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'Being There': questions of proximity and power in the ethnographic study of networked learning communities
Type of publication: Misc
Citation: 316
Year: 2005
Month: 2
Note: Ferreday 23-25 February 2005 - 'Being There' js, 27.05.2007
URL: http://www.malts.ed.ac.uk/ice2...
Abstract: Debra Ferreday Lancaster University, UK 'Being There': questions of proximity and power in the ethnographic study of networked learning communities In recent years, there has been increasing debate around the question of 'presence' or 'telepresence' in online societies (Stratton 1997; Milne 2003). It has been widely argued that online communications create a sense of presence, in which participants are imagined as being brought into intimate proximity to one another (Milne 2003). This notion of presence is also prevalent in theories of ethnographic research. Therefore, this paper draws on ethnographic studies of networked management learning communities to examine critically the ways in which 'presence' is invoked to create a fantasy of virtual ethnography as 'authentic' knowledge. This opens up key question for ethnographic studies of networked learning: if one wishes necessary to pay attention to the issues of power, authority and difference that are at stake in networked communities, what form might this 'paying attention' take in practice? By invoking the notion of 'presence', ethnography is in danger of producing power relationships of its own. In her study of virtual ethnography, Christine Hine agues that the ethnographer is in danger of defining participants as Other, to the extent that only the ethnographer is defined as a subject and hence as capable of really 'being there' (Hine 2000). However, the notion of proximity can also open up the possibility of a more complex understanding of power relations, often in surprising ways: as Suchman argues, organisational anthropology often involves 'the juxtaposition of anthropologist as investigator of the exotic Other, with anthropologist as exotic Other in the mundane, familiar halls of the corporate workplace' (Suchman 2000). This paper will build on Hine's compelling account of the debates surrounding what might be termed 'virtual presence', to suggest that networked ethnography might enable us to recognise online spaces precisely as a space in which the interconnectedness of written and verbal communication is made visible. This is not to suggest a technocentric view, in which the internet is seen as having particular properties that are different to those of other (offline) sites of sociality. Rather, whilst network ethnography pays attention to the particularity of the online space being studied, it also opens up the possibility of deconstructing the binary model of speech and writing that is implicit in some studies of ethnography and of understanding how the two are inter-related in offline as well as online communications. that is, by paying attention to one's own weak and strong ties to the participants and their communities - it should be possible to attain new insights into both the community being studied, and the practice of ethnography itself. Network theory might allow for an analysis of networked learning that cuts across existing notions of community, with their often utopian focus on consensus and collaboration. In particular, the notion of 'presence' seems to echo the idea that close ties are crucial for the dissemination of 'authentic' knowledge. References Hine, C. (2000). Virtual Ethnography. London, Sage Publications. Milne, E. (2003). 'Email and Epistolary technologies: Presence, Intimacy, Disembodiment.' Fibreculture 2(2). Stratton, J. (1997). 'Not Really Desiring Bodies: The Rise and Fall of Email Affairs.'Media International Australia 33. Suchman, L. (2000). 'Anthropology as 'Brand': Reflections on corporate anthropology'. Lancaster, Department of Sociology, Lancaster University.
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Authors Ferreday, Debra
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