Week 6 Summary

This week has been taken up with working on the virtual ethnography. It has kept me away from the lifestream, to a certain extent.

Reading Hine (2000), along with Jen’s feedback, has helped me understand a little more clearly why I am writing these weekly reflections.  I was not sure why I had to write the reflections, apart from it being something that I had been asked to do, so it was a fairly instrumental task for me.  (I understand reflection and the value of it, but I was not quite clear why I was being asked to reflect on why I had chosen certain feeds to go into the lifestream as I had already written about them in the notes.) However, Hine’s point about reflection, albeit in an ethnographic context, has helped me come to a deeper understanding of the process that I am engaged in. She states that ‘an ethnographer of  the Internet cannot hope to understand the practices of all users, but through their own practices can develop an understanding of what it is to be a user.’ (2000, p 54). It is the reflection on one’s own actions that is the key for me here. By writing this reflection I am developing an understanding of what it is to be a user in a digital environment, but I had to read this before I could join the dots and realise that that is what I have been doing, but maybe not quite achieving in the content of the reflections.

Hine goes on to challenge the notion that an ethnographer should, in order to maintain observer status,  avoid becoming too familiar with the work of their  own informants (2000, p  54). However,  becoming increasingly  familiar with digital environments can result in the development of the proficiency to encounter and produce digital artefacts (Hine, 2000, p  55). This has been my experience. As I encounter more digital artefacts, listen to and read the voices that make up the Internet,  I feel I am moving into the Internet’s  ‘communities of practice’. As I endeavour to incorporate these voices into my own product, this lifestream, I feel I am being further pulled into the digital world.

Having said this, I do not yet feel as if I am a member of a community. Gillen (2009) cites Hammam’s  (1997) three-fold definition of a community: a group of peoplewho share ties and  an area (space)  for  certain periods of time. I may be feeling as if I am being drawn into a community or communities, but I am not a member as, at the moment, this drawing in is taking place in a solitary fashion. It’s a strange feeling.