Go Live! Der User-Livestream als Präsentationsbühne

Giving In on the Field

“…Nevertheless, we argue that personal experience and learning during the research progress has to be seen as significantly relevant when conducting ethnographic research online. In our case, passing meant differentiating certain possibilities and limitations that come with online livestreams in cases of observation and production practices (Kirschner 2012, 2013). This first step provided us with the possibility to actually take part in where the action is, as well as experience the typical field constituting relevance.…”

“…Following the concept of Karin Knorr Cetina, such situations can be seen as “synthetic” (Knorr Cetina 2009) in the way that these social situations, when observed and experienced, constitute a “patchwork of parallel, itemized flows” (72), which are generated, maintained, and observed by everyone involved even though they are locally unbound. Following this concept, the subject-based manipulative zone may become extended by media in such a way that the resulting media setting provides participants with the possibility of “delocalized co-presence” (Kirschner 2013, 162). Participants in these situations share a continuous stretch of attention and experience (see Knorr Cetina 2003), often resulting in a “gathering” (Goffman 1963, 19) that is experienced individually via a respective screen and other manipulative interfaces.…”

“…Hence, we began our research by acquiring explicit knowledge through participant observation, including forum research, video tutorials, and personally setting up nonpublic online livestreams. Through this, we were able to differentiate the technological backbone that constitutes the vast range of channels and their respective content, as well as differentiate between TV-like, non-feedback-channel livestreams and user livestreams (Kirschner 2013). With this first stage of our research, we framed the future progress since we could thereafter focus on answering “what is going on here.” Before this categorization, our access to the field was simply shut off because we were neither able to comprehend nor compare different online-livestreams.…”