On "Virtual Ethnography" and "The Wealth of Networks"

Just try to go here, and not have a train wreck reaction. A message board where there are no rules, and anonymity is almost enforced. A community where the anonymous and immediate transfer of information worldwide is just another day.

Inside of all of its cultural shock and awe chaos, there is order. A series of regimented rules and regulations, ways of stating what individuals want or "DO NOT WANT". You might read things like "TITS OR GTFO", or "Rule 34" or "OP IS GOD!!!1!"


Before beginning research, I had never been on /b/ channel or 4chan. I am fluent in LOLcat, and my Internet lingo was passable, but /b/ itself has a language all of its own. Hines, in "Virtual Ethnography" discusses how digital ethnographers have an advantage on traditional ethnographers, in that we can "Lurk" or covertly participate in cultural observations. Armed with urbandictionary.com, anyone who spends a few hours on /b/ could be participate on /b/ like a native.


Though Hines also writes about how we are not, in a purist sense, doing an "real" ethnography. The space and community exists in virtual space, and that distances us. Giving the feeling that the lurking on /b/ is "not quite" participant observation.


"The Wealth of Networks" Looks more widely at the Internet as a whole and how it effects the tech-junkie and the computer illiterate population. Benkler comments that conceptually, social norms are changing with social networking, Voip Internet phones and social information sites like wikipeida. The network of the Internet seems to keep us changing, rather than forcing us into a state of anomie.