Online Ethnography

I. Conceptual, practical, and ethical fundamentals

Week 1: Jan 20, 22
Introduction: What is ethnography? Why “online ethnography”? Setting up our class blog.

Blood, Rebecca. (2000) “Weblogs: A History and Perspective. Available online at Rebecca Blood’s website.

Recommended / Further research:

Robinson, Wendy. (2006) “Catching the Waves: Considering Cyberculture, Technoculture, and Electronic Consumption.” In Critical Cyberculture Studies. David Silver and Adrienne Massanari, eds. New York: NYU Press. pp. 55-67.

Emerson, Robert, et al. (1995) “Fieldnotes in Ethnographic Research.” In Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. pp. 1-16.

 

Week 2: January 27, 29
Setting up research. Ethical considerations in online research.

Markham, Annette. (1998) “Going Online,” “Ambivalence and the Body,” and “The Shifting Project, the Shifting Self.” In Life Online: Researching Real Experience in Virtual Space. pp. 23-83.

Constable, Nicole. (2003) “Ethnography in Imagined Virtual Communities.” In Romance on a Global Stage: Pen Pals, Virtual Ethnography, and ‘Mail-Order’ Marriages. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 31-62.

“Association of Internet Researchers Ethics Guide,” available online at the AoIR website.

Recommended / Further research:

“Code of Ethics of the American Anthropological Association,” available online at the AAA website.

“Handbook on Ethical Issues in Anthropology,” available online at the AAA website.

**Make an appointment with me to discuss your interests and ideas for the final project in this course.**

 

II. Novelty and playful possibilities of the internet

Week 3: February 3, 5
Ethnography of writing and reading online. Playfulness in online performance.

Danet, Brenda. (2001) “’Feeling Spiffy’: The Changing Language of Public Email” and “Typed ‘Jazz’: Writing, Play and Performance on Internet Relay Chat.” In Cyberplay: Communicating Online. Oxford: Berg. pp. 51-156.

Powers, Richard. (2001) “The Artist’s Bedlam.” In Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion and Art. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, eds. Boston: MIT Press. pp. 476-477.

 

Week 4. February 10, 12
A closer look at one of the icons of the novelty of the internet: the figure of the hacker.

Turner, Fred. (2006) “How Digital Technology Found Utopian Ideology: Lessons from the First Hacker’s Conference.” In Critical Cyberculture Studies. David Silver and Adrienne Massanari, eds. New York: NYU Press. pp. 257-269.

Stallman, Richard. (1984) “The GNU Manifesto.” Available online at Richard Stallman’s website.

Baker, Nicholson. (2008) “The Charms of Wikipedia,” in The New York Review of Books 55 (4).

Check out the Free Culture website.

In-class viewing: Wesch, Michael. (2007) “Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us,” available online at YouTube.

Recommended / Further Research:

Melissa Scott (1994) Trouble and Her Friends. Excerpts. In Reload: Rethinking Women + Cyberculture. Mary Flanagan and Austin Booth, eds. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. pp. 64-84.

Assignment: Preliminary draft of your semester research paper is due.

 

Week 5. February 17, 19
A closer look at the narratives about the transformative potential of the internet. How are class, gender, sexuality, age, disability, and race reconceptualized online? The figure of the cyborg.

Orgad, Shani. (2005) “The Transformative Potential of Online Communication: The Case of Breast Cancer Patients’ Internet Spaces.” Feminist Media Studies 5 (2): 141-161.

Nakamura, Lisa. (2000) “Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on the Internet.” Available online at Mark Poster’s website.

Lewitt, Sharian. (2002 [1998]) “A Real Girl.” In Reload: Rethinking Women + Cyberculture. Mary Flanagan and Austin Booth, eds. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. pp. 505-518.

 

III. Online affinities and familiar social forms

Week 6. February 24, 26
How do online “communities” reconfigure kinship, nation, and religion?

Miller, Daniel, and Don Slater. (2000) The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach. Oxford: Berg. pp. 1-84.

 

Week 7. March 3, 5
A look at the global character of the internet.

Finish reading Miller and Slater (2000).

 

Week 8. March 10, 12
The connections between virtual labor, mobile capital and transnational migration.

Coupland, Douglas. (1995) Microserfs. New York: HarperCollins. Excerpts. Available at the Wired website.

Xiang, Biao. (2006) Global “Body Shopping”: An Indian Labor System in the Information Technology Industry. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Prologue, Introduction, and Chapters 2 and 3.

Dibbell, Julian. 2007. “The Life of the Chinese Gold Farmer.” New York Times, June 17, 2007. Available online at the New York Times website.

Film viewing: MTV, “The Real Price of Virtual Gold,” Nov. 18, 2006. Available online at the MTV website.

Check out the filmmaker Ge Jin’s website.

 

SPRING BREAK – March 14-22

 

IV. Techniques of culture

Week 9. March 24, 26
Exploring circulation of texts as an instrument of social action. What kind of connections are facilitated by online texts?

Reed, Adam. (2005) “’My Blog Is Me’: Texts and Persons in UK Online Journal Culture (and Anthropology).” Ethnos 70 (2): 220-242.

Start reading Boellstorff (2008).

 

Week 10. March 31, April 2
“Virtually human”: Culture in/of/as the virtual.

Boellstorff, Tom. (2008) Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chapters 1-4.

In-class viewing: 536. (2003) “Avatara” available online via Vodpod.

Assignment: Turn in your final paper for peer review.

 

Week 11. April 7, 9
Tracing personhood as inherently fabricated. Mediating nature of culture. Techne.

Finish reading Boellstorff. Chapters 5, 6, 8, 9.

In-class viewing: Matulick, S. (2006) “Our Brilliant Second Life,” available online at YouTube.

Assignment: Turn in your peer review along with the copy of the paper.

 

Week 12. April 14, 16
Online intimacy and accountability.

**Visit by Tom Boellstorff and class discussion of his ethnography on April 14.**

Collins, Lauren. (2008) “Friend Game.” The New Yorker, January 21, 2008.

 

Week 13. April 21, 23
Coding ourselves. Intimacy and surveillance.

Gershon, I. (Forthcoming) “Every Click You Make, I’ll Be Watching You: Facebook Stalking and Neoliberal Information.” Cambridge Anthropology.

Thompson, C. (2008) “Brave New World of Digital Intimacy.” New York Times, September 7, 2008. Available online at The New York Times website.

 

Week 14. April 28, 30

Presentations of students’ research projects.
Students’ blog portfolios are due.

 

May 7
Students’ finalized research papers are due by noon in my office.