Martey And Shiflett Virtual Ethnography

Synthetic, pretend, mock, fake, these are all synonyms to the word virtual. “Ready Player One” by Ernest Cline shows the positives and negatives to living entirely in a virtual world. Although there are favorable aspects to developing and nurturing online friendships or even relationships there are fallible aspects as well that seem to outnumber what may appear harmless at first. In this book we are shown 3 different sets of online relationships, that of best friends, a couple and “brothers”. Aech and Wade are the first real relationship shown in this book and they model best friends. These two have been best friends for the past 4 years and have spent countless hours together playing video games, watching movies and just talking. Because

As we begin to go on an excursion through literature, it is important to understand the concept of what an ethnography is. Ethnography is known to be a descriptive type of work that analyzes culture and customs of individual people. James Clifford has implemented this work into his studies and has influenced many others to do the same. I saw through the books I have read, ethnography makes these books become vivacious for a reader.

Ethnographic methodology provides rich and complex data (Brownlow, 2012). In the ethnographic approach a researcher joined the studied group in their natural environment, stayed as a part

It is first important to define what ethnography is because it is a prominent method that social scientists use in their research (Roy, lecture 4). Professor Roy defines ethnography as looking at culture – a methodological skill of observation in a natural setting. Chambliss was able to do this with his qualitative research at Hanibal. Qualitative research, compared to quantitative, is often characterized by a depth of information from a limited number of cases (Ragin & Amoroso 28). This type of study relies on the human component of interaction in the real world. Chambliss actively engaged with

I mean- my brother makes his living off of creating clothes for the avatars of people who delve deep into this alter-reality What could be so terrible about a person’s real life that the need to escape into a virtual one is so strong? Truthfully, it wasn’t until I really reflected on my own usage of my computer and iPhone that I realized I’m just as much of an escape artist as the daily Second Life user. Just yesterday, I was tired and cranky as I sat in my English Seminar on the American Frontier. I was annoyed by the content of the course and faraway in my thoughts of the hundreds of other things I could have been doing instead of sitting in that swirly black chair for the next hour and fifteen minutes. What did I do to ease my troubled, distracted mind? I quickly popped open my Nook account and took to reading a book that was due for an upcoming class. Of course, I still threw in my opinion to the class discussion every few minutes; we are the age of the multi-tasker, after all. My point is, as long as people continue to fall victim to a dependency on technology, we are all in some way escaping our reality, even if only for a few seconds.

According to Polit and Beck (2017), ethnography studies "involve the description and interpretation of cultural behavior, and seek to understand their world view" (p. 468). The strengths of ethnographic

James P. Spradley (1979) described the insider approach to understanding culture as "a quiet revolution" among the social sciences (p. iii). Cultural anthropologists, however, have long emphasized the importance of the ethnographic method, an approach to understanding a different culture through participation, observation, the use of key informants, and interviews. Cultural anthropologists have employed the ethnographic method in an attempt to surmount several formidable cultural questions: How can one understand another's culture? How can culture be qualitatively and quantitatively assessed? What aspects of a culture make it unique and which connect it to other cultures? If

On the playground, I met who will soon to be my first best friend, shortly after I had my first kiss. Kissing a girl, I felt so scared of what it meant that I knew I had to make myself the way I believed was right. I thought the best way was denying and eliminating all feelings that I had of the opposite sex because I never saw two of the same sex could be together. Little did I know my mom is gay but, she was too afraid to talk about it at the time so, it led me to struggle with my sexuality growing up. I developed strong feelings for my best friend and I believed that I just loved her because she was my best friend. I quickly learned that I loved her in a stronger way and still not knowing how to deal with my feelings, I started to hate my

     The Postmodernist view in ethnography, then, questions the basic assumptions underlying the reportage of ethnographic information, noting that reporting ethnography is a distinct action from doing ethnography, though equally important (Clifford and Marcus 1986); that there is not only one single language or style able to convey the elusive ‘truth’ of the universe, in fact there are a multiplicity of reporting modes or voices capable of conveying ethnographic information (Rorty 1982); and thus ethnography should not be based on the conveyed ‘understanding’ of the researcher (which places him or her in a position of privileged interpreter), on a dialogic relationship between the ethnographer and subject in which both participants within the dialogue are an integral part of the study (Marcus and Fisher 1986).

The authors argue that biases and affinities exist when conducting research. Macleod is more objective working with quantitative methods whereas Hodkinson complies to a relativist viewpoint primarily working with qualitative method (2010). These paradigmatic alignments play a significant role in the three-way relationship. The ontological viewpoint of the researcher influences the research question, the chosen methodology and the design frame (The open university, 2012k). This section will examine the four research approaches undertaken by Hodkinson and Macleod; one of mini-ethnography; a second involving life histories; and the other two are survey based methods.

I live in a country where I can meet people from all cultures and walks of life on a daily basis, yet still I have felt like a stranger in this “melting pot”. In the United States, the idea of diversity is a term I have heard many times when speaking of ways to heal the past of slavery and segregation, but I think that in the current political climate, diversity is seen as an enemy to the American way of life. I am an outsider in the country I call home, and my cultural background has impacted the way I see the world.

Participant observation is a method of collecting information and data about a culture and is carried out by the researcher immersing themselves in the culture they observing. The researcher becomes known in the community, getting to know and understand the culture in a more intimate and detailed way than would be possible from any other approach. This is done by observing and participating in the community’s daily activities. The method is so effective because the researcher is able to directly approach the people in the community in a natural context as opposed to taking the participant out of their environment. The aim of participant observation is to gain an understanding the subject’s life from their perspective, with the purpose of

Ethnographic research implies that researcher is obtaining the data by observing researched people in their common environment and with common circumstances (Silverman, 2010). It has been discovered that this style of research requires trustful relationships between researcher and the researched, especially when the ethnography is made in the closed settings and access to researcher is granted from the head. In analyzed study permission was acquired exactly in this way, and Russell described a large number of problems related to establishment of trust and balancing between two sides: teachers and students. Cassell and Symon (2004) argue that gathering information in case of no trust in ethnographic research might be difficult. To prove that they provide an example of Westley (1970) study. In this research the author experienced a large number of obstacles, such as unwillingness to give an interview during his fieldwork in police organization in USA.

There are multiple characteristics of ethnographic approach. This research is considered to be more of a descriptive type research approach, that is intended for “in-depth research and descriptions of ethnic groups, cultures, large organizations, and their features” (Percy, Kostere, & Kostere, 2015, p. 16). This type of research immerses its selves in the organization or culture they are reviewing, and becoming a part of the culture, so that we can learn about it from the inside out. Therefore, this methodology often involves longer time frame for information collection, and consists of researchers returning a number of times to the location where the research is to acquire more information. Some “doctoral learners tend to avoid ethnographic studies, because of the typical long time-commitments, however, it can be a fruitful approach, even in shorter periods, for understanding the customs, culture, belief systems, and implicit rules of organizations and large groups” (Percy, Kostere, & Kostere, 2015, p. 15)

Unlike the utopian literature portrays the ideal worlds, that is what it is dystopian literature imaging defects and problems in virtual communities. These communities often linked to utopia, and chose specifically miserable book is based on the detection of deficiencies in those social systems previously considered ideal.