Online ethnography

Since it erupted in 2009, the Greek debt crisis has disrupted Greek people’s quotidian life both at a socio-political and at a personal level. In the contemporary social media ecosystem, with the massive bulk of user-produced and user-consumed content, narratives that concern this critical turning point in Greek modern history have found fertile soil to thrive. In this article, having enmeshed discourse-centered online ethnography (Androutsopoulos, 2008) with small stories research (Georgakopoulou, 2007), the dimensional approach to narratives (Ochs & Capps, 2001), and stance-taking (Du Bois, 2007), I look at how a Greek Facebook user has recounted her emotions, thoughts, opinions, and assessments toward the Greek crisis. In doing so, I point to the intertextual, multimodal, and synergetic nature of these narratives. The article argues that Facebook can function as a powerful grassroots channel for expressive storytelling within a period of major socio-political upheaval. It also shows how Facebook has stretched our conception of what (digital) storytelling is as different Facebook affordances propel into different ways of narrating within the medium.

Netnography (Kozinets, 2010) is an ethnographic approach to study communities
that exist primarily online. Engaging in online participant observation, the
netnographer connects to the online community through a computer screen, and
the field is located inside the screen. Although it has been used in marketing
research extensively, netnography is a relatively new methodology in educational
research. In this paper, I give an overview of netnography and its applicability in
studying online language teaching communities. Drawing upon a netnography
of a globally-distributed online community of practice of English language teachers,
Webheads in Action, I provide detailed accounts of my experiences during
data collection and particular methodological considerations in netnography in
order to shed light on the often untold aspects of an ethnographic design in online
research that involves participant observation. I conclude with a discussion of
possible benefits of a participant observer approach in netnography in understanding
the culture of online language teaching communities, and invite CALL
researchers to consider netnography and online participant observation in their
future studies.

Ethnography online  as an ethnographic division is often critically treated because it allows researchers to investigate a culture without having face to face contact (Hine 2008:259). It is moreover sometimes seen as inferior to traditional ethnography because much of the data collection occurs passively. But even though some researchers argue that online and offline world should be regarded as separated, ethnography online is not condemned to be conducted totally on the Internet, but rather almost naturally expands to related offline contexts. Accordingly, it offers many possibilities to understand a culture’s beliefs, values, norms, social practices, and behavior in online and offline correlations. There are “complex connections between online and offline social spaces [and a] key challenge for the future is to develop forms of ethnography that take seriously the social reality of online settings, whilst also exploring their embedding within everyday life” (Hine 2008: 258). In this respect, in the following, I will discuss why ethnography in and on online environments is a meaningful approach. I want to critically reflect on advantages and disadvantages of ethnography online and in particular consider how useful and appropriate a pure online observation is, compared to other ethnographic methods which might also be extended to the offline world. For this discussion I will take the example of my brief study of two female German YouTubers who are publishing videos concerning their everyday activities about beauty, fashion and ‘do it yourself’ on the online video community YouTube. One of the women I merely observed online via watching her videos, the other one agreed to additionally answer some questions in a personal interview via video call. Because consequently, I obtained information from both informants via different research methods, I want to critically discuss whether my research findings are anyway comparable. For reasons of simplification and for the flow of reading, I will use the male form of a word when actually gendering would be necessary.

The Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) genre represents one of the most popular, dynamic and influential spaces of digital play. Since the genres first commercial release in 2009 with the title League of Legends (2009 – present, Riot Games), MOBAs have played an integral role in pioneering ‘fair’ models of free-to-play, live streaming as a ubiquitous spectator activity and e-sports as an increasingly recognised mainstream industry. This thesis posits each of these trends as connected to the influence of MOBAs as a genre with a rich history in grassroots spaces of non-commercial play and participation. Adopting an online ethnographic approach, the thesis describes how the transition of the genre away from its non-commercial and collectivised origins has introduced an influential model of hybrid power relations characteristic of the affective economics that underpin many wider digital platforms.

Central to this thesis is the introduction of playful co-creativity as a conception for describing the productive role that play and closely related participatory activities exert in the vibrant activities of MOBAs. Through framing play as a co-creative practice that informs design, spurs participation, creates professions and sustains vast sums of affective value, the thesis asks how the political economy of playful co-creativity in MOBAs can be critically approached. The research mobilises approaches from game, fan and Internet studies to approach the complex set of relations encompassed by MOBAs.

The online ethnography of this research comprises observations, personal experiences, in-depth case studies and player responses from online open discussions on Reddit. In particular, the research focuses on three influential examples of MOBAs in the original Warcraft III (Blizzard Entertainment, 2003) custom game DotA, League of Legends and Dota 2 (Valve Corporation, 2013 – present). Through grasping the differing modes of governance in each of these games, the aim of this thesis is to exemplify how MOBAs are a genre imbricated with affective forms of playful interaction that both sustain and at times threaten the hybrid power dynamics of this heterogeneous genre.

