e-notes

Still one of the best dicussions of the ethical aspects of online ethnogrphical research of the radical participatory kind follows a useful introduction to the topic by Terra Nova's Constance Steinkuehler.

One particularly fruitful perspective that emerged in that discussion is the idea of treating one's informants as fellow researchers, and citing them as one would any other source.

Assume the observations of these fellow researchers are published in public (as indeed they are, not the least on TN). To the extent that the ethnographer draws exclusively from those published observations, they will be able to draw up an ethnographic account unencumbered by the ethical dilemmas belingering traditional ethnographical research, whether conducted on- or off-line. True, one would have to discuss the comparative merits of different ethnographical approaches in this context. But with a range of excellent radically first-hand participant-observation studies of individual games having appeared in print during the past seven years or so, what we need is more accounts of the emerging aggregate picture. Issues that reach across individual games, issues that no individual researcher will be able to research first hand, given the time it takes to enculturate in any given game.

Posted at : May 24th, 2006 - 8:50 am
Filed under : Notes
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