From Ethnography To Netnography

With as many as 1 billion people now using online communities such as newsgroups, blogs, forums, social networking sites, podcasting, videocasting, photosharing communities, and virtual worlds, the internet is now an important site for research. This exciting new text is the first to explore the discipline of 'Netnography' - the conduct of ethnography over the internet - a method specifically designed to study cultures and communities online. For the first time, full procedural guidelines for the accurate and ethical conduct of ethnographic research online are set out, with detailed, step-by-step guidance to thoroughly introduce, explain, and illustrate the method to students and researchers. The author also surveys the latest research on online cultures and communities, focusing on the methods used to study them, with examples focusing on the new elements and contingencies of the blogosphere (blogging), microblogging, videocasting, podcasting, social networking sites, virtual worlds and more. This book will be essential reading for researchers and students in social sciences such as anthropology, sociology, marketing and consumer research, organization and management studies and cultural and media studies.

Netnography is an adaptation of ethnography for the online world, pioneered by Robert Kozinets, and is concerned with the study of online cultures and communities as distinct social phenomena, rather than isolated content. In this landmark third edition, Netnography: The Essential Guide provides the theoretical and methodological groundwork as well as the practical applications, helping students both understand and do netnographic research projects of their own. Packed with enhanced learning features throughout, linking concepts to structured activities in a step by step way, the book is also now accompanied by a striking new visual design and further case studies, offering the essential student resource to conducting online ethnographic research. Real world examples provided demonstrate netnography in practice across the social sciences, in media and cultural studies, anthropology, education, nursing, travel and tourism, and others.

Social media and Internet data offer rich opportunities and vexing challenges for sociocultural research. Explaining and extending prior approaches, Netnography: Redefined is an indispensable guide to the understanding and conduct of Internet ethnography. With this volume, netnography is upgraded, updated and renewed with the latest netnographic research from media anthropology, geography, education, library sciences, travel and tourism, linguistics, media and cultural studies, sociology, sexuality, addiction research, gaming studies, and nursing, and multiple examples from the worlds of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media sites. Like its predecessor, Netnography: Redefined includes full, step-by-step procedural guidelines for the accurate and ethical conduct of netnography. Yet this edition adapts netnography to include big data and social media analytics, as well as further incorporating notions of network analysis. It deepens the practice of netnography through participative engagement, introspection, alternative representation, and a new humanist focus. Netnography: Redefined presents readers with up-to-date guidelines for the most fully realized and distinctive form of online ethnographic research yet developed.

Netnography has become an essential tool for qualitative research in the dynamic, complex, and conflicted worlds of contemporary technoculture. Shaped by academic fields, industries, national contexts, technologies and platforms, and languages and cultures for over two decades, netnography has impacted the research practices of scholars around the world. In this volume, 34 researchers present 19 chapters that examine how they have adapted netnography and what those changes can teach us. Positioned for students and researchers in academic and professional fields, this book examines how we can better use netnographic research to understand the many ways networked technologies affect every element of contemporary business life and consumer existence. Netnography Unlimited provides an unprecedented new look at netnography. From COVID-19 to influencer empathy, gambling and the Dark Web to public relations and the military, AI and more-than-human netnography to video-streaming and auto-netnography, there has never been a wider or deeper treatment of technocultural netnographic research in one volume. Readers will learn what kind of work they can do with netnography and gain an up-to-date understanding of the most pressing issues and opportunities. This book is a must-read for those interested in technology, research methods, and contemporary culture.

With coverage of the entire research process in social media, data collection and analysis on specific platforms, and innovative developments in the field, this handbook is the ultimate resource for those looking to tackle the challenges that come with doing research in this sphere.

This book brings together Sociologists, Computer Scientists, Applied Scientists and Engineers to explore the design, implementation and evaluation of emerging technologies for older people. It offers an innovative and comprehensive overview, not only of the rapidly developing suite of current digital technologies and platforms, but also of perennial theoretical, methodological and ethical issues. As such, it offers support for researchers and professionals who are seeking to understand and/or promote technology use among older adults. The contributions presented here offer theoretical and methodological frameworks for understanding age-based digital inequalities, participation, digital design and socio-gerontechnology. They include ethical and practical reflections on the design and evaluation of emerging technologies for older people, as well as guidelines for ethical, participatory, professional and cross-disciplinary research and practice. In addition, they feature state-of-the-art, international empirical research on communication technologies, games, assistive technology and social media. As the first truly multidisciplinary book on technology use among ageing demographics, and intended for students, researchers, applied researchers, practitioners and professionals in a variety of fields, it will provide these readers with insights, guidelines and paradigms for practice that transcend specific technologies, and lay the groundwork for future research and new directions in innovation.

Doing research is an ever-changing challenge for social scientists. This challenge is harder than ever today as current societies are changing quickly and in many, sometimes conflicting, directions. Social phenomena, personal interactions, and formal and informal relationships are becoming more borderless and disconnected from the anchors of the offline “reality.” These dynamics are heavily marking our time and are suggesting evolutionary challenges in the ways we know, interpret, and analyze the world. Internet and computer-mediated communication (CMC) is being incorporated into every aspect of daily life, and social life has been deeply penetrated by the internet. This is due to recent technological developments that increase the scope and range of online social spaces and the forms and time of participation such as Web 2.0, which widened the opportunities for user-generated content, the emergence of an “internet of things,” and of ubiquitous mobile devices that make it possible to always be connected. This implies an adjustment to epistemological and methodological stances for conducting social research and an adaption of traditional social research methods to the specificities of online interactions in the digital society. The Handbook of Research on Advanced Research Methodologies for a Digital Society covers the different strands of methods most affected by the change in a digital society and develops a broader theoretical reflection on the future of social research in its challenge to always be fitting, suitable, adaptable, and pertinent to the society to be studied. The chapters are geared towards unlocking the future frontiers and potential for social research in the digital society. They include theoretical, epistemological, and ontological reflections about the digital research methods as well as innovative methods and tools to collect, analyze, and interpret data. This book is ideal for social scientists, practitioners, librarians, researchers, academicians, and students interested in social research methodology and its developments in the digital scenario.