EAGER: Extreme Ethnography: When Content and Tools Change Continually on Vast Scales, How Must Our Research Methods Change

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In the new era of distributed online spaces it is no longer sufficient to look at human behavior just on local servers and storage sites. From exploring on-line videos to searching vast information spaces with keyword search interfaces, the information scope and societal impact have changed. HCI researchers therefore need new strategies to study, respond, and adapt to changing circumstances as the context for research changes. Quantitative methods such as social network analysis (SNA) and surveys are appropriate techniques for addressing some research questions in some types of online social spaces, but they have limitations. For some studies, qualitative methods, specifically applied ethnography, may offer the only way to deeply understand users' behavior, intentions and feelings within the social-digital ecology of the Web. The goal of this research is to examine the issues that researchers encounter when attempting to understand diverse types of behavior in large online spaces using ethnographic approaches. To accomplish we will conduct a two-stage study. Stage 1 will produce a meta-analysis of current research literature on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia and other large-scale social systems, and on keyword search interfaces, to identify the methods that were used by researchers, under what assumptions, and which outcomes these studies reported. Stage 2 will produce a grounded theory analysis of case studies of how a sample of HCI researchers do qualitative research, particularly ethnography, in these vast and changing information spaces.