To analyze this issue from what I advanced in a previous post: virtual ethnography does not work (only) virtual communities ... This text is an extension of that, so I will summarize the arguments then:
# On the one hand, social connections in the virtual and the real is too complex to say that a group of people with shared affinities and share time and contacts across the network form a community. This is shown in the study by Wellman et. al. "The Strength of Internet Ties: The internet and email users Aid in Maintaining Their social networks and when to Provide pathways to help people face big decisions" , which reports on the socio-structural interactions in the context of people between the physical world connections and virtual, and how it is possible to find linkages between the two environments in the forms of social behavior. Specifically, the study says that people with a greater number of connections in cyberspace are also more social success in the physical world, measured by number of bonds of sociability in the surroundings ... which, on the other hand, leads to Castells (2001) , supported in Wellman, talking about a company's own scheme of information called "networked individualism."
# To this argument adds the actor-network theory of Latour (2005) , facing the complex relationships in the social structure. Latour speaks of a type of membership - similar to the classic concept of social aggregation - given around multiple group situations and actions as complex networks of interaction, where the artifacts and objects are as important as the subjects, whether these "actors" or "target" of the shares.
Well, after this first approach, now try to remove a type of closed approach, while constraining the field of ethnographic study of virtual (or digital). The argument has been summarized in a sentence like this:
"Most virtual communities develop around a specific theme, in this sense, virtual communities vary according to what they say and how to say what they say. The virtual community is comparable with the notion of field, a field limited by the issue around which the community structure. Virtual ethnography is responsible for studying those issues that deal with virtual communities. "
This is a limited view that reduces the chances of a qualitative study of virtuality. Of course, the study of topics dealing with virtual communities is exciting [Note: A good example is the case study of an ethnographic of Steel (2006), "Assembling machines to build society" (title subject to variation, field notes taken during presentation "Subverting the informational order, following the trail of hackers" in the Workshop of IN3 , Researching the digital world, for a derivative work, may be "On the error as an event and the hacking as a creative use the same "), a study structured around the idea of" project "and following the footsteps of the hackers in cyberspace and beyond the cyberspace], but this is not the sole purpose of virtual ethnography.
Perhaps the shift in focus is a matter of time. Kuhn (1962) points you need some time to crystallize the new theoretical currents and displace the established paradigms. This process is dynamic and occurs constantly, but there are periods of stability in which a dominant paradigm. If there is a trait that characterizes the current moment is the smooth, liquid, the evanescent, the unstable ( Verdú, 2003 ). The change affects the course of events. Innovation is at the basis of the information society, of which the Internet is its raw material ( Castells, 1999-2005 ). And that means that, at this stage, especially in the area of \u200b\u200bscience that studies the phenomena related to innovation (social, technological, methodological), paradigms elapsed in shorter time periods. A paradigm that saw (alone or especially) the inside of the Internet as object of study (the culture of / on the Internet and Internet culture itself) with an own structure type, consisting of stable communities, where people shared patterns of behaviors that can be studied in a particular way, is giving way to one characterized by a vision of the network and cyberspace as a complex cultural phenomenon (Internet as cultural artifact), the structure is intertwined with the physical society, where one key is mediation, which can be studied from multiple approaches, because inside there is room for many other phenomena, compound, complex, vague and fluid, where the focus is not to define the method, explain the epistemological principles that make its study differential, or to address the issues of validity in the context of social science, but figuring out the meanings with which they build relationships, make sense of behavior, describe processes, analyze transformations and represent the data appropriately to the environment and the elements that have occupied the field of research.
