Slides from the Oxford Internet Institute Doctoral Training Centre session on Ethnography, 24 November 2011

1. OII 2011
Eric T. Meyer & Rebecca Eynon
Oxford Internet Institute, www.oii.ox.ac.uk

2. • 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

3. Bronislaw Malinowski with Trobriand Islanders in 1918.
NAPOLEON CHAGNON with the Yanomamo Indians
he studied in the Brazilian Amazon ca 1960s-1990s
Margaret Mead: Coming of Age in Samoa (1928)
Source 1: http://www.theage.com.au/news/Reviews/Malinowski-odyssey-of-an-anthropologist/2005/06/02/1117568312895.html
Source 2: http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/primary-sources/329
Source 3: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=anthropologys-darkest-hou

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

5. Bronislaw Malinowski with Trobriand Islanders in 1918.
NAPOLEON CHAGNON with the Yanomamo Indians
he studied in the Brazilian Amazon ca 1960s-1990s
Margaret Mead: Coming of Age in Samoa (1928)
Source 1: http://www.theage.com.au/news/Reviews/Malinowski-odyssey-of-an-anthropologist/2005/06/02/1117568312895.html
Source 2: http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/primary-sources/329
Source 3: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=anthropologys-darkest-hou

6. 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
Innikka Equipped with the Amice of
Brilliant Light from the Black Temple
Source: Nardi (2010). My Life as a
Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological
Account of World of Warcraft
Tom Boellstorff/Tom Bukowski
COMING OF AGE IN SECOND LIFE (2008)
Image Source: http://www.spiritofthesenses.org/secondlifesalon.htm

9. 1.Choose a topic
2.Determine the boundaries
3.Imagine some theories

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

12. Very common method in ethnographic research
 Suitable for gathering in-depth information, opinions
and exploring people’s thinking and motivation
 Flexible

13. +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)

14.  Typically non-probability sampling
 Purposive
 Snowball
 Convenience

15.  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

16. “..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

17.  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

18. Asynchronous Synchronous
 More thoughtful, in-  Most similar to face to
depth responses face
 Easier to moderate
 More spontaneous
 Addresses problems of
 Less ‘polished’
different time zones
 More dropout  Quicker
 ‘Polished’ responses  Difficulties with
moderation
(interruptions, question
creation, group
dynamics…)

19.  Make notes immediately after the session
 The importance of listening
 Transcripts versus detailed notes

20.  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?

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

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

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

24. Triad Tests

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

26. Lineages related to Timothy Asch / Napoleon Chagnon film The Axe Fight
Source: http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/projects/axfight/complin.html

27. Bernie Hogan: Group Structure in Facebook
Source: http://people.oii.ox.ac.uk/hogan/graphics/

28. Family
Local Friends
Three co-worker groups
Friends

29. Data
What to collect, how to organize it, how to analyse it, how to report it

30.  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)

31.  Ethical governance in traditional research settings
 Is the human subjects model always appropriate?
 Challenges in devising a code of practice in a
global context
 Disciplinary boundaries
 Sensitivity to context
 A balancing act
 Protected but not burdened

32.  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)

33.  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

34.  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?

35.  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)

36.  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

37. 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)

38. 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

39. Eric T. Meyer
eric.meyer@oii.ox.ac.uk
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/?id=120
Rebecca Eynon
rebecca.eynon@oii.ox.ac.uk
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/?id=21