Virtual and Reciprocal Ethnography on the Internet: The East Mims Oral History Project Website

Abstract

This article examines a problem in the design of folklore websites: in what ways can technology be used to build into the documentation process itself an ethnographic guide to the materials that incorporates the folkgroup's own understanding of those materials, and how they can be best presented to the public? In examining this problem, the article focuses on the potential of digital media for addressing two concerns of contemporary folkloristics—reflexivity and ethnographic storytelling.

Online Communication Settings and the Qualitative Research Process: Acclimating Students and Novice Researchers

“…Under ideal circumstances when writing about and participating in digital environments, the user experience "transports" the participant to a simulated space that connotes a form of sensory "immersion." It is precisely this transportation-which can include virtual environments, online community forums, even asynchronous social media sites-that makes the process and the encounters it entails so promising for good storytelling (Danet, 2001;Underberg, 2006).…”

7 Authorship and context: Writing and text production as situated activities

“…Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or Youtube encourage social actors to seek and share new information creating new forms of mediated visibility, changing the nature of communication and at the same time changing the traditional relationship between political authority, mass media and the public, thereby making it easier for the general public to collaborate and express opinions or concerns. Research methods such as online or digital ethnography (Underberg 2006) try to answer questions about the constitution of social groups in and through the World Wide Web, combining systematic observation of postings on various internet sites with interviews with individuals about their practices (Androutsopoulos 2006). But there are still remaining questions about the interplay between written discourse in the World Wide Web, especially in social media and social spheres like politics and economy (Self and Hawisher 2004).…”

Oral Communication and Technical Writing: A Reconsideration of Writing in a Multicultural Era

“…Moreover, the critical study by Brophy and Craven aims to provide the Web interactivity to the blind, which eventually is not feasible with text. At its center of Cultural Heritage Alliance, the University of Central Florida (USA) has launched a Website whose interactivity accommodates oral groups from Africa, with their drums and dances [45]. Interactivity on the Web has been offering by far more than text.…”