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Overview
In this activity, you will consider how the analysis of your social, cultural, or global event where a technology plays a significant role might have turned out differently if you looked at it through a different lens. You will also consider how your critical analysis can help in interactions with others. Completing this activity will result in a draft of the second part of the reflection section of your project. It also provides an opportunity to obtain valuable feedback from your instructor that you can incorporate into your project submission.
Directions
In this activity, you will work on the second part of the reflection section of your project. You should consider the feedback from your instructor on the previous activity. Include diverse perspectives from varied sources to support your points. Look to the SNHU Shapiro Library for assistance and consider the sources you have used thus far to support your research.
You are not required to answer each question below the rubric criteria but may use them to better understand the criteria and guide your thinking.
Specifically, you must address the following rubric criteria:
Integrate reliable evidence from varied sources throughout your paper to support your analysis.
It is important to draw from a diverse pool of perspectives from varied sources to support the analysis. This is different from the Citations and Attributions rubric criterion.
You will be evaluated on both criteria.
Explain at least one way in which your analysis might have been different if you had used one of the other general education lenses to analyze the technology’s role in your event.
SAGE Reference
Encyclopedia of Social Media and Politics
Pub. Date: 2014
Product: SAGE Reference
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781452244723
Keywords: Twitter, social media, social networking, Napster, bulletin boards, Facebook, MySpace
Disciplines: Politics & International Relations, Communication Studies, Media Studies, Political Science,
Political Communication, Social Media, Political Communications
Access Date: February 11, 2023
Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc.
City: Thousand Oaks
Online ISBN: 9781452244723
© 2014 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
SAGE
SAGE Reference
© 2014 by SAGE Publications, Inc.
Social media are Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of
Web 2.0—the concept of the World Wide Web used as a platform where content and applications are continuously modified by users in a participatory and collaborative manner. Social media enables the creation and
exchange of user-generated content, or all forms of media content that are publicly accessible and created by
end users. The social media landscape today looks significantly different from its humble beginnings; in the
last few decades, it has undergone a marked evolution.
1930s
In 1935, new machines called Notificators, with “robot” message boards, were installed in the streets, stores,
railroad stations, and other public places in London. These would aid persons who wished to make or cancel
appointments or inform friends of their whereabouts. Individuals could leave messages for a small sum on
these message boards, which appeared on a window for at least two hours so that the person for whom it was
intended would have sufficient time to observe the note at the appointed place. Notificators are considered to
be the first predecessor of Twitter.
1950s
The social aspect of social media was born on line, that is, on the phone. In the 1950s, technophiles and
information addicts used telephone networks as rogue ways to mass communicate, and the first podcasts
took place on hijacked corporate phone lines. These early social media explorers built boxes, or homemade
electronic devices, that could generate tones, which allowed them to make free calls and get access to the
experimental back end of the telephone system. They sniffed out telephone company test lines and conference circuits to host virtual seminars and discussions. The first blogs and podcasts were a result of hacked
corporate voice mail systems called codelines, where phone phreaks would hack into unused mailboxes and
set up shop until they were found and thrown out. Phone phreaking was not essentially motivated by fraud
but rather a telecom monopoly that made telephone use expensive.
1970s and 1980s
Usenet is an online discussion system that was conceived by Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott
and Jim Ellis in 1979 and was established in 1980. On Usenet, users read and post messages, articles, or
posts, collectively termed news, to one or more categories known as newsgroups. It is mostly responsible for
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the development of newsreader clients, which are the precursors to RSS (rich site summary or really simple
syndication) feed readers used to follow blogs and news sites today. Discussions are threaded with modern
news-reader software, though posts are stored on the server sequentially.
Usenet is distributed among a large, constantly changing conglomeration of servers that store and forward
messages to one another in news feeds. Individual users read messages from and post messages to a local
server operated by their Internet service providers, universities, or employers. Usenet has no centralized server or dedicated administrator, setting it apart from most bulletin board systems (BBS).
The first electronic bulletin board system (BBS) was developed and made accessible to the public in the late
1970s by Ward Christensen. He coined the term bulletin board system as a reference to the traditional corkand-pin bulletin board where people can post messages, advertisements, or community news. The first BBSs
were small servers powered by personal computers attached to a telephone modem, where one person could
dial in at a time and get access.
