As a methodologist, I cannot ignore the issue of the research design of my micro virtual ethnography.
Given the time limit on the ethnography – basically a week – the study will be an exploratory one.
I will be using my own checklist for research design – see di Gregorio, S. and Davidson, J. (2008) Qualitative Research Design for Software Users, Open University Press: Maidenhead – http://mcgraw-hill.co.uk/html/0335225217.html
Research topic/ problem
The topic, which was given to us, is to do a virtual ethnography of a virtual community. Motivation for this topic is partly practical (it is required for this course) but also intellectual and theoretical – to explore what is a virtual community. The particular virtual community (if it is a virtual community) I am going to explore is Davidsfarm. Why Davidsfarm? It is fair to say it is a YouTube phenomenon – starting in April 2007 – with over 1000 video uploads by Dave – who has his fans – who have developed their own Davefarms fans’ website – and who has his ‘haters’ who have made serious and disturbing allegations about Dave’s past. I ‘found’ Davesfarm a few months ago when I was exploring how internet users have not only been content producers but also analysts of their own and other’s content. My focus then was on life histories – how users construct and analyse their life – and I found the video below that Dave constructed of his life history.
It is Dave’s construction of his life and his many videos are Dave’s construction of Davesfarm. The popularity of Davesfarm suggest for his followers or fans that it is what David Bell calls an ’ imagined community ‘ which they can join online.
Research questions
The kinds of questions I am asking are ‘what’ questions. What is Davesfarm? What is a virtual community? What would constitute as evidence of a virtual community? These are very big questions and I cannot hope to answer them in a week. The literature I am drawing from is the reading suggested on the course particularly Hines and Bell. I have also bought Hines’ book – C. Hines (2005) (Ed.) Virtual Methods: Issues in Social Research on the Internet, Berg: Oxford - which I intend to dip into.
The approach is exploratory and from a social constructionist perspective. It will be descriptive – hopefully giving a very general overview of Davesfarm and the elements that may constitute evidence of a virtual community.
Data Collection
The kind of data I will be collecting is secondary data – data created for other purposes. I will be looking at some of the videos on Davesfarm, some comments on some of the videos, links to other sites (such as the fan site) that is related to Davesfarm. Due to time constraints, I will not be creating any primary data – such as interviewing Dave himself or some of his fans. The data itself is all qualitative although some descriptive statistics – such as number of videos uploaded, number of subscribers etc will be collected.
(Note: I am thinking about the term data collection – is this data collection or data observation? Hmm.)
The research setting is online (I need to add this to my schema above).
The sampling strategy is retrospective – looking at the online history of Davesfarm. The sampling strategy is theoretical – in the sense that I have already identified several types of videos on Davesfarm – ‘life on the farm’, ‘how-to videos’, and ‘Dave’s personal reflections’. There may be other types. I intend to look at some of the comments on each type.
What I am able to do will be constrained by the time available for this task – one week. I have the necessary resources – computer and broadband link but my time on this task has to be balanced with the time I need to devote to my paid work. In terms of ethics and access, the materials I will be looking at are all public and easily accessible. My proposal conforms to the four principles on ethics outlined by Sian
- Ethical expectations of venue – both videos and comments are public so there is less obligation to protect individual privacy, confidentiality, right to informed consent, etc. They expect their comments to be read and commented upon.
- the posters themselves do not constitute a vulnerable group
- the initial expectations of both Dave in posting his videos and those who post comments are that they are a public not a private communication
- the risk of the research to those involved in Dave’s farm is minimal as everything examined is in the public domain
Data handling and analysis
Given the time constraints, the analysis I will be able to do will be very general. I intend to use one of the timeline software packages to map out a rough timeline of Davesfarm. I will use Tumblr for my research journal and reflexive memos as I explore Davesfarm. Given time constraints data reduction will be very broad – based on the key types of videos I outlined above and key types of comments and contributors to Davesfarm. I think I will use Delicious to bookmark these as I find them. I also have Evernote which I might use to store key information. How I will present all this, I still need to think about. Of course, what I have outlined above is subject to change depending on what I find.
