My annotated bibliography is heavily slanted towards theory. The following is the tentative outline of the major sections that will refocus my writing towards the method of online ethnography. The less formal section titles will most likely change.
What’s in a name?
This section will be a micro-history of online ethnography. There are several names for internet-based ethnographic studies: cyber-ethnography, virtual ethnography, online ethnography,, and netnography. Some of the names are a product of their time and rarely seen today such as cyber-ethnography. One of the most attention grabbing is the portmanteau, netnography, which comes from a marketing research discipline. The choosing of a name can identify a researchers discipline.
Method discussion
This section will discuss the data collection and analysis techniques used. It will also include the advantages of this method such as the context is not created by the researcher.
Part of a mixed or multiple method study
Ethnography is sometimes used as a means to create a better quantitative survey or more focused qualitative interviews. The exploratory nature of ethnographic methods lends itself to strengthening other methods.
Ethics
Online ethnographic methods share similar ethical considerations to traditional ethnography. It also raises some new concerns since the researcher can be virtually invisible which might be seen as electronic eavesdropping.
What’s being studied?
Internet forums are well suited for online ethnographic studies, since forums can be viewed as a parallel to real-time off-line human interactions. The aspect of time and exchanges of information make online ethnography a great choice for information studies research. The topics of the forums being studied range from leisure activities (eg. hiking and rubber duck collecting) to individual coping with life changing events (eg. cancer patients and Bosnian refugees).