Until the mid-1990s, most BBSs were run free of charge by the system operator, or SysOp, while other BBSs
charged their users subscription fees for access or were operated by businesses as a means of supporting
their customers. The functions included social discussions on message boards, community-contributed file
downloads, and online games. In the 1980s, the social media scene acquired an underground flavor. A fair
percentage of bulletin boards had secret, adult, or pirate software rooms, and handles, or online pseudonyms,
were the norm. BBSs can be considered the first social communities connected online.
1980s and 1990s
After BBSs came online services like CompuServe and Prodigy, the first large-scale corporate attempts to
bring interactive, social, online experience to the masses. These services rose to popularity along with BBSs
and catered to a more corporate and mainstream, home-user client. CompuServe was the first company to
incorporate a chat program, CB Simulator, into its service in 1980 but was infamous for its high charges of $6
per hour, plus long-distance telephone fees, adding up to almost $30 per hour. Prodigy launched nationwide
in 1990, growing quickly in popularity for its color interface and lower cost.
America Online (AOL) started as an online service too and gained critical mass with aggressive compact disc
(CD) promotions and direct-mail campaigns. AOL also did one of the most epic product placements of all time
in the 1998 film You’ve Got Mail, bringing social online culture and romance into the Hollywood mainstream.
Although the Internet existed as a network since the late 1960s, the World Wide Web became publicly available on August 6, 1991. Tim Berners-Lee, an English computer scientist, is credited for developing this global
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information medium that users can access through computers connected to the Internet. The term is often
mistakenly used as a synonym for the Internet itself; rather, it is a service that operates over the Internet. At
the beginning of the 1990s, Internet access was available only to those with legitimate university, government,
or military connections, and to hackers.
Around the mid-1990s, private Internet service providers (ISPs) started shop in most metropolitan cities in the
United States. This gave millions of home users a chance to enjoy unfiltered, unlimited online experiences.
Usenet became the primary center for most high-end discussions. Also, the first online social media etiquette
standards, or netiquette, were proposed to stop rampant flaming—hostile and insulting interactions between
Internet users—and keep the online environment civilized. By the late 1990s, Internet forums grew in popularity and began replacing Usenet and BBSs as the primary nexus for topical discussions.
In 1988, Internet relay chat (IRC) was developed by Jarkko Oikarinen. It is a protocol for real-time Internet
text messaging and chat or synchronous conferencing. It is mainly designed for group communication in discussion forums called channels. It also enables one-to-one communication via private messaging and is used
for data transfer including file sharing. When IRC was first made available, many people stayed logged into it
constantly, using it to share links and files and keep in touch with their global networks, the same way Twitter
is used today. In 1996, ICQ was developed by four Israeli technologists and was the first instant messenger
(IM) system for desktop computers. ICQ was quickly purchased by AOL and became a mainstream hit. It was
partly responsible for the adoption of avatars, abbreviations such as LOL and BRB, and emoticons.
Napster was a peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing Internet service that emphasized sharing audio files, typically
music, encoded in MP3 format. It was cofounded by Shawn Fanning, John Fanning, and Sean Parker and
went live in June 1999. Napster transferred the power of distribution from record companies to the consumer.
Music started to freely flow across the Internet, stripped of hype and payola.
Napster thrived through 1999 and 2000, until it was declared illegal and was forced to filter out all the copyrighted content. Competing P2P applications like Limewire took Napster’s place until BitTorrent technology
arrived and provided a robust, centralized way to share files without being blocked. BitTorrent was designed
by programmer Bram Cohen. While the technology itself is perfectly legal, the legality of many of its uses is
being litigated in courts worldwide.
1990s and Early 2000s
SixDegrees was launched in 1997 and was the first modern social network. It was named after the six degrees
of separation concept—the idea that everyone is on average approximately six steps away, by way of introduction, from any other person in the world. MacroView, the company that developed the site, was founded by
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Chief Executive Officer Andrew Weinreich. SixDegrees allowed users to list friends, family members, and acquaintances both on the site and externally; invitations were sent to external members to join the site. Users
could send messages and post items on a bulletin board for people in their first, second, and third degrees,
and see their connection to any other user on the site. At its height, the site had around 1 million fully registered members. In 2000, Youth-Stream Media Networks paid $125 million to buy SixDegrees; it was around
until 2001.
