Cutting though the exaggerated and fanciful beliefs about the new possibilities of `net life′, Hine produces a distinctive understanding of the significance of the Internet and addresses such questions as: what challenges do the new technologies of communication pose for research methods? Does the Internet force us to rethink traditional categories of `culture′ and `society′?
In this compelling and thoughtful book, Hine shows that the Internet is both a site for cultural formations and a cultural artefact which is shaped by people′s understandings and expectations. The Internet requires a new form of ethnography. The author considers the shape of this new ethnography and guides readers through its application in multiple settings.
Table of Content
Introduction
Internet as Culture and Cultural Artefact
The Virtual Objects of Ethnography
The Making of a Virtual Ethnography
Time, Space and Technology
Authenticity and Identity in Internet Contexts
Reflection
About the author
Christine Hine is a reader in sociology in the Department of Sociology at the University of Surrey. Her main research centres on the sociology of science and technology with a particular interest in the role played by new technologies in the knowledge production process. She also has a major interest in the development of ethnography in technical settings, and in “virtual methods” (the use of the Internet for social research). In particular, she has developed mobile and connective approaches to ethnography which combine online and offline social contexts. She is the author of Virtual Ethnography (SAGE Publications, 2000), Systematics as Cyberscience (MIT, 2008), Understanding Qualitative Research: The Internet (Oxford, 2012), and Ethnography for the Internet (Bloomsbury, 2015) and the editor of Virtual Methods (Berg, 2005), New Infrastructures for Knowledge Production (Information Science Publishing, 2006), and Virtual Research Methods (SAGE Publications, 2012).
More ebooks from the same author(s) / Editor
128,658 Ebooks in this category
