Reading Response: Virtual Ethnography

The readings this week focused on the virtual world—the internet, social media, etc.

Ilana Gershon’s “Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover” outlined many different ways media has played a role in relationships, especially the ending of one. She focused on the idea of “media ideology,” which is basically a particular person’s understanding of the media and how that is used to understand and construct meaning to words and statements that are being said through that particular media channel. Because of this, one media source (i.e. email or texting) cannot be generalized to have specific characteristics and qualities because each person may have a different standard. Reading this, I did not fully realize how complicated it would be to make a generalized statement about a media platform because there are so many different understandings behind it.

The other two readings, Christine Hine’s Ethnography for the Internet and Daniel Miller’s How the World Changed Social Media tackles some of the obstacles involved with conducting ethnographies with the virtual world as the field site, which is quite different from the more traditional physical fieldwork sites. Miller made an insightful point that social media should be seen as the contents that they are made of rather than as platforms that people post on and that since the online world and people’s everyday worlds are so interconnected, a holistic view is necessary in approaching an ethnographic research. Hine also mentioned that ethnographers should be fluid in their research, as the internet is always dynamic and full of unanticipated events. Due to the complexities and the sheer scope of the internet, it seems as if ethnographers must accept certain limitations in their studies as they cannot take into account all aspects of the field site.