LiveJournal was launched in 1999 by American programmer Brad Fitzpatrick. It took a different approach to
social networking from SixDegrees. While SixDegrees allowed users to create a predominantly static profile
or page, LiveJournal was dynamic because it was built around constantly updated blogs sharing the most recent thoughts and acts. LiveJournal encouraged its users to follow one another, create groups, and interact.
This could be considered the precursor to the live updates feature in advanced social networks.
Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGS) became popular in the early 2000s and have
become social networks in their own right. They are a genre of role-playing video games in which numerous
players interact with one another within a virtual game world. The most famous of these is World of Warcraft
(WoW). Here, players interact both in the game world and on related forums and community sites. Social
interaction within the game ranges from teams set up specifically for tactical reasons to friendships and romances.
2000s
Friendster was founded by Jonathan Abrams and Rob Pazornik in 2002. It was one of the first social networking sites to attain more than 1 million members at its peak. Friendster allowed users to contact other members, maintain those contacts, and share online content and media with those contacts. It was also used for
dating and discovering new events, bands, and hobbies. Users could share videos, photos, messages, and
comments with other members via their profiles and their networks. Friendster was acquired by MOL Global
in December 2009 for $26.4 million. In May 2011, Friendster repositioned itself as a social gaming site, discontinuing support for existing users’ social data; its new focus is on providing users with entertainment and
fun.
The first mainstream social network devoted to professional networking, LinkedIn was founded in 2003. One
significant purpose of the site is to allow registered users to maintain a list of contact details belonging to people with whom they have some level of relationship, called connections. LinkedIn can be used in a number of
ways. Users can upload their résumés or design their own profiles to showcase work and community experiences; it can be used to find jobs, people, and business opportunities recommended by someone in one’s
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contact network; and employers can list jobs and search for potential candidates.
Myspace is owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. It was founded in 2003 and by
2006 had grown to be the most popular social network in the world. It gained novelty by allowing users to
completely customize the look of their profiles. Users could post music and embed videos from other sites on
their profiles. Originally, Myspace allowed communication through private messages, public comments posted to a user’s profile, and bulletins sent out to all friends of the user. In 2006, Myspace introduced Myspace
IM, an instant messaging client that enables users to chat with their friends.
Facebook was founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with his Harvard University roommates. The Web site’s
membership was initially limited to Harvard students, but it quickly expanded, and by 2006, almost everyone
could join Facebook. As of June 2012, Facebook had more than 955 million active users, most of whom access it on a mobile device. In order to be a user, one has to register; then one can create a personal profile,
add other users as friends, exchange messages, and receive automatic notifications. Additionally, users may
join common-interest user groups and categorize friends based on degree of intimacy or place of acquaintance. By 2005, the use of Facebook had become so ubiquitous that the generic verb Facebooking was introduced to describe the process of browsing others’ profiles or updating one’s own.
Other Social Networking Developments
As social networking grew, niche sites were launched for specific interest groups. There are now social networks for virtually every hobby, passion, interest, industry, and group. Ning is the first widely used platform for
creating niche social networks. New users can either create social networks for any niche they choose or join
any of the existing networks. Ning’s biggest advantage is that it is user-friendly. A number of niche social networking sites have been developed by corporations; Autonomy is one example. It is a writers’ network hosted
by the United Kingdom division of HarperCollins that has attracted thousands of hopeful writers from all over
the globe. While some of these niche networks have active groups, many do not and end up being shut down
due to lack of activity.
Sharing photos, videos, and other multimedia content is a popular social media activity. Some important sites
associated with media sharing are Photobucket, Flickr, YouTube, and Revver. Photobucket was the first major
photo-sharing site, launched in 2003. Flickr has groups and photo pools and allows users to create profiles,
add friends, and organize images and video into photo sets or albums. It allows users to license their photos
as well as retaining all copyrights. YouTube was the first major video hosting and sharing site, launched in
2005. YouTube’s major social features include ratings, comments, and the option to subscribe to the channels
of a user’s favorite video creators. Revver took a different approach to video hosting and sharing. While other
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sites let users post videos for free and did not pay content creators any of the advertising revenue their videos
generated, Revver shared revenue. It shut down in 2011.