There is more to place on the social network site  of  Facebook  than  its  software  configurations  that allow seamless location sharing and tracking. Users do much  more  complex  linguistic  and  multimodal  work  to give meaning to specific places foregrounding them as geographical  but  also  as  social,  political,  cultural,  and emotional  entities.  This  paper  draws  on  insights  from discourse  analysis,  sociolinguistics,  semiotics,  and online  ethnography  to  explore  the  ways  in  which  two Greek  female  Facebook  participants  talk  about  and represent places in their postings. The analysis shows
that,  by  means  of  the  place,  the  users  communicate
something  about  themselves:  they  confirm  belonging,
they  communicate  respect  to  other  cultures,  they  use
different languages to affiliate with certain places, they make  political  statements,  they  disidentify  with  the stressful  aspects  of  a  place  in  crisis,  and  they  raise awareness about local and national issues.

ในอดีต “ก้น” ถูกความเป็นชายจัดการและเบียดขับให้ไปอยู่เป็นคู่ตรงข้ามกับความเป็นชายโดยสิ้นเชิง ซึ่ง “ก้น” มักถูกนําไปเชื่อมโยงกับความเป็น “ฝ่ายรับ” และเป็นหน้าที่ของ “ฝ่ายรับ” ในการจัดการให้ “ก้น” มีคุณสมบัติแบบ “ก้นนิยม” หรือ “buttocksism” แต่โลกาภิวัฒน์พัดพาส่งผลให้มีการใช้สื่อสังคมออนไลน์ เพื่อสร้างปฏิสัมพันธ์ โดยกรณีศึกษานี้ใช้ทวิตเตอร์ ส่งผลให้ปัจจุบันมีความเปลี่ยนแปลงที่เกิดข้ึนเมื่อเรื่อง “ก้น” ถูกจับมาผูกกับความเป็นชาย โดยที่ “ฝ่ายรุก” กลับมาให้ความสําคัญและนําเรื่องคุณลักษณะของ “ก้น” มาเพื่อสร้างปฏิสัมพันธ์กับชายรับชายอื่นในพื้นที่ทวิตเตอร์

The 2003 UNESCO Convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage
highlights the importance of safeguarding traditional practices.
While some of these practices are only performed in their place of
origin, others (such as yoga and flamenco) take place worldwide.
In this paper we explore what happens when a form of ICH that
originated in one place becomes global. For this, we use Egyptian
raqs sharqi (bellydance) as a case study. This is a dance genre
with strong cultural roots in Egypt but is also hybrid and now
practiced worldwide. Theoretically, we draw on a holistic view of
living heritage, Welsch’s transculturality and Urry’s mobilities.
Research methods include one-to-one interviews, analysis of
written sources and of online dance videos. Raqs sharqi emerges
as hybrid and transcultural, yet strongly connected to Egypt as
the origin of its heritage. We conclude that ICH can be
transcultural and global, whilst maintaining a strong connection
to its place of origin.

Purpose – The paper systematically reviews boundary related challenges of online ethnography in the field of organization and management studies. We especially focus on how researchers deal with drawing space boundaries, setting time boundaries, and crossing them to engage their online field.

Design/methodology/approach – We perform a systematic review of extant literature. We identify 189 journal articles that perform some form of online ethnographic research. Among those, 59 papers are identified in 40 different journals as online organizational and/or management ethnographies. We perform both open coding and quantitative analysis on collected papers.

Findings – We identify how researchers deal with the issue of defining space and time boundaries and how they cross them to engage their online field. We illustrate that some of the advantages of online ethnography actually prompt researchers to favor the same research designs over others and we suggest that some relatively underused designs offer methodological opportunities for future research.

Research limitations/implications – We focused only on articles adopting online ethnography in organization and management studies that are listed in Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) database. Online ethnographies in other research fields and indexes are not studied in this paper.

Practical implications – The paper provides concrete examples and suggestions for researchers who undertake online organizational ethnography.

Social implications – The paper contributes to the maturation of online organizational ethnography. More generally, it contributes to our understanding of how organisations and individuals engage with online phenomena.

Originality/value – The paper provides a comprehensive and systematic overview on past and current practices of online organizational ethnography, with a wide array of examples from various disciplines.

Depuis une dizaine d’années, la recherche en contexte numérique a conduit à repenser les notions de consentement, de vie privée et de confidentialité au point où l’éthique de la recherche en ligne serait devenue en soi un champ de recherche. Dans cet article, je développe la réflexion selon laquelle une étude ethnographique des usages numériques devrait mobiliser une approche contextuelle afin d’être menée éthiquement. Ceci implique que les données en ligne qui sont accessibles publiquement ne sont pas de facto publiques et qu’il importe de tenir compte des attentes des internautes. Je mets alors cette réflexion à l’épreuve de mon ethnographie sur les pratiques informationnelles des internautes sur deux groupes Facebook de partage d’information juridique. À travers ce cas à l’intersection du droit et de la communication, je soutiens qu’une approche contextuelle implique aussi d’appréhender la démarche éthique au prisme de l’objet de la recherche et de son contexte disciplinaire.

