the method of study Virtual ethnography is not (only) in analyzing communications in a virtual space ... the ethnographic method has undergone numerous modifications over time. Issues such as staying in the field, research techniques and ethics, directly linked to the participant observation, different values \u200b\u200bhave taken over the years and have changed as contexts, epistemological precepts or interpretative frameworks in research qualitative. Now, virtual ethnography, there is a tendency to assume some methodological principles as presets. This is the case of a postulate that is to say:
"virtual ethnography takes on a range of research strategies, the most used the approximation to the community from an ethnographic perspective of the communication (for example, ethnographic sociolinguistics) to place the rules and regularities that limited field space. "
From there, or to get there, also tend to assume regularities which range from going to the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) virtual community or collect messages posted in forums, to conduct electronic surveys or interviews through e-mail. This type of research is a very interesting from the standpoint of social and cultural life and to find out the evolution and current status of a particular virtual community. From this approach, the virtual community is taken as the field of observation in the sense Bourdieu [See
Bourdieu, Pierre and Loic Wacquant , Answers. For a reflexive anthropology, Mexico, Grijalbo, 1995], ie it is a play space determined by regularities of conduct and accepted rules. By tracking the messages and knowing the rules governing the community, the researcher may access the behavior and the subject of this virtual community, in its view, the characteristics that define and distinguish it from the rest. Similarly, applying the perspective of
Hymes is possible to determine the major socio-linguistic regularities that from a cultural point of view, are essential to explain the behavior in virtual communities based on exchanges of symbolic messages in text format.
These strategies are very practical when it comes to virtual ethnography, ethnography of cyberspace. But all can be extended in a more open when it comes to doing ethnography in / from / with / from Internet. Consider ethnographic Internet in a sense is also problematize the technology that supports it and do it in the context of the society in which it was created. To
Latour (2006) , we are living in a world where social ties are established through the possible meanings artificially constructed devices. Problematize and show alienation from Internet technology can help make qualitative methods of interview and observation in the central elements of ethnography / Internet and related phenomena. The goal then will be to manage the "anomalies" (Werner and Schoepfle
, 1987 ) Internet as a whole during the period of investigation to do, then a content analysis of the data and so represent ethnographic. And this will require the use of appropriate new methods to a field so defined.
is clear that ethnography is not a amount of qualitative methods, but understanding a culture, making use of such methods in a systematic (scientific). At the methodological level, to virtual ethnography also needs to rethink the "crisis of the method, but in a specific way. You may visit forums, asking participants and analyzing listings FAQs not sufficient for access to the cultural codes of a particular community. Another type of textual content analysis (the cultural product of the community) based only on the coding and categorization, can not be all that effective to understand the deeper meaning of communications. Just as the cognitivism and ethnology in the sixties helped to overcome the crisis of method in ethnography, now are other technological resources available to researchers to access cultural forms related to the network. The crisis of the sixties was supported in ethnology to help the researcher to gain an understanding of the culture he was studying to be able to share meanings and their partners. So it was that both researcher and researched, shared the same cultural codes that between them could provide a significant research dialog.
But a deeper understanding how a virtual community or a community of people interacting in the field of Internet and transferred its shares also in the field of physical action (as, for example, most communities of bloggers). In another post we talked about social constructivism (Gergen and Gergen
, 2003 ) and performative social science (Jones
) as epistemological and theoretical responses. In the specific field of methodology, the analysis of social networks can be a broad sweep approach to ethnography / Internet.
An example drawn from fieldwork in virtual communities around educational purposes forums. Elsewhere (Domínguez y Alonso, 2005, p.385) [
Combined Evaluation of On-Line Learning Communities . En Méndez, A.; González, B; Mesa, J. y Mesa, J.A. (Eds.), Recent Research Developments in Learning Technologies, Badajoz (Spain), FORMATEX, pp. 384-389] comentábamos que:
“Determinados comportamientos con escaso potencial formativo en situaciones offline, demuestran ser decisivos para articular gran parte del conocimiento generado en un foro virtual. En nuestras observaciones hemos visto con frecuencia mensajes con un contenido irrelevante desde el punto de vista pedagógico que, sin embargo, adquirieren una importancia central dentro del foro, agrupando comunicaciones y generando debate y reflexión en torno a them. (...) The explanation for these deviations in the contingencies and communicative reciprocity in cyberspace, and those found in educational forums such as the lack of relationship between the number of messages sent and responses or between the type of speech, more or less structured, and resolution of doubts in the group are not adequately resolved during the [current] ethnographic research, which leads them to seek other complementary approaches to enrich the pedagogical study of virtual communities.
social network analysis (SNA) is able to fill that kind of gaps. Outside the positivist reasoning, methods ARS structural and relational terms can explain the weight of a message within the communication network established in a virtual forum. And also, considering the personal attributes of the participants, the ARS provides important clues that may explain the processes of socialization in a given community. Taken as nodes in a communication network, some messages in online forums can be analyzed using content analysis techniques, qualitative 'soft', but its importance as part of the relational matrix of all posts to the forum also has a justification in terms of centrality, connectivity or the degree of interference that node with others in the network. In that sense, the ARS does not come to stand for traditional qualitative methods, simply enriches the analysis by providing information on the state of affairs that allows us to reflect again on the processes-social or learning-taking place within the group .
This approach is also cited by
Anne Beaulieu (2004) in terms of non-subjectivity of the ethnographer. Beaulieu
mentions the work of Howard (2002) , based on the method of "reticular ethnography, which employs the ARS to study the how and the terms of hypermedia organizations. Integrated ethnography This method makes it possible, first identify the ethnographer behavior closer relations in all reticular and also allows access to the distribution of relations in the whole network. "The purpose of the study [Howard] came here for the abstraction of certain behaviors or individual features and representation of these behaviors in the field is crucial. The elements of the interaction with the actors are shaped by the identification of field sites through the use of automated processes "(Beaulieu, 2004, p.149).
These innovative approaches applied to virtual ethnography make the spotlight pass the communication to the intermediary, and holistic analysis of the content to mediation, particularly those located processes that enable leading to localized social constructions. In this sense, virtual ethnography ethnography could be understood as structured around specific cases within and outside the network, linked together through complex relationships mediated by technological devices, of which the Internet would only be one more of them. Thus, resolving the crisis of the ethnographic method new factors come into play when digital technology would have to do with management and resolution methods using penetration analysis and representation, the complexity of relations network that is engaging subjects and machines at the same time. We
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