The mid-2000s witnessed the advent of social news and bookmarking sites. Bookmarking is the method by
which Internet users organize, store, manage, and search for bookmarks of news and resources online. Delicious, or http://Del.icio.us, was founded in 2003; it popularized the terms social bookmarking and tagging.
Tagging enables users to organize their bookmarks in flexible ways and develop shared vocabularies. Digg
was founded in 2004; its users share links to anything online, and other users can vote the content up or down
(or dig or bury). The Digg Effect—when content makes it to the front page, thereby sending a huge influx of
traffic to that site, overloading its servers—is a well-known phenomenon today and is often frustrating to those
unprepared for sudden popularity.
Real-time Web is a set of technologies and practices that enable users to receive information in real time, as
soon as it is published by its authors, rather than requiring that they or their software check a source periodically for updates. There is no knowing when, or if, a response will be received. The information transmitted
is often short messages, status updates, news alerts, or links to longer documents. Some significant names
associated in this category are Twitter, Posterous, and Tumblr.
With the advent of Twitter in 2006, status updates became the new norm in social networking. Twitter has
developed a cult-like following and has a number of celebrity users. Twitter has also spawned a number of
third-party sites and applications, turning it into more of a platform than a single service. Posterous is the
newest major microblogging application, started by Y Combinator in May 2009. The content of a microblog is
typically smaller in both actual and aggregate file size than a blog.
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The microblogging site Twitter, founded in 2006, takes advantage of real-time
Web technologies that have spread rapidly with the advent of the iPhone. The
site had an estimated 500 million accounts and 200 million regular users as of
2013.
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Tumblr, founded in 2007, is a cross between a lifestreaming application and a microblogging platform. There
are mobile applications available for posting on Tumblr, making it ideal for lifestreaming. In fact, the iPhone
can be largely credited for the rise in popularity of real-time updates. There are social networks only available
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on the iPhone, such as iRovr, launched in 2007.
In the context of social media, lifestreaming emphasizes the vast flows of personal information and exchange
created by social network services. Lifecasting is a continual broadcast of events in a person’s life through
digital media. Real-time updates have led to an increase in the number of people who are now lifestreaming
or lifecasting virtually everything they do, while some opt to lifestream by aggregating their online activities in
a single place. The Web site http://Ustream.tv, founded in 2006, allows users to broadcast from the Web site
once logged in or from a mobile device using Ustream’s mobile broadcasting application. Users can watch
streams live on the Web site and on the Ustream iPhone and Android applications. It allows users to interact, such as vote in polls, rate, and chat. http://Justin.tv is a streaming video host, founded in October 2006,
that lets lifecasters and live show creators broadcast to numerous Internet users. FriendFeed, launched in
2007 and recently purchased by Facebook, allows integration of most of one’s online activities—Twitter, RSS
feeds, Flickr—in one place.
Conclusion
This evolutionary account shows that social media has traveled far from its humble beginnings and intersects
with nearly every aspect of people’s lives today. It has transformed human communication, human interaction,
and the human social experience.
SoumiaBardhanSt. Cloud State University
• Twitter
• social media
• social networking
• Napster
• bulletin boards
• Facebook
• MySpace
See Also:
Innovation and Technology
Instant Messengers, IRC and ICQ
Internet Forums
Microblogging
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Peer to Peer
Social Media, Adoption of
Social Media, Definitions and Classes of
Social Media Sharing, P2P, Bit Torrent
Social Networking Web Sites
Social Worlds
User-Generated Content
Web 2.0
World Wide Web, History of the
Further Readings
Christakis, Nicholas A. and James H.Fowler. Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and
How They Shape Our Lives. Boston: Little, Brown, 2009.
Huberman, Bernardo A.The Laws of the Web: Patterns in the Ecology of Information. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 2003.
Kaplan, Andreas M. and MichaelHaenlein. “Users of the World, Unite! The Challenges and Opportunities of
Social Media.”Business Horizons, v.53 (2010).
Kietzmann, J. H., K.Hermkens, I. P.McCarthy, and B. S.Silvestre. “Social Media? Get Serious! Understanding
the Functional Building Blocks of Social Media.”Business Horizons, v.54 (2011).
Kirkpatrick, David. The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World. New
York: Simon & Schuster, 2010.
MacNamara, Jim.The 21st Century Media (R)Evolution: Emergent Communication Practices. New York: Peter Lang, 2010.
