Ethnography and the digital fields of social media
Ethnography and the digital fields of social media
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DOI：
10.1080/13645579.2018.1465622
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发表时间：
2018-01-01
影响因子：
3.3
通讯作者：
Airoldi, Massimo
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Airoldi, Massimo
定性研究人员努力通过传统的人种学方法研究Twitter等社交网站的瞬变场。本文建议，为了更进一步，我们应该区分有界在线社区的相对稳定的语境场和基于元数据的分散交流内容的聚集所产生的流动的元场。数字环境的这两个相互交织的层面都与用户的在线社交实践相互作用-这些实践嵌入到线下日常生活中，反之亦然。虽然互联网民族志主要涉及背景数字领域，但在线研究领域的最新发展使数字元领域及其公众的民族志探索成为可能。这一转变让人想起马库斯对多地点民族志的呼吁，但实际上，这种转变更进一步，走向了一种真正没有地点的民族志。通过对欧洲交换生Facebook身份的探索性研究，我强调并讨论了元和情境实地考察的主要方法论意义。
Qualitative researchers struggle to study the transient fields of social network sites like Twitter through conventional ethnographic approaches. This paper suggests that, in order to step further, we should distinguish between the relatively stable contextual' fields of bounded online communities and the fluid, meta-fields' resulting from the aggregation of scattered communicative contents based on their metadata. Both these two intertwined layers of the digital environment interplay with users' online social practices - which are embedded within offline everyday life and vice versa. While Internet ethnography largely dealt with contextual digital fields, recent developments in the realm of online research allow the ethnographic exploration of digital meta-fields and their publics. This shift recalls Marcus' appeal for a multi-sited ethnography but, in fact, goes further beyond, towards a truly un-sited' ethnography. I highlight and discuss the main methodological implications of meta- and contextual fieldworks by presenting an exploratory study of European exchange students' Facebook identities.