Are the members of this community authentic in their responses in an ethnographic sense. The first step is to explore what we mean by authentic.
Hine (2000) questions whether non face-to-face interactions can truly be trusted because the ethnographer cannot confirm what they are told about the real lives of the participants. However an important consideration is what the individual sees as their ‘real lives’ and how they express that in a virtual world. Which ‘part’ of their personality are they revealing, and if they only reveal that part, does that make it a lie (or not authentic) simply because it is only a small sector of the whole person? If I where to list the identities that I reveal on a daily basis, the ‘work’ me, the ‘friend’ me, the ‘family’ me, the ‘creative’ me, the ‘tired’ me, there would be plenty of identities. However showing just one does not make it more or less authentic, or diminish the importance of those other facets that I choose not to reveal at that moment.
If this is the case, as ethnographers, can we really call an online persona a lie if it truly comes from an individual? In my example, I think that the users of this quilting gallery could be considered by any measure to be authentic. Many of them use their real name, and include personal photos in their blogs as well as on their facebook pages. We can read about their families, their values as well as their creative endeavors. They share their emotions as well as the highs and lows generated by their work.
This is an example of authentic experience sharing.
This blogger is sharing some very really emotional moments, with a loved one entering a hospice. This may of course be a fabrication, but it is a common theme running through this blog and it would be hard to see why a person would fabricate such a persona.
Reading these blogs you can get a real sense of the values that this community has, and the mutual support that it offers the members, especially in trying circumstance. It is not possible to tell if there are a large number of lurkers, but there do seem to be an unusually high number of comments left on the blog entries that I have viewed. Even more unusually for an online environment, all of these comments have been positive ones which would again reflect the warmth that seems to shine through with this group.
So in answer to the question, “is my community authentic?”, I would have to conclude ‘yes’ – as far as any community can be considered authentic.