Watts, Duncan J.Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age. New York: Vintage, 2003.
https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781452244723
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The SAGE Encyclopedia of the Internet
Author: Tyler Sonnichsen
Pub. Date: 2018
Product: SAGE Reference
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781473960367
Disciplines: Media, Communication & Cultural Studies, Communication Studies, Computer-Mediated
Communication
Access Date: February 11, 2023
Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc.
City: Thousand Oaks,
Online ISBN: 9781473960367
© 2018 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
SAGE
SAGE Reference
© 2018 by SAGE Publications, Ltd.
The Internet, especially its social media component, has played a significant yet unheralded role in ethnographic research. The reorientation of human networks that has occurred through the web has rendered both
ethnographic data and human informants accessible in manners that would have been inconceivable three
decades ago. The proliferation of websites, weblogs (blogs), chat rooms, user groups, message boards, and
other formats of virtual community has profoundly changed methodologies and general practices of ethnography. However, various online research methods remain unheralded in many academic corners due to latent
stigmas of pedestrianism and unprofessionalism associated with sites like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat,
and similar platforms. This entry examines how the Internet has affected ethnographic research; the history
of Internet research; how online ethnographic research has changed as new platforms, including mobile platforms, have emerged; and the ethics of Internet research.
Facilitating Access
The two major contributions that the Internet has made to ethnographic research have both involved increasing and speeding up access for researchers. The first is the expansion of access to informants. The second
has been an expansion in publically accessible, extant ethnographic data. Both of these contributions have
fundamentally altered the dynamics of ethnographic research, yet both recall traditional ontological and epistemological theses that have existed for centuries. Similar in ways through which the Internet disrupted extant
models of music circulation and consumption, the Internet has disrupted traditional patterns of human-subject
interaction and research. Understandably, the vast majority of seminal literature on ethnographic research
was published prior to the proliferation of the Internet, and so any researcher’s ontological and methodological foundations would be heavily informed by classic, pre-Internet models. Ironically, academic researchers
generally gather a majority of this ethnographic literature from all eras using online conduits like Academic
Search Premiere, Google Scholar, and university library networks. Even with a 21st-century ontological foundation, ethnographic research cannot exist outside the web’s superstructure.
This is why social scientists over the past 20 years have engaged with the inevitable role of the Internet in
ethnographic research. Even research that focuses on spaces and places without Internet access (vanishing
as they are) is still mediated through Internet conduits. For example, the initial gatekeepers in university-sanctioned human subject research, institutional review boards, have predominantly restructured as all-digital interfaces to reduce clutter and enhance approval processes. Even a researcher whose data collection relies
entirely on handwritten notes in a hypothetical remote community with no electricity or indoor plumbing would
need to file his or her credentials using digital means. Similarly, university depositories for completed theses
and dissertations have adopted digital portals; many libraries are no longer even printing hard copies of these
documents.
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The Beginnings of Internet Research in Academia
The first academic work on Internet-mediated communication, at least within the humanities, appeared in
the early 1990s. By the middle of that decade, email had already grown into the chief form of asynchronous
communication. Some qualitative and analytical work appeared on the technology’s ascent and subsequent
mutation into a multipurpose platform. Traditional physical formats of correspondence, still widely in use by
older members of the academy, became derided as “snail mail” within popular culture (no doubt abetted by
Microsoft’s public relations division). Though this was not the first appearance of the term snail mail, it was
the first time that using the postal service was categorically less efficient than the digital alternative.
As a medium through which to conduct ethnographic research, email presented multiple advantages as well
as disadvantages. The advantages, perhaps most evidently at first, were the lower expense, both monetarily and resource-wise. Email required the payment of a monthly connection fee, though individual University
email accounts were included in the cost of tuition fees for students and facilities fees for faculty. For private
researchers, websites like Hotmail, Yahoo, and Lycos standardized the availability of free email accounts.
Once registered, the researcher could email any other account in the world for no additional fee. From an economic standpoint, this eliminated long-distance phone bills as well as postage costs. Email also made possible near-instantaneous delivery of messages, unimaginable to those who began conducting their research
using the post.
The disadvantages of email-mediated ethnographic research, however, were inherent in the mechanics.
