As an example of how the field is described and constructed, we will start with an example from one of the authors of this OER (Hanell, 2020). In this example, a netnographic study is conducted between 2012 and 2015 focusing on teacher students’ use of digital tools, views of learning, and positioning of identity, in the digital daily lives at a pre-school teacher education in Sweden. Given this research interest, the students' digital practices delimited and focused on the field rather than certain (digital) sites (cf. Hine, 2000).

As a starting point, this study adopts the use of the community concept to frame the field and the main site of study while still reflecting on the potentially problematic nature of the concept: 

While uncritical overuse of the community concept is questionable, I still consider digital community a useful term to describe the Facebook group discussed in this paper. In line with the theoretical underpinnings of the study, shifting identity positions and ways of using and understanding the group are considered even though I apply the community concept. The digital community studied is a Facebook group used by teachers and more than 200 pre-school teacher students enrolled in teacher education 2011 (Hanell, 2020, p. 331). 

In this quote, we can see how the theoretical assumptions guiding the study lead to a certain view of the focus of the study, which is also informed by experiences and insights gained during a sustained period of time engaging with the field in question and the participants. 

Another example of how to frame the field using the notion of community is offered by Kozinets (2002) reporting from a study of contemporary coffee consumption as enacted in a digital community dedicated to coffee-related discussions: 

This Netnography into online coffee culture began with an overview of the newsgroups that contained the term “coffee” and were available from my local server. These revealed three potential newsgroups, <alt.coffee>, <alt.food.coffee>, and <rec.food.drink.coffee>, as well as several others. I chose <alt.coffee> because it had by far the highest amount of traffic (approximately 75 messages per day) and therefore contained the most data. [...] It contains a core of insiders who are frequently quoted and referenced by other community members, deferred to by existing and new members, and mentioned by members as important arbiters of coffee taste. Therefore, from an informal type of network analysis, these insiders seem to be usefully conceptualized as opinion leaders in the local context of this particular online community (Kozinets, 2002, p. 66).

In the quote, we can observe how the author approached newsgroups, important online sociality sites at the time, and his considerations as he gradually narrowed his focus to a certain digital community. As a way to learn more about the relations of the participants, we also see how the author employed a form of (quantitative) network analysis.

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References

• Hanell, F. (2020) Co-learning in a Digital Community: Information Literacy and Views on Learning in Pre-school Teacher Education. In: Anneli Sundqvist, Gerd Berget, Jan Nolin, Kjell Ivar Skjerdingstad (ed.), Sustainable Digital Communities: 15th International Conference, iConference 2020, Borås, Sweden, March 23–26, 2020, Proceedings (pp. 327-342). Cham: Springer Nature Lecture Notes in Computer Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43687-2_26 (Open Access version)
• Hine, C. (2000). Virtual ethnography. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications.
• Kozinets, R. V. (2002). The field behind the screen: Using Netnography for marketing research in online communities. Journal of marketing research, 39(1), 61-72.