Ethnography on/of the Internet

OII 2011

Eric T. Meyer & Rebecca EynonOxford Internet Institute, www.oii.ox.ac.uk

Overview

• Ethnographic tradition

• What’s new about the Internet?

• What topics work?

• Methods, old and new

• Data: what to collect, how to organize it, how to analyse it, how to report it

• Ethical considerations

Bronislaw Malinowski with Trobriand Islanders in 1918.

Margaret Mead: Coming of Age in Samoa (1928)

NAPOLEON CHAGNON with the Yanomamo Indians he studied in the Brazilian Amazon ca 1960s-1990s

Source 1: http://www.theage.com.au/news/Reviews/Malinowski-odyssey-of-an-anthropologist/2005/06/02/1117568312895.htmlSource 2: http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/primary-sources/329 Source 3: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=anthropologys-darkest-hou

Kula Ring

Source: https://webspace.yale.edu/anth500/projects/01_Curley/KulaHomePage.html

Bronislaw Malinowski with Trobriand Islanders in 1918.

Margaret Mead: Coming of Age in Samoa (1928)

NAPOLEON CHAGNON with the Yanomamo Indians he studied in the Brazilian Amazon ca 1960s-1990s

Source 1: http://www.theage.com.au/news/Reviews/Malinowski-odyssey-of-an-anthropologist/2005/06/02/1117568312895.htmlSource 2: http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/primary-sources/329 Source 3: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=anthropologys-darkest-hou

Innikka Equipped with the Amice of Brilliant Light from the Black TempleSource: Nardi (2010). My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft

Source of Gorean image: Bardzell & Odom (2008). The Experience of Embodied Space in Virtual Worlds: An Ethnography of a Second Life Community. space and culture 11(3): 239-259

Tom Boellstorff/Tom BukowskiCOMING OF AGE IN SECOND LIFE (2008)Image Source: http://www.spiritofthesenses.org/secondlifesalon.htm

What’s new about the Internet?

What topics work?

Online / offline

Exercise

1. Choose a topic

2. Determine the boundaries

3. Imagine some theories

Methods: Old and new

Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jemshed/4123591152/ Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/johanl/4375773612/

Why use interviews?

Very common method in ethnographic research

Suitable for gathering in-depth information, opinions and exploring people’s thinking and motivation

Flexible

When to go online?

+ve

Good fit with other parts of the research

Particularly good for certain topics

Reduces costs & increase convenience

-ve

May not give you the whole story

Requires a new skill set

Can be more difficult to analyze the data

Online (e.g. email, online chat rooms, instant messaging, skype, videoconferencing, virtual worlds)

Sampling

Typically non-probability sampling Purposive Snowball Convenience

Recruitment & preparing participants

Online & offline

Details of research What to expect (e.g. amount of time,

kinds of questions) Incentives Ethical considerations

Informed consent Agreeing levels of confidentiality & anonymity

Technical considerations

Self disclosure and rapport

“..the goal of finding out about people through interviewing is best achieved where…the interviewer is prepared to invest his or her personal identity in the relationship”

Oakley, 1981:41

Planning

Preparation of questions and devising an interview schedule

But online means you need to consider… Delivery / timing of questions

“Chunking” of schedule? Asynchronous or synchronous

Errors Asking sensitive questions

Importance of pilot & reflection

Asynchronous or synchronous focus groups

Asynchronous More thoughtful, in-

depth responses Easier to moderate Addresses problems

of different time zones

More dropout ‘Polished’ responses

Synchronous Most similar to face

to face More spontaneous Less ‘polished’ Quicker Difficulties with

moderation (interruptions, question creation, group dynamics…)

Preparing data for analysis

Make notes immediately after the session

The importance of listeningTranscripts versus detailed notes

Online implications

Ability to modify text before it is sent Cannot be certain participants are who they

say they are Don’t know where the interviewees are

based / what they are doing at the same time Less in-depth responses (more to the point) More open / honest online? Reduced NVC

Can you compare both kinds of interviews in the context of the same study?

Source: http://www.analytictech.com/borgatti/etk3.htm

Source: Jacob Nielsen (1995). Card Sorting to Discover the Users' Model of the Information Space. http://www.useit.com/papers/sun/cardsort.html

Card sorts / pile sorts

Source: Horowitz, D.M. (2007). Applying Cultural Consensus Analysis To Marketing. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Florida State University, Department of Marketing

Triad Tests

Source: http://homepages.wmich.edu/~bstraigh/AN240/Lecture7.htm

Source: http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/projects/axfight/complin.html

Lineages related to Timothy Asch / Napoleon Chagnon film The Axe Fight

Source: http://people.oii.ox.ac.uk/hogan/graphics/

Bernie Hogan: Group Structure in Facebook

Family

Local Friends

Three co-worker groups Friends

DataWhat to collect, how to organize it, how to analyse it, how to report it

Analysis and writing up

Be clear about your approach (reliability / dependability)

Are the results credible to the group you studied? (internal validity / credibility)

How do these findings relate to other work on the topic? (external validity / transferability)

Use quotes carefully examples and to give a voice to participants

Be explicit about your own role and bias, & the influence of the context of the research Alternative viewpoints & negative instances

(objectivity / confirmability)

Ethics: What is new?