Though it was unquestionably faster and cheaper than using the postal service or telephone for interview correspondence (especially internationally), it could not avoid the latent “clunkiness” of Internet-mediated communication. This presented a viable gambit for qualitative research, as the investigator’s inability to “be there”
in person or in voice over the phone made it impossible to discern nonrepresentational data (e.g., expressions, pauses) from the informant. Additionally, like mail correspondence, email gave the informants time and
opportunities to amend their answers, fundamentally shifting them from the dynamics found in personal interviews. This generated a new set of ethical questions in the collection and reportage of ethnographic data.
Smartphones, Social Media, and Access in Ethnographic Research
Another disruption in the proliferation of ethnographic data and access to ethnographic sources has been the
surging popularity of handheld computing devices (smartphones). In the 2000s, companies like Blackberry
recognized the potential for transitioning mobile phones into handheld devices that could access email, take
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photographs, and transfer files in addition to placing calls and sending SMS. Companies like Apple and Samsung have engaged in a digital and mechanical arms race with products like the iPhone and Galaxy, respectively. Ethnographic researchers, particularly those from middle-class backgrounds in developed countries,
carry these with them at most times. When America Online and other public search engines launched in the
1990s, mobile phones were becoming smaller, more inexpensive, and increasingly ubiquitous.
By the early 2000s, a majority of those engaged in civic life in the developed world were in possession of cell
phones, which made people more instantly accessible devoid of attachment to place. However, to contact an
informant, one still needed to know their phone number and rely on access to individuals who could provide
contact information. This dynamic was similar to email in the early Internet era, as there was no accessible
database of private phone numbers or email addresses. Smartphones, in tandem with Internet conduits, have
made individuals virtually accessible at all times through a multiplicity of means. If a researcher has wireless
Internet access, he or she can contact any informant through his or her social media account anywhere in
the world. Many chain restaurants like McDonald’s provide Wi-Fi for free without purchase, and an increasing
number of public meeting spaces have Wi-Fi available to paying customers. Little research has been done
on the role of consumption as a means to an end in ethnographic research, whether engaging informants
through laptops, smartphones, or buying food and drink for an informant in a personal interview situation.
Considering the relatively recent prevalence of the Internet, social science is still charting its impacts on music, media, and the general cultural pale. Many have called attention to how Internet access is still at a premium for most in the developing world, which has exacerbated inequalities of development. Though Internet
connection speeds have made the exchange of audio files and video files almost instantaneous in developed
countries, much of the global South is still lagging behind. The same could be said for all questions of technological access, especially smartphones.
The exponentially widening pool of accessible ethnographic data must be understood epistemologically. For
every new conduit or forum through which the researcher can gather data, he or she must consider the limitations and specific dynamics of each. Social activities always occur in a place, so when place in the classic
Euclidian sense is compromised, so must the researcher’s positionality. Though it may not have been their
directive on founding the site in 2004, Facebook has unwittingly created a user-generated public archive of
cultural ethnography. Individual users’ private accounts notwithstanding, users still frequently contribute anecdotes and opinions (of debatable veracity or congruity) onto Facebook-linked news sites and comment sections. Within Facebook itself, many topics worthy of academic research like music scene histories are categorically archived through inclusive user groups where people can upload old images, show flyers, and share
reflections on contextual places and events.
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Internet Video and Ethnography
Perhaps the most profound impact the Internet has had regarding the accessibility of more-than-representational/nonrepresentational ethnography has been via video sharing. These include both user-to-user communication interfaces like Skype and Oovoo as well as public streaming-video interfaces like YouTube,
Vimeo, and mechanisms offered through Facebook and Twitter. Skype and other video-chatting services have
widened the accessible pool of ethnographic data while decreasing the distance necessary to travel in order
to conduct synchronous ethnographic interviews. Most obviously, video communication enables the ethnographer to note facial expressions, bodily comportments, and other nuances of the personal interview process,
which evade capture via written or audio communication. Although Skype interactions still pale in terms of
their sensory connection compared with in-person interviews (especially in frequent cases of imperfect Internet connectivity), they offer many benefits for ethnographic research. Most notably, video interviewing vastly
decreases the potential costs of in-person interviews internationally, making these interactions more accessible for researchers who lack the funding or the time to visit their informants in person yet still desire faceto-face connections. Though they all have purchasable and subscription options, video services like Skype
normally offer their programs for free download as well as audio-only option, which can substitute for expensive international long-distance phone calls.
