Doing Ethnography on Social Media: A Methodological Reflection on the Study of Online Groups in China

Abstract

This article draws on the two authors’ extensive fieldwork experiences in studying Chinese feminists and lawyers on social media to offer some thoughts on how to conduct qualitative research in the digitalized world. We argue that qualitative methods such as participation observation, in-depth interview, and textual analysis can provide thick descriptions and deep, localized knowledge of social processes that go far beyond the sketches of Big Data. Social science data collection and analysis on social media need not only Big Data’s bird’s-eye view, but also the day-to-day ethnographic immersion—“living on the sites” and interacting with research subjects over a long period of time. The rise of social media has not changed the basic principles of doing ethnography, such as the importance of immersion and reflexivity. Nevertheless, ethnography of online groups presents new challenges and opportunities in terms of accessing field sites, analyzing ethnographic data, and research ethics.

An Alternative Method of Interviewing: Critical Reflections on Videoconference Interviews for Qualitative Data Collection

“…Critical to the interview forum are further rapport-related issues, including the researchers’ identity or positionality (e.g., social position) and personality, and also the interviewee’s personality (e.g., reserved or introvert) (Deakin & Wakefield, 2014; Mirick & Wladkowski, 2019). When these are issues for videoconference interviews, certain strategies can help researchers to develop rapport (Wang & Liu, 2021). Roberts et al (2021) asserted that the researcher’s positionality (as an outsider) requires intentional actions to grasp the context of the study, which helps build rapport as these actions involve additional, creative, innovative, and purposive efforts.…”

Beyond Patient-Provider Relationships: Expanding the Roles and Boundaries of Families during Patient End-of-Life

“…While we could identify a variety of HCP positions through self-disclosure, it was not possible to gain this information on all individuals. Access in online ethnography presents a trade-off between an increased research population and deepening information for each participant in that population seen with traditional ethnography (Wang & Liu, 2021). Furthermore, although the forum captured the views of many different types of healthcare providers, not all types of providers are represented within these data.…”

Co-Presence and Contingency: Comics as a Methodological Innovation in Researching Automated Futures

“…For instance, interest in global neocolonialism, capitalism, and financial flows motivated multisited research (Marcus, 2005). The rise of the internet and associated networked questions inspired a number of "virtual" ethnographic works with online communities (Boellstorff, 2008;Wang & Liu, 2021;Wilson & Peterson, 2002), which has intensified recently as a pragmatic response to the COVID-19 pandemic (Howlett, 2021). The rise of studies of expert communities (Holmes & Marcus, 2008), particularly in ethnographic Science and Technology Studies (STS), has further required conceptual expansions of the field.…”