For more than a decade, the increasing popularity of online research has prompted a rethinking or reconsideration of such notions as consent, privacy and confidentiality. This re-examination has been so extensive that the ethics of online research has emerged as a distinct field of study. In this article, I discuss how an ethnographic study of digital practices should adopt a contextual approach to ensure research in this field is conducted in an ethical manner. Such an approach implies that publicly accessible online data are not de facto public, so it is imperative to recognize and heed the expectations and requirements of internet users. I tested this hypothesis in my ethnographic research of the online practices of two Facebook groups whose members share legal information. Based on my analysis of their online activity, which combines aspects of both the law and communications, I argue that a contextual approach also encompasses an understanding of the ethical considerations that are inherent to the disciplinary context and goal of a research project.

This paper, based on broader digital ethnographic research performed on YouTube, aims at framing issues of online popularity development through the examination of videos and user comments. To explore the phenomenon of beauty gurus, I analyse a purposeful sample of 80 videos from the channel Bubzbeauty and introduce an emerged typology of two video categories: tutorials and vlogs. Findings suggest that the strengthening of the guru’s role as a popular online personality is the result of two spheres of influence. The commercial side consists of YouTube as a business platform and is best represented by her tutorials. The community sphere, sustained by the power of affective ties with her audience, is represented by her vlogs. I argue that her market value as a renowned guru is built through her know-how expressed in straight-forward tutorials. Conversely, her social value as an interesting, trustworthy personality is fostered by intimate vlogs.

Netnography has been developed and improved from traditional Ethnology methods by many scholars and scholars. One of them is Professor Robert V. Kozinets, who is recognized as the creator of the Netnography concept, as well as an academic on social networking and marketing, which studies the beliefs, culture, social interaction, and behavior of small societies that Involve different participation and observation, with access to more and more diverse areas of the field. Including a variety of communication Able to connect to communication across many forms and store data permanently and most importantly, the researcher must not disturb the research field because he wants to study "as it is", including the confidentiality of research participants through human research ethics. That is the most important issue of research through Netnography.

The fall of the Eastern Block, the dissolution of former Yugoslavia and the subsequent enlargement of the European Union to include former socialist countries contributed to an increase in the movement of people from Eastern to Western Europe which began about a decade earlier. Among them, the Roma are probably the most clearly recognizable group and surely the ones that received, and keep receiving, more media attention. While their presence in the media as subjects of discussion is a topic worth analyzing, the present work is about their presence in a particular medium, the Internet, as actors and producers of content. As a population of Indian origin spread across Europe over the past five centuries, Roma have often been regarded as a diaspora. Ethnographic studies about diasporas and their usage of the Internet have often described diasporic websites as discoursive spaces in which new, hydrid identities are negotiated and stereotyping and marginalizing discourses about diasporic subjects are challenged. The role of languages in these websites, however, has often been neglected. On the other hand, sociolinguistic studies have highlighted how the Internet provides a space for vernacular language usage in which the relaxation of language norms and users’ creativity play a crucial role in overcoming the limitations in text transmission imposed by the medium. A partial bridge between these two trends of studies has been provided by the analysis of code-switching in diasporic websites, which has shown how meaningful language alternation is used to flag users’ hybrid identities. The study of the relationship between diasporic languages and identities on the Internet clearly appears to be in its infancy and only few case studies have looked at the interactions between each diaspora’s specific cultural and sociolinguistic settings and the usage of the Internet. Furthermore, many diasporas, including the Roma, speak unwritten languages which have not been or are just starting to be standardized. Processes of language standardization have always involved both identity and language policies and have often been pivotal in struggles for nationhood or minority rights recognition. While so far such processes tended to be mostly centralized and top-down, the Internet is offering a space for the spontaneous transition from orality to literacy. Thus, analyzing the interaction between diasporic, non-standardized languages and the identities of their speakers as manifested on the Internet can provide new insights into the relations between diasporic languages and identities and into language standardization processes. The present work investigates these issues by analyzing the on-line usage of Romani, the Indic language spoken by many Roma. The study draws on data collected through an online ethnography from Radio Romani Mahala, a website created and used by the recently dispersed community of the Mitrovica Roma. The data are analyzed both qualitatively, using discourse analytic methods, and quantitatively, using traditional sociolinguistic approaches. Combining such approaches allows drawing a nuanced picture of the phenomena under observation accounting both for micro level, individual patterns of usage and macro level trends shared by all users involved. Particular attention is also paid to the emerging Romani spelling and the role played by individual users in the establishment of shared writing norms. The interdisciplinarity of this approach will show how the interplay between diasporic identities and attitudes, non-standard language ideologies and the possibilities offered by the Internet is leading to effective language codification without the intervention of a central authority and outside the frame of any nation-state policy. Such findings call for a re-thinking of current notions on linguistic human rights. Based on the viability of the Romani model, I thus propose a theory of linguistic pluralism in trans-national contexts centred around the notion of cosmopolitan sociabilities, non-utilitarian, everyday interactions creating open and inclusive relations across and even despite perceived cultural divides.

