Nov
7th
It’s been a real pain getting this presentation – my micro-ethnography of a virtual community – published. I’ve had problems with BT Broadband, my new Mac, YouTube and Vimeo (and, just in case you wondering, no, no it’s not user error;-)!).
I am currently hating technology with a vengeance and wondering where I can get an application form to join the Amish (yes, I’d like to spend my days building barns and milking cows).
Anyway, here it is – click on the screenshot below to access it (WordPress won’t let me embed):
I didn’t upload the most recent version though which omitted image citations so here they are:
- Slide 4: The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Anatomy_Lesson.jpg - Slide 6: Map of online communities
http://xkcd.com/256/ - Slide 13: Archaeology pit
http://www.conservationhalton.on.ca/uploads/images/Archaeology%20Pit%20at%20Crawford%20Lake.jpg
Hi Tony,
I enjoyed your very well structured and aesthetically pleasing presentation. (I am sorry to hear about your technological woes – I’ve been there!) Your use of metaphors is very illuminating. I like the archeological one – yes, we have to dig and dig and dig. In my ethnography, it got very confusing about what was real, constructed and imagined and I only had time in one week to lay the groundwork and stake out an area to further ‘dig’. As for your argument that ‘virtual community’ is overused and rather we should be talking about a a ‘digitally mediated network’, I am not so sure. I understand your point but looking at a few of the mini ethnographies so far, I think that there are a range of types of ‘communities’ – some are just places we visit and are not really part of our identity – as you say – and maybe those are ‘digitally mediated networks’ but I think there are others that are more like a shared community – such as Sarah P’s quilting community and my Davidsfarm. But I am still open and need to explore much more this whole area before being anyway sure about this.
Seconding Silvana and her praise of your metaphors! I especially like your analysis of the map and the blogipeligo, and your musings on proximity vs connectedness. To pick up on Silvana’s point above – perhaps we do need more than one way of characterising the sorts of interactions we have online. Maybe ‘community’ sets up too many expectations about what those interactions will look like, and stops us being able to see how digital connection and affinity works as a group-forming glue in the absence of (or in addition to) proximity. Hm – group-forming glue doesn’t sound very appealing, does it?!
Hi Silvana, hi Jen,
I’ve just posted a response to Silvana’s kind and thoughtful comments. I think I’m ok with the idea of there being virtual communities – it’s just that I think it sometimes gets applied inappropriately. Anyway, there’s more in the latest post …
Hi Tony. So far, I found this the most academically focussed ethnographic study. You have gone so in depth, I wonder how it would stand as a final assignment.
I have two comments. First, I do believe in the existence of digital communities. For me, community requires both membership and interaction. I have found both within two established forums – the football forum I studied for this activity and the class forum itself. Individually, we may be complete starngers in the real world. However, here we are sharing and commenting on the intimate details of our studies. That to me is community.
Secondly, I found your comments on blogging interesting. Do they represent community? To a large extent, all the class blogs are inter-related as opossed to interconnected. That is until we engage in activities like this – reading and commenting on one another’s. The owner’s posts may be the main event of a blog but its the comments that breath socialisation to it. Does a falling tree make a sound in an empty forest? Does a blog offer any meaning if it is not read?
Cheers
Great pice of work Tony. I really liked the cartography metaphor displaying boundaries, and the discussion re blogrolls in building the community. My piece on quilting moved away from the concept of virtual ethnographic field site because there seemed to be no boundaries to the community. 3474 blogs are actually listed in the community, but the extensive use of blogrolls on every single one of those can lead to to an infinite (or so it seems) number of connections.
Nice job Tony – please don’t defect to the Amish! I posted comments on the slideshare site.
btw Sarah, I like your comment on blogrolling here – it makes me think again of blogging, and the internet generally, as the circle whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere : )