This week I have spent a lot of my time doing research in to my online community “Bankeyfields”. I am finding it quite difficult to find the right balance between too little information collated for the project and going into too much depth! I have emailed the administrator of the site to ger permission to delve into their postingsbut have yet to hear anything.
In my Lifestream this week I have again been exploring Ethnography, community and how to conduct an ethnography project. I found a particular quote on Ethnography by Hammersley and Atkinson, 1995, which describes ethnography as a method of overtly or covertly participating in a communities everyday life. My method of participating will be a covertly one. I began to look on Library Thing for books relating to community and ethnography to expand on the weeks reading. I posted three I found in my Lifestream.
Looking at one of the core radings by Hine “The Virtual Objects of Ethnography” I decided to write an arrival storywhich described by Hine,
“They [arrival stories] play the crucial role of anchoring that description in the intense and authority giving personal experience of fieldwork” (Hine, 2000)
I felt this was imperative to set the scene of my researchand why I actually decided to choose my particular community and what I intended to find out. I have posted my arrival story in this weeks lifestream.