From Experience to Summit or Vice Versa? Netnography Study on a Virtual Community of Mountaineering

Abstract

Virtual communities have been a significant channel for people to share their feelings and experiences regarding a special issue. The combination of ethnography and the internet offers the opportunity for new methods of research that can potentially reach a broad audience in the online world. Thus, netnography, a combination of internet and ethnography, is an approach to analyze the online community systematically. This study aimed to reveal the experiences and feelings of a virtual community comprised of mountaineers in a virtual community. This research uses Kozinet's netnography approach on experiences and feelings, applied to a virtual community context, in order to better understand the nature of the sharing of a serious leisure community. The results of this study indicated that three main themes and nine sub-themes portray experiences, feelings, perceptions and group interaction of the virtual mountaineering community. This study emphasizes the themes of adventure experiences, preparation and supply, and completion, taking into account mountaineers' feelings and experiences in the virtual community.

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