The emergence of online learning environments and advances in web-based technologies enable teachers to interact and exchange ideas and experiences in online communities. However, these rapid technological advances also cause such online communities to disband quickly, before they have the opportunity to evolve into a community of practice, in which a group of teachers build a shared history, a shared repertoire of resources and activities, and mutually engage in collaborative professional development, over time. Moreover, rapid advances in technology necessitate on-going collaboration among teachers so that they develop meaningful technology integration practice. While such collaborations have taken place in face-to-face settings, how this might be achieved through participation in an online teacher community of practice has been under-researched. Therefore, the present study examines one long-standing, globally-distributed, online community of practice created by English language teachers, called "Webheads in Action", whose shared domain of interest centers on exploring the pedagogical uses of web-based technologies in English language teaching.

The study employs netnography, or online ethnography, in which the researcher collects data through participant observation, interviews, and archiving, all of which is conducted completely online. The aim of this study was to understand the broader culture of learning, collaboration, and mentoring in this online language teacher community by exploring and analyzing its shared repertoire of resources, and activities; ways members engage in the collective development of this technology integration practice; and the role of participation in such an online community of practice on developing language teachers' technological pedagogical content knowledge when designing instruction.

The data for this study comes from various sources of data collected through online participant observation in this community's activities over a year, reflective observational fieldnotes, online interviews, and archived data. Throughout my online fieldwork, I participated in this online community's activities both synchronously and asynchronously. At the same time, I took reflective observational fieldnotes of my participation and observations during these activities, as well as community's spaces and email communications. As for archival data, I archived the email communication that occurred during my time in the field, as well as screenshots of the community spaces and platforms. I conducted in-depth interviews with four key people in this community in order to better understand the organization and background of this community and its activities, and interviewed five individual members in order to learn about their stories with and as Webheads.

Through qualitative data analysis procedures, namely coding, categorizing and finding themes, the study provides a rich and thick description as well as an analysis of this community and its culture in the light of my experiences and observations, as well as the experiences of others. The study reveals insights as to the culture of teacher learning in an online community of practice and the mediation of technological pedagogical content knowledge in online communities of practice.

Limitations of the study and suggestions for future research are also presented, as well as an in-depth discussion of how ethnographic fieldwork practices are adapted in netnography with online communities of practice.

In this chapter, the author describes the technologies she employed while conducting an Ethnography of Communication on Eloqi (pseudonym), a for-profit start-up company that built and operated a proprietary Web-based, voice-enabled platform connecting English language learners in China with trainers in the United States. While Eloqi existed, its unique platform not only connected trainers and students for short one-to-one English conversation lessons but also brought together the company admins, trainers, and students in a virtual community. This chapter describes the technologies that the author used to carry out the qualitative study from start to finish, including the steps of online participant observations, on-line and offline interviews, qualitative coding, and qualitative data analysis. Because the author studied a virtual community, technologies played a critical role in how she collected, managed, and analyzed the dataset, which was completely electronic. The chapter concludes with tips and advice for fellow researchers using technologies to support qualitative studies of communication, whether online or offline.

Au Québec et au Canada, l'accès à la justice est une préoccupation croissante pour les milieux juridique, politique et universitaire. L'inaccessibilité financière des services juridiques engendre plusieurs problèmes pour un nombre important de justiciables, tout comme l'inaccessibilité cognitive de l'univers juridique. C'est dans ce contexte que les technologies de l'information et de la communication [TIC] occupent une place importante dans les discussions sur les manières de rendre la justice plus accessible. Elles auraient notamment le potentiel de fournir des ressources plus intelligibles et accessibles aux justiciables. Les médias sociaux en particulier pourraient démocratiser l'information juridique dans la mesure où ils sont faciles d'utilisation, rassemblent une diversité de contenus et sont de plus en plus ancrés dans les activités quotidiennes. Malgré l'intérêt que suscitent ces plateformes sur le plan de l'accès à la justice, leurs usages relatifs à l'information juridique restent à explorer pour la recherche en droit. Le présent article s'intéresse à ces plateformes, et en particulier au média social Facebook, qui a pour particularité de mettre en scène des internautes qui sont à la fois créateurs, récepteurs et relayeurs de contenus d'information juridique. Nous proposons finalement une typologie utile à la recherche sur le thème du droit et des médias sociaux.

Access to justice is an increasing concern for the legal, politic and academic spheres in Quebec and in Canada. Many problems are related to the financial inaccessibility of legal services for a considerable number of litigants, but also to the cognitive inaccessibility of the legal universe. In this light, information and communication technologies [ICT] make up an important part of the discussions about ways to make justice more accessible. More specifically, social media could democratize legal information insofar as they are easy to use, gather a diversity of content, and are more and more ingrained in daily activities. Despite the growing interest in these platforms in terms of access to justice, their uses pertaining to legal information are yet to be explored by legal researchers. This article hence focuses on these platforms and more specifically on Facebook, which allows users to simultaneously be creators, receptors and relators of legal information content. We finally introduce a typology useful to research oriented towards law and social media.

