Christine Hine is one of the first scholars to combine ethnographic approaches and principles with studying online interactions. In her seminal book Virtual Ethnography (2000), Hine discusses how internet ethnography offers new perspectives on the spatial dimension since the internet binds different (physical) locations together, and people may be present at several different (physical and virtual) places simultaneously. Drawing on the work of Manuel Castells (2010) and his ideas of how information flows within the network society and the notion of “multi-sited ethnography” (Marcus, 1998), Hine (2000) suggests that ethnographic internet research should follow practices rather than places. We will return to this matter more in detail in Unit III, discussing netnographic fieldwork and the field.

While Hine’s groundbreaking work on virtual ethnography paved the way for ethnographic research concerned with online interactions and provided several significant insights, this work also reflects perspectives from the 1990s that seem outdated today. In particular, the sharp line between physical interactions and the virtuality of the internet, considering the digital as inauthentic and separated from the real world, appears problematic today. The clear distinction between online and offline is increasingly difficult to maintain as our lives are entangled with digital tools such as search engines, social network services, digital media platforms, and smartphones. Some researchers even argue that all ethnographic research today can be seen as virtual (Shumar & Madison, 2013) since practically all places where humans interact now are, to some degree, both physical and virtual. At the same time, social interactions mediated by digital tools have certain distinctive traits. Notably, the notion of “persistence” (see boyd, 2008) describes how social interactions online generate different types of persistent texts, enabling a certain lasting quality as well as asynchronous communication. Taking both the pervasiveness and distinctive implications of the digital into account, Netnography (Kozinets, 2010, 2015, 2020) provides a methodology for studying online social interactions, communities, and culture in an increasingly digital world. It is worth noting that several other strands of research are rooted in ethnography and focused on digital interactions, for example, social media ethnography (e.g. Postill & Pink, 2012) and digital ethnography (see Caliandro, 2018). In this OER, we focus on the netnographic approach as it provides clear and coherent directions for doing qualitative studies of social interactions online while also providing strong connections between quantitative and qualitative approaches.

In this video, Robert V. Kozinets is interviewed about his latest book Netnography: The essential guide to qualitative social media research. Watch the first 5 minutes to learn more about how the netnographic methodology was conceived and developed until today:

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Now, let's return to the 1990s by taking this trivia quiz:

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References

• boyd, d. m. (2008). Why youth (heart) social network sites: the changing place of digital media in teenage social life. In D. Buckingham (Ed.), Youth, identity, and digital media. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
• Caliandro, A. (2018). Digital methods for ethnography: Analytical concepts for ethnographers exploring social media environments. Journal of contemporary ethnography, 47(5), 551-578. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891241617702960
• Castells, M. (2010). The rise of the network society (2 ed.). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Hine, C. (2000). Virtual ethnography. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications.
• Kozinets, R.V. (2010). Netnography: Doing ethnographic research online. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications.
• Kozinets, R.V. (2015). Netnography: Redefined (2 ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
• Kozinets, R.V. (2020). Netnography: The essential guide to qualitative social media research (3 ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
• Marcus, G.E. (1998). Ethnography through thick and thin. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
• Postill, J., & Pink, S. (2012). Social media ethnography: The digital researcher in a messy web. Media International Australia, 145(1), 123-134. https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878X1214500114
• Shumar, W., & Madison, N. (2013). Ethnography in a Virtual World. Ethnography and Education, 8(2), 255-272. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17457823.2013.792513