Regarding the public (and private) cache of streaming videos accessible for ethnographers, YouTube, Vimeo,
and DailyMotion all launched in the later 2000s, and social scientists were quick to approach their “meanings”
for the humanities. Geographers like Robyn Longhurst posed bigger questions about how humans’ methods
for communicating place-experience were changing with mass-publishing audiovisual media, and what this
may mean for ethnography. As YouTube and Vimeo both expanded their respective storage capacities and allowed video lengths, the gates opened for a vast expansion of easily and instantaneously accessible footage
of cultural events and materials. These included, but were not limited to, full live musical performances, feature-length films both independently produced and pirated off of copyright holders, and expansive raw footage
from events that had been unreleased in its preproduction form. These all offer wide arrays of ethnographic
representations for researchers who could not “be there,” whether because they lacked funding, access, or
were not born when the events depicted took place. In this way, streaming video archives have been a boon
to historically oriented researchers. However, as YouTube expands within the control of Google and associated corporate interests, the “public” nature or ownership of these videos can be compromised. The ownership
of specific videos and audio records germane to ethnographic research has evaded the control of the original
producers, as streaming videos are easy to download, reedit, and reupload with a contrary or censored message. These services all have too many users to individually monitor all uploaded videos for quality, copyright,
or content. Community guidelines, which are sporadically enforced, can also prevent access to ethnographic
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data for legitimate researchers focusing on controversial topics like hate groups or pornography.
Ethics in Online Ethnographic Research
Ethnographic social media research has presented debatable ethical quandaries. By entering their opinions,
thoughts, and memories into the public record, Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter have made millions of users
into unwitting informants for ethnographers. However, depending on the subject matter and adherence of the
commenters to the specific network through which the researcher is searching, these informants may never
become aware of their contributions. Such is the fluidity of the public record and malleable data on social
media. Debates still rage on what constitutes “public” versus “private” on the Internet, and the researcher and
their informants may not agree on what is exactly fair game. Whether to anonymize these informants is a
decision for the researcher; the institutional review board cannot easily mitigate these situations, as online
ethnographic research is not in person. Considering how the investigator did not elicit these data personally,
culpability for any unfortunate consequences of their words being published cannot rest completely on one
actor’s shoulders.
Ultimately, the Internet’s role in ethnographic research will only become more pervasive as the Internet itself
becomes more omnipresent in the life and daily interactions of researchers and their informants. The rate
at which the Internet is spreading to incorporate more facets of daily life in more places around the globe is
much faster than the rate at which technologies have affected the dynamics of ethnographic research in the
past. Therefore, social scientists have a prescient and growing responsibility to remain knowledgeable and
vigilant about challenges that these changes present.
See also Blogs; Facebook; Social Media; Twitter; YouTube
Tyler Sonnichsen
Further Readings
Carter, P. (2015). Virtual ethnography: Placing emotional geographies via YouTube. In S. Hanna, A. Potter,
E. Modlin, P. Carter, & D. Butler (Eds.), Social memory and heritage tourism methodologies (pp. 48–67). London, UK: Routledge.
Dunn, K. (2010). Interviewing. In I. Hay (Ed.), Qualitative research methods in human geography (pp.
101–137). Don Mills, Ontario, Canada: Oxford University Press Canada.
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SAGE Reference
© 2018 by SAGE Publications, Ltd.
Herbert, S. (2010). A taut rubber band: Theory and empirics in qualitative geographic research. In D. DeLyser,
S. Herbert, S. Aitken, M. Crang, & L. McDowell (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative geography (pp.
69–81). London, UK: Sage.
Hine, C. (2000). Virtual ethnography. London, UK: Sage.
Longhurst, R. (2009). YouTube: A new space for birth? Feminist Review, 93(1), 46–63.
Madge, C. (2010). Internet mediated research. In N. Clifford, S. French, & G. Valentine (Eds.), Key methods
in geography (2nd ed., pp. 173–188). London, UK: Sage.
Whittaker, S., & Sidner, C. (1996, April). Email overload: Exploring personal information management of
email. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 276–283). New
York, NY: Association for Computing Machinery.
Wilson, R. E., Gosling, S. D., & Graham, L. T. (2012). A review of Facebook research in the social sciences.
Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7(3), 203–220.
https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781473960367
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