate these voices into my own product, this lifestream, I feel I am being further pulled into the digital world.

Having said this, I do not yet feel as if I am a member of a community. Gillen (2009) cites Hammam’s  (1997) three-fold definition of a community: a group of peoplewho share ties and  an area (space)  for  certain periods of time. I may be feeling as if I am being drawn into a community or communities, but I am not a member as, at the moment, this drawing in is taking place in a solitary fashion. It’s a strange feeling.

I found this video – Visual Ethnography. It is a brief overview of using film as a way to construct and present ethnographies. About 3.30 minutes in, there is a film of an interview with a documentary maker, Jean Rouch, talking about how he decided to avoid using music [...]]]>

Click here to view the embedded video.

I found this video – Visual Ethnography. It is a brief overview of using film as a way to construct and present ethnographies. About 3.30 minutes in, there is a film of an interview with a documentary maker, Jean Rouch, talking about how he decided to avoid using music in his films. This has made me think about the different tools visual ethnographers can use to manipulate the message of their products -  zoom, use of web cams, editing, use of music, and voiceover, and how this might affect the messages that we are receiving and how we might ’encounter’ them.    The availability of such tools makes me ponder the validity of digital media as a way of presenting ethnographies. However, different tools which nevertheless have the save manipulative capacities are also available to the writer; I am referring to such tools as the use of hedging, selection of area to investigate, selection of quote to use, selection of source to validate a view or with which to construct a view, ordering of ideas.  All of these can be and are used as persuaders – as ways to persuade the reader to adopt the line of argument.

This line of thinking has led me to seeing the ‘author’ of an ethnography, especially if that ethnography is produced with the use of film and visuals, as  writer, producer, editor and director all at the same time. All of these labels, excepting the last in the list, can be used to describe text based and visual products, but, depending on the product, the definition will vary. It is a case of wearing several hats and once, or making a quick switch between performances. It is also a case of the viewer/reader/consumer -a  person encountering the ethnography – being aware that all of these hats are available to the person making the ethnography and that at any one time, they are being used as ways to persuade the viewer. The result may be that it makes not only producting such artefacts but also critically encountering them a rather complex endeavour.

At 4.45 minutes, we have Dr. M. Wesch giving a lecture in which he refers to a Moldovan pop song the ‘Nu Nu’ song and how it spread like a virus around the world via YouTube.  Apart from being very engaging to watch, this part of the video shows how social networking has affected his lecturing style. As we might anticipate, as he is lecturing on new media, he includes YouTube videos in his talk. However, I was struck by the fact that at one point he segues his own talk into the voice of one of the people on a YouTube video. More DJ than academic, but it works, for me, at least and it shows how new media can influence that place so called ‘RL’.