I’m only just getting around to exploring everyone’s ethnographies and very much enjoying discovering something interesting with every new click! Your discussion of the ethical implications of lurking and covert reporting certainly got me thinking about how I approached my mini ethnography. I will go back and try to unpick the ethics in my own context. You also made me think about the balance of on/off line interactions and how the community might be shaped by this balance. The nature of the connections in the GlobalWe seemed high level – communicating a sense of shared beliefs in environmental activism perhaps. However in contrast the connections in Ania’s #eltchat seem much more specific and oriented to day to day issues of ELT. An interesting comparison perhaps?
I really like your prezi too! Thanks

I think this was quite a brave decision, choosing a group you know personally. I did wonder if someone would choose to do their ethnography on ‘our community’.

I can’t add to the comments already made by Jeremy and Ania except to say that I liked that you found the ‘virtual’ persona is similar to the ‘real life’ one. And it’s great that this task has been of use to you in your work.

I’m not sure if the sites can be considered static though – a problem I encountered in my exploration – doesn’t the inbuilt interactivity, even the number of ‘likes’ make them more dynamic? The Web allows for much more participation and interaction than in in the late 1990s when Hine was wondering if it can subjected to the ethnographic enquiry. What do you think?

What I found interesting in your approach was your condition that you know the community member offline so that you can verify their authenticity and your insistence on dealing with real life identities. Apart from the question about wholeness/fragmentation of identity and the possibility to reflect either online I wonder if the offline requirement does not introduce a sort of asymmetry. Although the members do meet in actual life (as documented in the snippets of their online activity), do they actually know each other before/when they arrive in the community?
Second, you were quite strict about keeping the status of a lurker in order to keep the environment undisturbed. However, like you, I wonder to what extent we can remain objective in interpreting the observations as we perceive them through our own, often narrow, experience. Can we rely on the effectiveness of self-discovery without getting involved and so do justice to the community in our account?

You also touched on the transparency of reporting your findings, especially when being interpreted by the reader. I really liked that reflective side of your report, especially when it comes to ethics.

I was also interested in the references you made to ‘lurking’ and undertaking covert research. This seems to be a delicate ethical issue, and you raised some interesting points. Although not necessarily applicable to this micro-ethnography, I would certainly be cautious about doing ‘undercover’ research where the results may be published. But, the wider point is, I think, an epistemological one. If we consider that a ‘lurker’ can be *more* objective, we are surely assuming that an individual is capable of perceiving a situation ‘exactly as it is’; accessing an external reality. That stance would appear to ignore the perceptual, social and cultural qualities that might work through the observer, and colour any attempt at ‘discovering reality’ anyway. So for me Hine’s (2000) claims on striving for objectivity through ‘lurking’ are post-positivist at best.

As for whether the public nature of the web is a ‘worry free’ domain for researchers, I am reminded of Kozinets dilhema (2010) – that web content could be viewed both in terms a ‘space’, or a ‘text’, with each implying something quite different. A space might imply ‘public’, and any conversations in that space might be considered the same as conversations overheard in public. However, if the web *page* is considered a text, questions about ownership arise. If something is written by an individual, do they not have rights to it, despite its ‘publication’ in public space? Interesting questions!