"Israeli journalistic websites have initiated a feature that became
fairly universal: a section at the end of each article that allows readers to respond to the article and to each other. This feature is captured by the metacommunicative term ‘tokbek’, derived from the English phrase ‘talk-back’. Although originally viewed as having the potential to promote civil participation, the tokbek soon became associated with pejorative cultural meanings that indicated its failure to do so. Drawing on the Ethnography
of Communication, we provide an interpretative framework for an analysis of this failure. The main function of tokbek is the construction of the commenters’ political identities, mainly as leftists and rightists. This oppositional construction takes the antagonistic form of a ‘bashing ritual’ that communicates
radical pessimism about the possibility of political debate. Because sharing a virtual space does not necessarily facilitate deliberation, democratic culture should be explicitly addressed when discussing technological advancements."

Yeni iletişim teknolojilerinin sunduğu zaman-mekân parametrelerinden bağımsız
iletişim imkânı, bireylerin küresel düzlemde etkinlikler gerçekleştirmesine, yeni değerler
edinmesine ve yeni kimlikler kazanmasına aracılık etmektedir. Çocukların iletişim
teknolojileriyle kurdukları bağlar, ortaya çıkardıkları yeni pratikler ve ilişkide oldukları
olgular, şirketleşmiş sosyal medya platformlarının ekonomi-politik yapısı içerisinde
gerçekleşmektedir. Bu yapının varlığı hem çocuk YouTuberın hem de izleyici çocukların
platformdaki etkinliklerinin irdelenmesini gerekli kılmaktadır.
Bu çalışma, çocukların sosyalleşme süreçlerini ve pratiklerini, şöhretlik edinimlerini,
tüketim davranışlarını ve emek-kazanç durumlarını bir sosyal medya mecrası olan YouTube
platformu üzerinden ele almış ve bu platformda üretmiş oldukları video içerikleri özelinde
irdelemiştir. Nitel araştırma deseninin benimsendiği, etnografi yönteminin temel alındığı ve
gözlem tekniğinin temel veri sağlayıcı olarak kullanıldığı bu çalışmada, çocuk YouTuberlığın
küresel eğilimlerinin ve yerel görünümlerinin izlerinin sürülmesi amaçlanmıştır. Bu
doğrultuda belirlenen kriterler çerçevesinde amaçlı örnekleme yöntemi aracılığıyla YouTube
Türkiye içerisinden 5 ve YouTube World içerisinden 6 çocuk YouTuber kanalı incelemeye
dahil edilmiştir. Kanallarda üretilen video içerikleri, çevrim içi etnografi yöntemiyle
incelenmiş ve elde edilen veriler, belirli temalar altında betimsel şekilde analiz edilip bütüncül
bir çerçeve içerisinde aktarılmıştır.
Araştırma sonucunda çocukların oyun anlayışlarının, oynama davranışlarının ve oyun
araç-gereçlerinin dönüştüğü; ebeveyn tarafından inşasına başlanan kariyerin süreç içerisinde
çocuğun tek başına inşa etmeye devam ettiği bir yapıya büründüğü; üretilen içerikler
bağlamında YouTuberın hem kendisini hem de izleyici çocukları bir tüketim ideolojisinin ve
kültürünün taşıyıcısı haline getirdiği; oynamak, eğlenmek ve hatıra biriktirmek gibi çeşitli
motivasyonlarla içerik üretimine başlayan çocuğun süreç içerisinde şirketleşmiş sosyal
medya platformu YouTube içerisinde tam zamanlı performans gösteren dijital bir işçiye
evirildiği görülmüştür.
Anahtar Kelimeler: YouTube, Çocuk YouTuber, Kidfluencer, Çevrimiçi Etnografi, Dijital Emek

Dans ce chapitre, nous proposons de dérouler le fil réflexif qui a guidé la constitution puis le travail d’analyse d’un terrain ethnographique sur la mise en scène de soi et de son intimité par des jeunes, garçons et filles, sur YouTube. L’objectif est de revenir sur le processus d’élaboration de la problématique et sur la manière dont il s’est articulé avec la construction du terrain d’enquête : une immersion ethnographique de dix-huit mois suivie de la stabilisation d’un corpus de 80 vidéos francophones réalisées par des garçons et des filles entre 14 et 18 ans, vivant en France, en Belgique, en Suisse romande et au Québec.

This article presents an analysis of participation patterns in an Alternate Reality Game, World Without Oil. This game aims to bring people together in an online environment to reflect on how an oil crisis might affect their lives and communities as a way to both counter such a crisis and to build collective intelligence about responding to it. We present a series of participation profiles based on a quantitative analysis of 1554 contributions to the game narrative made by 322 players. We further qualitatively analyze a sample of these contributions. We outline the dominant themes, the majority of which engage the global oil crisis for its effects on commute options and present micro-sustainability solutions in response. We further draw on the quantitative and qualitative analysis of this space to discuss how the design of the game, specifically its framing of the problem, feedback mechanism, and absence of subject-matter expertise, counter its aim of generating collective intelligence, making it conducive to groupthink.

