Hine Christine, 1998

Virtual Ethnography

http://sosig.esrc.bris.ac.uk/iriss/papers/paper16.htm

This paper explores methodological issues raised by an ethnographic approach to the Internet. The paper is motivated by an ongoing concern with the Internet as a technology and as a communication medium. The aim is to develop ways to study not just to how people use the Internet, but also the practices which make those uses of the Internet meaningful in local contexts. The first section of the paper maps out an emerging approach which is illustrated in the second section by data drawn from the Louise Woodward case. The final section reflects on the implications for methodological adequacy of an ethnographic approach increasingly divorced from reliance on a single bounded field site.