How did I get here?
What online community did I choose and why.
What di I intend to find out?
What questions am I going to ask?
A Ethnographic approach involves providing a description (a beginning), an analysis (a middle) and an interpretation of the culture sharing group (an end). Esentially the ethnographer is required to take on the role of a story teller. (Cresswell 2007, p162). So first of all to the beginning, or as I will call it, the “arrival Story”
What is meant by an arrival story?
“What developed in classic ethnographic text was the inclusion of some sort of arrival story to give authenticity to the findings”. (Geertz 1988, Pratt 1986)
“The arrival story provides a metaphor for the people and society being studied, suggesting to the reader how the susequent analysis is to be framed”. (Davies 1999)
Given the limited amount of time allocated to this task (to produce a mini ethnography project, based on a virtual community) the study will be an investigative one and will take a qualititive approach to research.
How did I get here?
Obviously the primary motivation to do this task is that it is a course requirement. So my arrival here was mainly due to a desire to do well on this module. Now I am here I inted to observe the interactions of the online community and try, if it is appropriate and I receive permission to participate in some of their debates.
What online community did I choose and why?
After a number of days spent trawling through the internet for inspiration I came across Banketfields: Tunstalls Community website. This site markets its self as an area where participants can discuss local issues, blog, post and read crime reports, display images and photos and contribute to a local directory. It is a fairly well estabished site and has been running for ten years. It has around thirty users who contribute on a regular basis to the numerous blogs and forums.
I decided to choose this online community as primarily it is a community who has a similar interest to me, they care about the well being of our local area. (I omitted to mention that Tunstall, the sites focus area, is the community in which I grew up). I also felt that with the volume of interaction going on in the blogs and forums it would reveal some interesting results about the users sense of online community as well as highlighting their physical sense of community. Does the sense of physical community I know only to well about from growing up there translate to their online community?
What do I intent to find out?
I am going to focus my attention on one thread on the forum, entitled “Beware- Trick or Treat threat” I felt that it is easily managable in the time frame allocatedto the task and that it gives a sense of their community online. The thread was started on the 18/10/2009 and is ongoing. So far there have been six postsand I expect more with this particular topic and bearing in mind the time of year! I intend to document the postings using a timeline in timetoast. The link I will post up at a later date.
What questions am I going to ask?
The questions I ma going to ask include,
What is a virtual community?
Does this forum show evidence of there being a virtual community?
How do participants construct a sense of community?
Are the users supportive of one another?
Is this a good place to study given the overall cultural themes we are tackling? (M.Clari)
Once I have answered these questions and any others I think appropriate as I go along will be presented in a series of blog postings. In my blog postings relating to this mini project I will tag with Ethnography mini project.
Tags: Ethnography mini project
Hi Caroline, i think it was very interesting that there are people who care enough about their community to take the time to set up and participate in this type of online community.
I notice you said that the community was a physical one as aswell as a virtual one and I’m wondering why they felt the need to go online? Just a thought about what they expected to gain that they didn’t already have?
another point of interest I thought of was relating to any new neighbours that move inot the area – they could be entirely virtual that is they may never have physically met any neighbours but just decided to join the online community….this could, depending on how often people move in and out of your area, mean that the nature of the community will change and perhaps even become totally virtual where noone has physically met any oth their neighbours…..mmm really interesting. thanks Caroline I enjoyed my virtual tour of your community.
Hi Lesley,
Thanks very much for your comments. I found it really interesting doing this ethnography and would have like to explore Bankeyfields in more depth, but time was limited! I too thought that there may be a risk of it becoming entirely virtual which would be a shame as the whole beauty of the site is that the virtual provides support for the physical, alos I would have liked to explore any issues with “misfits” or rouge neighbours in the community and how people respond to this on and off line! So much could have been done I guess, anyway, thanks again! Caroline.