Abdelnour Nocera José L., 2002

Ethnography and Hermeneutics in Cybercultural Research Accessing IRC Virtual Communities

http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol7/issue2/nocera.html

This article suggests a qualitative methodological framework and a holistic-historicistic epistemological perspective that balances the sociopsychological and cultural dimensions of IRC Virtual Communities. CMC cultural research should not be focused on intercultural collision phenomena alone, but also on cultural construction from inside the Net. An ethnographic strategy discovering cybercultures together with Gadamer's hermeneutics for the interpretation of systems of meanings are the proposed tools for understanding "virtual" life and cultural production within the Net.