Session Information
19 SES 09 B, Virtual Ethnography: Possibilities, Issues and Problems
Symposium
Contribution
This symposium will focus on issues relating to researching on line communities ethnographically in five papers. We will firstly review the area through one paper (Landri) focusing on an examination of the similarities and differences between virtual ethnography, cyber-ethnographies and multi-sited ethnographies. We will then hear about the development of a CPD virtual community (Jeffrey) and following that we will examine three issues: • reconceptualising the role of imagination in ethnographic research on-line through the idea of hybrid social spaces (Shumar); • how to manage both face to face ethnographies and researching our respondents on-line areas of life (Marques da Silva); • whether it is possible and/or desirable to research only virtually (Thomson) The objective of the symposium is to: • open up this area at a European level; • stimulate the construction of a network of those interested in this area • identify some of the areas for further investigation within this network • plan further network activity. The theoretical frameworks are broad, for example, virtual identities, dislocated social engagement and relations, virtual realities, all of which take in philosophy, sociology and psychology. One of the purposes of constructing this symposium is to bring to the fore in ethnography and education relevant theoretical frames and each of the presenters has produced references to begin this process. The symposium will critique some of the methodologies used in this area and compare them with those used in more classical ethnographic practices in education. We will investigate how the post structural and postmodern critiques of positivism, humanist and critical forms of ethnography relate to virtual ethnographies and what if any contribution the latter can make through our symposium discussion and review from our discussant. The outcomes of this symposium will be the establishment of a network to support this form of ethnography and we will aim for publication of for both methodological and substantive publications through the ethnography and education international outlets as well as other European outlets such as EERJ.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.