Ethical governance in traditional research settings Is the human subjects model always appropriate?

Challenges in devising a code of practice in aglobal context

Disciplinary boundaries

Sensitivity to context

A balancing act Protected but not burdened

Gathering data directly

Protection of harm online More difficult to assess, depends on the nature of the method Strategies (make it clear participants can leave, prior rapport

with participant, establishing netiquette)

Ensuring anonymity and confidentiality Perceived anonymity of the Internet To be considered at all stages of the research

Informed consent Distance between researcher & participant, challenges

anonymity strategies, verifying ability to give informed consent Strategies (email discussion, readability of documents, use of

quizzes, recruitment strategy and verifying identity)

Analyzing interaction

The online social setting: formally public, but respect the conventions for the privacy of the space? Be sensitive to context

Disclose researcher identity? Online possibilities are different from offline (ID

tag) ‘Invasion’ of researchers

Respect social milieu Connect with people offline?

Weigh burden on research participant

Data capture

Tools for capture are more powerful than for capturing offline interactions

Anonymous data about populations, but surveillance?

Reproducing and anonymizing captured interactions, but possible identification by search?

Ethics Summary

The ethics of internet research are becoming ‘professionalized’ via AoIR

Yet many novel issues continue to be raised across academic disciplines intertwined with broader social changes

(e.g., official data, commercial interests etc)

Further references Ess, C. (2006) ‘Ethics and the Use of the Internet in Social Science

Research’. In: Adam Joinson, Katelyn McKenna, Tom Postmes and Ulf-Dietrich Reips (eds) Oxford Handbook of Internet Psychology. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. pp 487-503.

Madge, C. (2007) Developing a geographers' agenda for online research ethics. Progress in Human Geography 31(5): 654–674

Pittenger, D. (2003) Internet Research: An Opportunity to Revisit Classic Ethical Problems in Behavioural Research, Ethics and Behaviour, 13(1): 45-60

Schroeder, R. (2007) ‘An Overview of Ethical and Social Issues in Shared Virtual Environments’, Futures: The Journal of Forecasting, Planning and Policy, 39 (6): 704-717

Stern, S. (2003) ‘Encountering distressing information online research: a consideration of legal and ethical responsibilities’, New Media and Society, 5(2): 249-266

Varnhagen, C., Gushta, M., Daniels, J., Peters, T., Parmar, N., Law, D., Hirsch, R., Takach, B., and Johnson, T. (2005) ‘How informed is online consent?’ Ethics and Behaviour, (15)1: 37-48

Zimmer, M. (2010) ‘‘But the data is already public’’: on the ethics of research in Facebook. Ethics and Information Technology, 12(4), 313-325

Information Ethnographers of interest (list courtesy of David Hakken, Indiana University, available at : http://www.informatics.indiana.edu/courses/descriptions/I651.doc)

John Anderson, anthropology, Catholic University (Arab informatics)

Steve Barley, management, Stanford (Researching engineers in Silicon Valley)

Genevieve Bell, anthropologist, Intel (Cross-cultural study of technology, especially Asia)

Tom Boellstorff, UC Irvine (Anthropology)

Pablo Boczkowski, MIT (Sloan School of Management)

Gabriella Coleman, anthropology, University of Chicago (Open Source and the Cultural Imaginary)

Andy Crabtree, Sociology, University of Nottingham, UK (organizations, systems development; rapid ethnographic assessment)

Joe Dumit, anthropology, (Director of STS program, UC-Davis)

Jan English-Lueck, Anthropology, San Jose State (Silicon Valley Project)

Joan Fujimura (Sociology, University of Wisconsin)

Keith Hampton, MIT (Department of Urban Studies and Planning)

Penny Harvey, anthropologist, University of Manchester (UK) (Museum informatics)

Stephen Helmreich, History of Consciousness, MIT (Artificial Life, Bio-informatics)

Adrienne Jenik, UCSD, (Computer and Media Arts)

Lori Kendall, SUNY Purchase (Sociology)

Jean Lave, Education and anthropology, University of California at Berkeley

Gustavo Mesch, University of Haifa (Sociology and Anthropology)

Bonnie Nardi, (Informatics, UC-Irvine)

Carsten Oesterlund, Information Studies, Syracuse University (health informatics)

Wanda Orlikowski, management, MIT (organizational informatics)

Bryan Pfaffenberger, anthropology in the School of Engineering, University of Virginia (technology)

Sandeep Sahay, Informatics, University of Oslo (development informatics)

Susan Leigh Star, Sociology, University of Santa Clara (Classification; science informatics)

Lucy Suchman, anthropology/ethnomethodology, University of Lancaster (UK)

Sharon Traweek, UCLA (science informatics)

Sherry Turkle, MIT (Sociology)

Nina Wakeford University of Surrey (Sociology and INCITE)

Practical exercise: planning a virtual ethnography

In small groups plan how you would go about doing a virtual ethnography for one of the topics/communities you selected earlier.

• Think about:– constructing the study– gathering and managing the data– the methods you would use– analysing the data – issues when analysing the data – ethical considerations

Eric T. Meyereric.meyer@oii.ox.ac.uk

http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/?id=120

Rebecca Eynonrebecca.eynon@oii.ox.ac.uk

http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/?id=21