Suchergebnisse

This edited collection brings together leading academics in the field to explore the ways in which digital and non-digital artifacts shape how groups and collectives organize. It focuses on the idea of materiality and the interactions between the social and the technical in organizations, at work, and in technologies.

Cover -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Foreword -- CHAPTER 1. WHY THIS HANDBOOK? -- 1.1 Beginnings -- 1.2 Why ethnographic methods and why virtual worlds? -- 1.3 Why a handbook? -- 1.4 An orientation to the virtual worlds we studied -- CHAPTER 2. THREE BRIEF HISTORIES -- 2.1 A brief history of ethnographic methods -- 2.2 A brief history of virtual worlds -- 2.3 A brief history of research on virtual world cultures -- 2.4 The uses of history -- CHAPTER 3. TEN MYTHS ABOUT ETHNOGRAPHY -- 3.1 Ethnography is unscientific -- 3.2 Ethnography is less valid than quantitative research -- 3.3 Ethnography is simply anecdotal -- 3.4 Ethnography is undermined by subjectivity -- 3.5 Ethnography is merely intuitive -- 3.6 Ethnography is writing about your personal experience -- 3.7 Ethnographers contaminate fieldsites by their very presence -- 3.8 Ethnography is the same as grounded theory -- 3.9 Ethnography is the same as ethnomethodology -- 3.10 Ethnography will become obsolete -- CHAPTER 4. RESEARCH DESIGN AND PREPARATION -- 4.1 Research questions: emergence, relevance, and personal interest -- 4.2 Selecting a group or activity to study -- 4.3 Scope of the fieldsite -- 4.4 Attending to offline contexts -- CHAPTER 5. PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION IN VIRTUAL WORLDS -- 5.1 Participant observation in context -- 5.2 Participant observation in practice -- 5.3 Preparing the researching self -- 5.4 Taking care in initiating relationships with informants -- 5.5 Making mistakes -- 5.6 Taking extensive fieldnotes -- 5.7 Keeping data organized -- 5.8 Participant observation and ethnographic knowledge -- 5.9 The timing and duration of participant observation -- 5.10 The experimenting attitude -- CHAPTER 6. INTERVIEWS AND VIRTUAL WORLDS RESEARCH -- 6.1 The value of interviews in ethnographic research -- 6.2 Effective interviewing