Drawing on the ethnographic study of the Norwegian Facebook group Yes to wearing the cross whenever and wherever I choose , this article focuses on the emotive performance of conflict. The author delves into the multitude of ways in which emotion appears to drive the conflict(s) in Yes to wearing the cross whenever and wherever I choose . This Facebook group, by virtue of dealing with religion and identity issues contains typical trigger themes, which may lead audiences to emotively enact conflict. Still, these modes of enactment of conflict cannot be understood as a characteristic of religious strife alone. Drawing on Papacharissi’s concept of ‘affective publics’ this article compares the modes of conflict performance, the most salient frames, trigger themes, and emotive cues in this Facebook group to findings from other studies about mediatized conflict. The analysis demonstrates that mediatized conflicts appear to be emotively performed in very similar, at times even identical wa...

Au même moment où les bénéfices, risques et limites de l’information juridique en ligne sur le plan de l’accès à la justice font l’objet de discussions multiples, la nature et la structure de cette information numérisée évoluent elles-mêmes à travers les mutations d’Internet et l’avènement des médias sociaux.

Ce texte fera ainsi état d’une recherche empirique sur les pratiques informationnelles des personnes ayant des questionnements juridiques à travers une analyse ethnographique de leurs échanges sur deux groupes Facebook d’entraide. Nous verrons que, d’une part, le Web social traduit des réalités émergentes dans la production et l’accès à l’information juridique telles que la mise en commun de l’information et des expériences avec le droit facilitée par l’interactivité, mais aussi la prolifération de la désinformation et des bulles informationnelles, dont les risques sont décuplés au détriment des groupes marginalisés. D’autre part, ces mêmes espaces numériques offrent des espaces de visibilité inédits en mettant à l’avant-scène la parole et les pratiques citoyennes. Les méthodes de recherche en ligne permettent alors d’éclairer des problèmes d’accès à la justice qui précèdent le numérique, mais qui sont difficiles à cartographier pour la recherche en droit, notamment les difficultés d’appropriation de l’information juridique.

Afin de comprendre dans quelle mesure le droit pourrait répondre aux défis du numérique dans toute leur complexité sociotechnique, il convient alors d’appréhender le numérique tant comme un amplificateur qu’un révélateur des inégalités sociales et, à ce chapitre, au prisme de ses possibilités méthodologiques pour la recherche en droit. Autrement dit, serait-il possible d’appréhender les défis et limites du droit par le numérique?

Puerto Rican soldiers have been consistently whitewashed out of the narrative of American history despite playing parts in all American wars since WWI. This book examines the online self-representation of Puerto Rican soldiers who served during the War on Terror, focusing on social networking sites, user-generated content, and web memorials.

This paper draws on empirical evidence collected from pro-anorexia websites and qualitative interviews with dieters to develop an analysis of the uses of medical and scientific expertise in processes of body- and self-fashioning. It builds on previous work by examining how `lay publics' refashion expertise in order to use it for new purposes, sometimes contradictory to the purposes of medicine itself. Four distinct groups are analyzed: Women diagnosed with anorexia; women diagnosed with EDNOS (Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified); dieters using traditional methods of caloric restricting; and dieters using a new method called Primal Dieting. Overall, respondents indicated an ambivalence toward medical and scientific expertise and the criteria used to evaluate expert discourses. Refashioning of expertise was conditional upon three different body/self strategies: 1) Moving oneself out of the discredited eating disorder diagnosis EDNOS; 2) Recreating the eating and living practices of `Paleolithic Man' through Primal Dieting; and 3) Creating moral boundaries around those who engage in body-work and diet practices and those who don't. While it has been suggested that lay practices and belief systems represent an epistemological challenge to expert knowledges (Epstein 2008), this analysis suggests that there is considerable overlap between frameworks of `truth-making' between the four groups and scientific medicine. This calls us to reexamine the relationship between the lay populace's engagement with expertise in the twenty-first century, understood here to be simultaneously empowering and disempowering, embracive of and resistant to medicalization, subversive and affirmative of cultural norms of the body.

rawing on the ethnographic study of the Norwegian Facebook group Yes to wearing the cross whenever and wherever I choose, this article focuses on the emotive performance of conflict. The author delves into the multitude of ways in which emotion appears to drive the conflict(s) in Yes to wearing the cross whenever and wherever I choose. This Facebook group, by virtue of dealing with religion and identity issues contains typical trigger themes, which may lead audiences to emotively enact conflict. Still, these modes of enactment of conflict cannot be understood as a characteristic of religious strife alone. Drawing on Papacharissi’s concept of ‘affective publics’ this article compares the modes of conflict performance, the most salient frames, trigger themes, and emotive cues in this Facebook group to findings from other studies about mediatized conflict. The analysis demonstrates that mediatized conflicts appear to be emotively performed in very similar, at times even identical ways, across a variety of themes and contexts. Participatory media audiences’ tendency to remediate conflicts in ways that draw on an abundance of emotional cues appears to be integral to the enactment of mediatized conflicts. It is argued that we ought to speak not only of affective publics but also of the politics of affect.

