Because online ethnographers are not necessarily physically co-present with their research subjects, they must conduct participant observation through computer-mediated interaction and develop the technological, social and cultural competencies necessary to fully participate in online settings, as well as improve their skills in the analysis of textual and visual data. Garcia et al.
(2009) remark that in online methods the nature of the participant observation changes because what we observe are mainly visual and textual arrangements, and participation is mostly based on textual and visual interchanges with the
05-Pink_AVM-4366-Ch-05.indd 82 07/03/2012 10:52:40 AM
Virtual/Visual Ethnography 83
participants of our research. Technologically mediated fieldwork raises a whole set of questions that virtual and visual ethnographers share. In fact, research experience is an intensively mediated experience, both for ‘visual’ and ‘virtual’
ethnographers: the camera, like any Internet technology, is central to the social relations and events the ethnographer is involved in.
One of the main methodological and epistemological questions posed by visual ethnography refers to the implications of the use of cameras in the field: what are the consequences of using a camera in fieldwork for the sub-jects, for the data and the knowledge produced? The answer largely depends on the epistemological framework and how the camera is used in the field, including the conceptualisation of the technology by the researchers and participants.
For scholars who view ethnography as naturalistic research, the camera is often perceived as a disrupting element that alters the behaviour of subjects in the field, leading them to question data authenticity. The methodological cor-relate is the reluctance to use the camera, or to ensure that it is almost invisible to the social actors. Such approaches are usually accompanied by an under-standing of the technology as a recording tool that does not interfere with the ethnographic field (Heider, 2006). From other positions closer to phenomenol-ogy, ethnographic film is the product of an encounter between the researcher and the subjects, and audiovisual data is the result of a co-production that occurs during fieldwork (McDougall, 2006). The ethnography is considered to be intersubjective and the camera is a social actor that gives access to the flow of shared experiences. In other words, the use of the camera during fieldwork does not only have expected consequences for the type of data constructed, but it is also a key element for the field experience itself. Thus, the ethnographer is not trying to prevent the camera from intruding, but rather she is prompted to accept its presence as part of the field relationships. Sarah Pink, for example, has stated that the camera was helpful and relevant in the construction of her identity during her fieldwork on the bullfighting culture in the south of Spain (Pink, 2007); and, as I have discussed elsewhere (Ardévol, 2006), the camera is a theoretical tool that interplays with the gaze of the researcher and her data to envisage new theoretical horizons.
Parallel to the claim that cameras may distort natural behaviour, Internet researchers are faced with the extended belief that online interactions are not
‘real’ or are less authentic than face-to-face encounters (Kendall, 2004). People may lie to the researcher and online behaviour and identity may not correspond to a ‘real’ identity and ‘real’ life behaviour. In both cases, the use of technology has been seen as interfering between the ethnographer and the subjects dur-ing participant observation, posdur-ing questions of authenticity and data validity.
Moreover, the technology contributes to shaping the context of research and
05-Pink_AVM-4366-Ch-05.indd 83 07/03/2012 10:52:40 AM
84 Elisenda Ardévol
the mode of interaction and relationship of the participants. Hine discusses the question of authenticity in online social interaction as something that is negotiated and sustained by the social actors themselves. Thus the researcher does not always need to clear up the ‘actual’ identity of the online actors to give them credibility, but to analyse how they manage authenticity for their claims (Hine, 2000). Instead of considering the presence of technology in fieldwork as a ‘distortion’, many visual and virtual ethnographers consider it an ‘opportunity’
to rethink ethnographic methodological assumptions and to reformulate some of their knowledge practices. The solution is not to banish technology from our methods, but to incorporate it reflexively. Visual and virtual ethnographers have had to deal with reflexivity in relation to the technologies they use (Hine, 2000; Ruby, 1980); the quality of the data they manage; how it contributes to their theoretical perspectives (Loizos, 2000; Seale et al., 2010); and how tech-nological mediation participates in defining the very context of research and limits of their field site (Burrell, 2009; Pink, 2007).
The notion of technological mediation allows us to decentralise methodologi-cal problems from a specific research practice linked to a particular technology, whether it is the camera or the Internet, and to situate in the same epistemic scenario diverse methodological practices and technologies. In doing so, the methodological questions faced by visual and virtual researchers enhance, reformulate and renew each other.