Right now that transition is occurring. The change - which in the absence of a generational story, it's 'de facto' that justified, or the result of reflection and consensus - is leaving aside the figures who were the ascendant in the previous paradigm. The maturity of the Internet and the current reality of cyberspace makes some classic studies that have been central to the analysis of cyberculture (to name only three significant Turkle (1995) , Agree and Schuler (1997) or more Recent Wilson and Peterson (2002) [The anthropology of Online Communities, Annual Review of Anthropology, 2002, 31: 449-67]) are viewed today from a distance. The same Rheingold (1996) , Smith and Kollock (ed.) (2003) (this, except in the chapter, really remarkable, Wellman and Gulia ) and Jones (ed.) (2003) , to quote the most outstanding authors also related to other previous paradigm. This does not mean that those views are not central and will remain so in the future. There are scientific references and between them and the current methods are multiple connections. For example, the literary vision of Gibson (1984) is not made questioned as a metaphor for cyberspace. Or, from science, approaches Escobar (1994) , Castells (1999-2005) or Hine (2000) are in full force today. Based its validity in the language they use, the language of basic science, in these cases, anthropology and sociology. That is, talk about them from territories stable essential. These and others have laid the groundwork for what today are social studies, cultural, economic, educational, (for example, socio-educational field, the approximation of the cibercultra Pierre Lévy [About the Cyberculture, Magazine West , 206, June 1998], the virtual [ What is virtual?, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1999 ] and its transfer to the educational [Collective intelligent, Cambridge, Ma, Perseus Books, 1999 ] continues to be a reference), etc., based on qualitative methods.
But that vision becomes different today. The texts of the authors of reference can not be analyzed today just as they were three or four years. Now the bases are moved, because the surface on which they rest is, by definition, unstable and complex. In the eighties there was Google and not until 2005 that talks about Web 2.0 . Only these two technological devices have led to such profound cultural change - cultural change in the sense given, among others, Latour (1988) - that require new epistemological horizons pair interpretation.
To conclude, I quote a job on the line contemporary approaches based on current scientific and classical authors who use the past to plan new approaches. This approach does not discard the past contributions, but gives an extra twist to fit the current context.
To Budka and Kremser (2004) [ CyberAnthropology - Anthropology of Cyberculture . In S. Khittel, B. Plankensteiner and M. Six-Hohenbalken (Eds.), Contemporary Issues in socio-cultural anthropology. Perspectives and Research Activities from Austria, Vienna, Loecker, 213-226) the (cyber) anthropology, or anthropology of cyberculture, is about:
"technologies and how they are constructed and implemented in society and culture. In this sense, the ciberanptropología not entirely new. Since 1950, anthropologists have increasingly investigated the specific technologies and their impacts on non-Western cultures. One of the best known examples is the work of Maurice Godelier (1971) [Salt currency 'and the circulation of commodities Among the Baruya of New Guinea, G. Dalton (ed.) Studies in Economic anthropology, Washington, American Anthropological Association , 376-379] on the effects of the introduction of steel axes indigenous groups in Papua New Guinea and Australia, but as noted Escobar (1994) , among others (for example, Pfaffenbenger, 1992) [The social anthropology of technology, Annual Review of Anthropology , 21, 491-516], one can not adapt these approaches to highly complex technological system in societies and cultures 'modern' "(p. 214).
That may be a starting point for virtual ethnography: critical approaches to anthropology. But after that statement, it is equally objects and areas necessary to note the study. Budka and Kremser (2004, p.215) propose the following areas for ethnography, among which include, of course, virtual communities (paragraph which include such references is entitled "The ethnography of ciberantropología domains, which in itself is a statement of intent):
(a) "Perhaps the most obvious domain for ethnographic research can be placed where ICTs are produced and used, from computer labs and companies, Internet service providers (ISPs) and centers virtual reality design, to homes, schools and workplaces as areas reception and consumption. "
(b) "A second domain consists of the use of ICTs such as Internet, connecting millions of computers and their users. (...) [In virtual communities] ethnographers can study the various relationships between language, social structure and cultural identity that are produced by mediated communication [ndt emphasis added] computer. "
(3) "The 'political economy of cyberculture' is another field for the ethnographic study, it investigates the relationship between 'information' and 'capital', as well as political and cultural dynamics 'information' set in motion. "
Budka and Kremser (2004) quote massively Escobar (1994) and also Daniel Miller and Don Slater (2000) , two of the pioneers of date. In this study point only a few cases of ethnographic study. The possibilities of finding some are as large as the sociocultural reality of Internet and its environs. As shown, the field of work is broad and goes beyond the virtual communities. It remains that penetrate and interpret knowledge in him and in context. We
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