This article examines the oral communication training that took place in Eloqi, a virtual language learning community. Eloqi (a pseudonym) was a for-profit start-up that built and operated a proprietary Web-based, voice-enabled platform connecting English-language learners in China with trainers in the United States.  While it existed, Eloqi’s unique platform was used to deliver short, one-on-one lessons designed to improve students’ oral English communication skills. Using the ethnography of communication and speech codes theory, a theoretical-methodological approach, the author presents an analysis of the speech code, or code of communicative conduct, employed at Eloqi. This code of English logic, which Eloqi’s community members associated with native English speech, comprised six locally defined rules for oral English speech; namely, speech had to be organized, succinct, spontaneously composed rather than rehearsed, original and honest, proactively improved, and positive. The article discusses the significance of this code, particularly as it pertains to cultural communication, and concludes with some implications for researchers and practitioners in business and technical communication.

Az infokommunikációs eszközök használatának széles körű elterjedése mindennapjaink egyik meghatározó tapasztalatává vált. A hálózati kommunikáció társadalmi hatásai, személyközi kommunikációban betöltött szerepe ugyan már az 1990-es évek elején is foglalkoztatta a különböző társadalomtudományokkal foglalkozó kutatókat, de a specifikusabb kvalitatív vizsgálódások időszaka csak az ezredfordulót követően jött el. Ezen időszak egyik fontos mérföldkövének tekinthető a Christine Hine (2000) által virtuális etnográfiának nevezett módszertani eszköztár leírása. Ezen módszertani gyűjtőfogalom Hine szándéka szerint a hagyományos etnográfiai kutatási módszerek lehetőségeit igyekszik kamatoztatni az online interakciók terében, s többek között a hagyományos etnográfiai terep fogalmának felülvizsgálatát, átértelmezését is szükségessé teszi. Írásomban a terep tradicionális etnográfiai fogalmának továbbgondolását igyekszem be-mutatni az online kvalitatív kutatások, elsősorban a Christine Hine (2000) által " virtuális etnográfiaként " (virtual ethnography) aposztrofált módszertan szempontjából. A szövegben egyrészt röviden vázolni kívánom azokat a legfontosabb változásokat, melyek az antropológia tárgyával, illetve a megismerési módszerekkel kapcsolatban a legnagyobb hatásúnak bizonyultak, s meghatározzák az információtechnológiai hálózatok mint interaktív társadalmi terek felé forduló antropológiai érdeklődést is. Másrészt az etnográfiai gyakorlat szempontjából kiemelt jelentőségű terep fogalmát igyekszem kibontani az internet vizsgálatai kapcsán. Bár a megfelelő pontokon igyekszem rámutatni azon módszertani problémákra, melyek a virtuális etnográfia terepének sajátos jellegéből adódnak (például az adatok autenticitása, valóságtartalma), ezekkel bővebben e helyütt nem foglalkozom. A terep különböző jellege (valós/virtuális), illetve a terep fogalmának különböző interpretációi eleve befolyásolják az etnográfiai értelmezések lehetséges eredményeit. Az etnográfia kifejezést az alábbiakban szigorúan módszertani értelemben, az angolszász hagyományban alkalmazott ethnography mintájára használom. Ahogyan Tom Boellstroff rövid meghatározásában olvashatjuk: " az »etnográfia« az a módszer, amelyet antropológusok és mások a »kultúra« tanulmányozására használnak " (Boellstroff 2008: 66).

This paper investigates the role of virtual spaces in maintaining a form of ‘cosmopolitanism from below’ among their users. Such ‘cosmopolitanism from below’ is characterized by what Hannerz (1990) defines a cosmopolitan perspective, we might also say cosmopolitanist outlook, i.e. the orientation towards and competence with different cultures. According to Hannerz, although orientation and competence may lead to the appropriation of other culture’s traits into one’s own, it is still questionable if such appropriation paves the way to cosmopolitanist identifications. The virtual spaces under analysis constitute a network centered on the web-site Radio Romani Mahala. Produced and mostly consumed by members of the now dispersed Roma (Gypsy) community of Mitrovica, Kosovo, this web-radio also hosts a real-time chat-room. An ethnographic investigation shows how the pre-existing ‘cosmopolitanism from below’ of both site producers and users is continued in virtual spaces. Furthermore, a quantitative analysis illustrates how the cosmopolitanist outlook provided by the medium is at work in the users’ choice of languages and spelling used on the chat-room. Both qualitative and quantitative data show how traits from various cultures are appropriated both by site producers and users. However, although embracing a cosmopolitanist outlook they do not share any cosmopolitanist identification. In light of the historical persecution and on-going marginalization faced by Roma, I suggest that their ‘cosmopolitanism from below’ has been forced on them rather than being consciously chosen. This leads me to claim that cosmopolitanist outlooks propagated by the media can encourage cosmopolitanist identifications in audiences already inclined to them, while at the same time they can help maintaining and strengthening ‘local’ identities in the face of marginalization. The paper also highlights how the Roma language is being standardized. Language standardization, the process by which a previously oral language is transposed in written form, has so far been considered possible only under the control of the nation-state. As a result (often enforced) adoption of and loyalty to a standardized form of language have been pivotal in the creation of national identities and loyalties (Milroy 2001). By combining the more traditional sociolinguistic quantitative methods with on-line ethnography, I am able to show how a cosmopolitanist outlook and the chances offered by the Internet allow speakers to spontaneously and effectively standardize their language outside the frame of the nation-state and without the requirement to pledge loyalty to a national identity. Such findings call for a rethinking of our current theories on language standardization and point at the need of understanding the potential role of new media and cosmopolitan attitudes and actors in the development of language policies.