The incorporation of the Internet as part of the ethnographic field has a two-fold dimension: first, it is a strategy to participate in the same setting as the participants, to establish rapport and share interactions, and second, it is an opportunity to reflexively interrogate the technological artifacts that take part in the very social interactions and practices the ethnographer is involved in. For studying blogging practices, Estalella (2008) created his own blog and for studying self-produced videos, in my own work (Ardévol and San Cornelio, 2007) I had to open a YouTube account and upload my own videos, as did Michael Wesch in his proposal to introduce YouTube for teaching ethnography (www.youtube.com/user/mwesch). Others, like Taylor (2002) and Boellstorff (2008), created their avatars to fully participate in the virtual worlds they study.
As Taylor puts it:
Presence is one of the most elusive and evocative aspects of vir-tual systems – and yet it forms the very foundation on which immersion is built. It goes to the heart of what feels ‘real’ and creates the quality of experience that signals to us ‘I am here’
(Taylor, 2002: 42)
For Estalella, to open a blog was, on the one hand, a strategy of co-presence with his subjects of study, enabling them to interact with him through the same
05-Pink_AVM-4366-Ch-05.indd 84 07/03/2012 10:52:40 AM
Virtual/Visual Ethnography 85
blogging practices he was studying; on the other hand, it gave him first-hand experience of the backstage and onstage contexts of the blogging practices he was interested in. However, it cannot substitute the ‘field diary’ to annotate observations and impressions; it is the point of reference of the researcher in the field. The ‘fieldblog’ guided the researcher’s experience, provided him cred-ibility and rapport, and allowed him to inform bloggers about his research, thus responding to elementary ethical concerns (Estalella and Ardévol, 2007: 52).
There, the field was constructed through networking, since the blogosphere is not like a virtual world with delimited boundaries that can be accessed through a click. Blogging appears to be mainly a writing and reading practice, or at least, that is what we usually think when thinking about blogs. Yet it goes beyond this. In their daily practice, the bloggers brought into play many other devices apart from the blog, such as image and video services and repositories of favorite links. They also have formal and informal meetings where taking photos, chatting or conferencing about blogs are part of their activity. There are many blogging-related practices that do not take part in front of the screen and that the ethnographer recalls by interviews, field notes, photos and vid-eos (Estalella, 2008). So, the result is a heterogeneous collection of visual and textual data, most of it produced in online interactions, some of it emanating from the bloggers’ self-productions which circulate through different Internet platforms, and other data which is produced by the ethnographer.
Internet data is easy to record, using screen capture programs or by sav-ing naturally occurrsav-ing conversation in instant messagsav-ing or webcam confer-ences. An online ethnographer can digitally record her or his visit to a website and replay it at will, stopping, starting and moving around the data as needed (Garcia et al., 2009: 64), creating ‘movies’ of his or her interaction with the website or recording online interviews with a webcam.
The camera registers sound and image, but as visual ethnographers are aware, our data is more than the audiovisual record. On the one hand, what happens in the field exceeds the recorded piece, and, on the other hand, what we have selected to film carries the theoretical charge of the researcher’s interpreta-tion. Therefore, we keep taking notes about information and impressions that images cannot capture. Internet data is easy to record and archive; we can cap-ture records on screen that are the exact products of textual interaction and no transcription is needed. However, what is happening is more than what is on the screen, and the task of the virtual ethnographer is to provide context to the online interaction and the captured data. Sometimes, the process of analysing them is similar to what in visual ethnography has been called ‘differed obser-vation’ (de France, 1989).
As in the case of visual ethnography, the virtual researcher’s and participants’
online interaction is registered technologically – textual interactions, comments
05-Pink_AVM-4366-Ch-05.indd 85 07/03/2012 10:52:40 AM
86 Elisenda Ardévol
or photos can be captured by specific tools, but generally they are kept in the blog archives, can be retrieved by the researcher and the participants, and some-times are open and accessible to anyone. Thus, although they are textual and visual records, the nature of online interaction registers differ, posing consider-able ethical problems that are difficult to solve. Ethical problems of Internet researchers relate to image rights (Gross et al., 1991, 2003), as well as consid-erations about anonymity and privacy regarding the traces that fieldwork may leave on the Internet archives (Bakardjieva and Feenberg, 2001).