This document provides an overview of ethnography on/of the Internet. It discusses key figures in the field such as Malinowski, Mead, Chagnon and their ethnographic work. It also outlines typical components of an ethnography including ecology, social organisation, developmental cycle and cosmology. Examples are given of ethnographic work done on online communities, virtual worlds and social networking sites. Ethical considerations for online ethnography are also briefly discussed.

1. Ethnography on/of the Internet
OII Summer Doctoral Programme 2010
Eric T. Meyer & Rebecca Eynon
Oxford Internet Institute
www.oii.ox.ac.uk

2. Bronislaw Malinowski with Trobriand Islanders in 1918.
NAPOLEON CHAGNON with the Yanomamo Indians he
studied in the Brazilian Amazon ca 1960s-1990s
Margaret Mead: Coming of Age in Samoa (1928)
Source 1: http://www.theage.com.au/news/Reviews/Malinowski-odyssey-of-an-anthropologist/2005/06/02/1117568312895.html
Source 2: http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/primary-sources/329
Source 3: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=anthropologys-darkest-hou

3. Components of an ethnography
An th
A ethnography usually i l d f
h ll includes four
elements of community life:
1)
) Ecology
gy
2) Social organisation
3)
) Developmental cycle
p y
4) Cosmology

4. Kula Ring
Source: https://webspace.yale.edu/anth500/projects/01_Curley/KulaHomePage.html

6. Source: http://www.unu.edu/Unupress/food2/UIN08E/uin08e0e.htm

7. Source: http://www.analytictech.com/borgatti/etk3.htm

8. Source: http://homepages.wmich.edu/~bstraigh/AN240/Lecture7.htm

9. Lineages related to Timothy Asch / Napoleon Chagnon film The Axe Fight
Source: http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/projects/axfight/complin.html

10. Bernie Hogan: Group Structure in Facebook
Source: http://people.oii.ox.ac.uk/hogan/graphics/

12. Bronislaw Malinowski with Trobriand Islanders in 1918.
NAPOLEON CHAGNON with the Yanomamo Indians he
studied in the Brazilian Amazon ca 1960s-1990s
Margaret Mead: Coming of Age in Samoa (1928)
Source 1: http://www.theage.com.au/news/Reviews/Malinowski-odyssey-of-an-anthropologist/2005/06/02/1117568312895.html
Source 2: http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/primary-sources/329
Source 3: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=anthropologys-darkest-hou

13. Source of Gorean image: Bardzell & Odom (2008). The Experience of Embodied Space in
Virtual Worlds: An Ethnography of a Second Life Community. space and culture 11(3):
239-259
Innikka Equipped with the Amice of
Brilliant Light from the Black Temple
Source: Nardi (2010). My Life as a
( ) y
Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological
Account of World of Warcraft
Tom Boellstorff/Tom Bukowski
COMING OF AGE IN SECOND LIFE (2008)
Image Source: http://www.spiritofthesenses.org/secondlifesalon.htm

14. Information Ethnographers of interest (list courtesy of David Hakken, Indiana University, available at :
http://www.informatics.indiana.edu/courses/descriptions/I651.doc)
John Anderson, anthropology, Catholic University (Arab informatics)
Steve Barley, management, Stanford (Researching engineers in Silicon Valley)
Genevieve Bell, anthropologist, Intel (Cross-cultural study of technology, especially Asia)
Tom Boellstorff, UC Irvine (Anthropology)
Pablo Boczkowski, MIT (Sloan School of Management)
Gabriella Coleman, anthropology, University of Chicago (Open Source and the Cultural Imaginary)
Andy Crabtree, Sociology, University of Nottingham, UK (organizations, systems development; rapid ethnographic
assessment)
Joe Dumit, anthropology, (Director of STS program, UC-Davis)
Jan English-Lueck, Anthropology, San Jose State (Silicon Valley Project)
Joan Fujimura (Sociology, University of Wisconsin)
Keith Hampton, MIT (Department of Urban Studies and Planning)
Penny Harvey, anthropologist, University of Manchester ( ) (
y y g y (UK) (Museum informatics) )
Stephen Helmreich, History of Consciousness, MIT (Artificial Life, Bio-informatics)
Adrienne Jenik, UCSD, (Computer and Media Arts)
Lori Kendall, SUNY Purchase (Sociology)
Jean Lave, Education and anthropology, University of California at Berkeley
, p gy, y y
Gustavo Mesch, University of Haifa (Sociology and Anthropology)
Bonnie Nardi, (Informatics, UC-Irvine)
Carsten Oesterlund, Information Studies, Syracuse University (health informatics)
Wanda Orlikowski, management, MIT (organizational informatics)
Bryan Pfaffenberger, anthropology in the School of Engineering, University of Virginia (technology)
Sandeep Sahay, Informatics, University of Oslo (development informatics)
Susan Leigh Star, Sociology, University of Santa Clara (Classification; science informatics)
Lucy Suchman, anthropology/ethnomethodology University of Lancaster (UK)
Suchman anthropology/ethnomethodology,
Sharon Traweek, UCLA (science informatics)
Sherry Turkle, MIT (Sociology)
Nina Wakeford University of Surrey (Sociology and INCITE)

16. Ethical considerations for
online ethnography
• Privacy in public, Nissenbaum (1998)
• Sensitivity to actors intentions of 'publicness' e.g. Bassett
and O'Ri d (2002)
d O'Riordan
• Changing nature of informed consent
• Profiling from multiple datasets
• Different cultural perspectives of values such as privacy
• Legal protections nationally bounded
• Research responsibility for rigour and usefulness