This paper situates gamer discussions of the fantasy race the drow, or dark elves, in masculinity theory. I examine threads from a Facebook group discussing the topic, and code the reactions of men participating. I discuss how some gamer masculinities that are displayed reinforces a belief of epistemic privilege among White men that allows for hegemonic responses to discussions that involve structural racism. I propose larp gamer masculinity as a hybrid masculinity, complicit in its support of hegemonic models but appropriating elements of subordinated populations to allow individuals to feel like an “outsider.” In these gaming discourse spaces, men employ an anti-intellectualized form of digital hooliganism as a rationale for their claims. These men dismiss claims of discrimination as they see those as characteristics outside the scope of the game. The resistance exhibited by these men reacting to changes should be viewed differently than extremist discourses.

The article aims at analysing online depression forums enabling lay reinterpretation and criticism of expert biomedical discourses. Firstly, two contrasting interpretations of depression are reconstructed: expert psy-discourses are confronted with the phenomenological descriptions of lay experiences, with a special emphasis on online forums as empirical platforms hosting such debates. After clarifying the general theoretical stakes concerning contested 'depression narratives', the results of an online ethnography are introduced: the main topics appearing in online discussions are summarised (analysing how the abstract tensions between lay and expert discourses appear in the actual discussions), along with the idealtypical discursive logics (analysing pragmatic advises, attempts of reframing self-narratives and expressions of unconditional recognition). Finally, based on these analyses an attempt is made to explore the latent functionality of online depression forums by referring to a secular 'ritual healing' existing as an unre-flected, contingent potential.

Les mises en scène de l’islam et de musulmans sont importantes et très contrastées sur internet. Elles témoignent de la grande diversité des sensibilités, notamment religieuses intra-islamiques, visibilisées à travers des répertoires, des discours et des esthétiques, plus ou moins élaborés et sophistiqués, très différents, voire parfois très antagoniques. Lors de cette matinée d’étude, seront présentés des articles portant sur le magazine féminin Imane, des figures d'autorité traditionnistes du Maroc et de Mauritanie, le prédicateur algérien Chemsou, les multiples vidéos parues en réaction à celle des Happy British Muslims, et enfin celle du vidéaste Killuminaty. Ces diverses contributions constitueront autant de portes d’entrées privilégiées pour analyser les transformations de l’islam contemporain à travers des enjeux comme : l’affirmation des identités et des appartenances à l’islam, la construction et la mobilisation des imaginaires, qui reflètent autant de manières de se penser et d’envisager le monde, la conception différente des modalités de transmission du message islamique (da’wa) à promouvoir ou encore l’établissement et la structuration des figures du leadership sunnite et de leurs modalités de légitimation.

En este ensayo doy a conocer las preguntas iniciales surgidas de la observación de algunos detalles de la página web del Santuario de Fátima, en particular, el modo como la institución que fomenta el santuario usa el lenguaje para legitimarse y atraer visitantes. Comienzo con una breve descripción de la página; luego, me detengo en uno de sus contenidos: el de los idiomas en que aparece; de allí surgen las primeras preguntas: ¿Por qué aparecen esas lenguas, y no otras? ¿Qué información se ofrece de modo simultáneo? ¿Qué información se reserva para algunas lenguas en particular y por qué? Las posibles respuestas a estas preguntas nos han llevado a considerar los siguientes aspectos; primero, respecto al primer interrogante, si la página convoca a peregrinos, turistas o devotos y si ello ocurre por la cercanía de los países, su tradición católica o por el número de peregrinos que visitan el santuario. Respecto a la segunda y tercera preguntas, nos hemos detenido en una información en particular que hace suponer que las autoridades que regentan el santuario pretenden otorgar sustrato científico a un hecho sobrenatural; es decir, que al parecer quieren promover un tipo de adhesión no solo espiritual sino racional.

Online social network sites have become an intricate part of people’s lives, posing new challenges for studying the construction of identities. Despite plentiful studies, researchers still grapple with how to analyze and interpret online data. While some studies are conducted entirely online, other researchers call for the contextualization of online data through limited offline interviews and observations. By conducting a two-year ethnographic research both offline and on Facebook of a social network of transnational Mexicans living in Chicago, this study demonstrates that participants’ identity construction online did not always match and, in some cases, contradicted what happened offline. Findings suggest that while certain topics such as language use can be studied effectively using existing approaches, a full concurrent online and offline ethnography is needed to study identity construction to avoid skewed interpretations.