Session Information
19 SES 09 B, Virtual Ethnography: Possibilities, Issues and Problems
Symposium
Contribution
Using insights from an ethnographic study in a Youth Centre in the North of Portugal, we argue that ethnography has felt some difficulties in researching youth cultures. We realise that new sites and objects of study are being proposed (networks, multi-sited ethnography, multi-media) and ethnography is being challenged and reinvented as we can also see through new concepts as virtual ethnography, ciberethnography or digital ethnography. Existing research on Internet (youth) cultures aims at focusing on either online or offline subcultural experiences, without revealing the links between these two subcultural worlds, or interrogating the implications of these links for subcultural members (Sterne, 1999). As a result, these world views seem more complex than is suggested by some academic writings and reports and opinions in the media. Ethnography requires us to suspend our judgement until we can re-examine zones of conflict between world views, as they are places where youngsters deal with existential conflicts and contradictory demands. The paper will try to discuss, through empirical data, the crisscrossing between online and offline spaces according to the following aspects: place, interactions, identity, authenticity, authority and challenges for ethnography.
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