Ethnography and Virtual Worlds

Ethnography and Virtual Worldsis the only book of its kind--a concise, comprehensive, and practical guide for students, teachers, designers, and scholars interested in using ethnographic methods to study online virtual worlds, including both game and nongame environments. Written by leading ethnographers of virtual worlds, and focusing on the key method of participant observation, the book provides invaluable advice, tips, guidelines, and principles to aid researchers through every stage of a project, from choosing an online fieldsite to writing and publishing the results. Provides practical and detailed techniques for ethnographic research customized to reflect the specific issues of online virtual worlds, both game and nongame Draws on research in a range of virtual worlds, including Everquest, Second Life, There.com, and World of Warcraft Provides suggestions for dealing with institutional review boards, human subjects protocols, and ethical issues Guides the reader through the full trajectory of ethnographic research, from research design to data collection, data analysis, and writing up and publishing research results Addresses myths and misunderstandings about ethnographic research, and argues for the scientific value of ethnography

Tom Boellstorff is professor of anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. His books include Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human. Bonnie Nardi is professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine. Her books include My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft. Celia Pearce is associate professor of digital media at Georgia Institute to Technology. Her books include Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds. T.L. Taylor is associate professor of comparative media studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her books include Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture.

Acknowledgments	p. xi
Foreword	p. xiii
Why this Handbook?	p. 1
Beginnings	p. 1
Why ethnographic methods and why virtual worlds?	p. 6
Why a handbook?	p. 8
An orientation to the virtual worlds we studied	p. 9
Three Brief Histories	p. 13
A brief history of ethnographic methods	p. 13
A brief history of virtual worlds	p. 22
A brief history of research on virtual world cultures	p. 25
The uses of history	p. 27
Ten Myths About Ethnography	p. 29
Ethnography is unscientific	p. 30
Ethnography is less valid than quantitative research	p. 36
Ethnography is simply anecdotal	p. 40
Ethnography is undermined by subjectivity	p. 41
Ethnography is merely intuitive	p. 42
Ethnography is writing about your personal experience	p. 43
Ethnographers contaminate fieldsites by their very presence	p. 44
Ethnography is the same as grounded theory	p. 45
Ethnography is the same as ethnomethodology	p. 46
Ethnography will become obsolete	p. 48
Research Design and Preparation	p. 52
Research questions: emergence, relevance, and personal interest	p. 52
Selecting a group or activity to study	p. 57
Scope of the fieldsite	p. 59
Attending to offline contexts	p. 61
Participant Observation in Virtual Worlds	p. 65
Participant observation in context	p. 65
Participant observation in practice	p. 69
Preparing the researching self	p. 72
Taking care in initiating relationships with informants	p. 76
Making mistakes	p. 79
Taking extensive fieldnotes	p. 82
Keeping data organized	p. 85
Participant observation and ethnographic knowledge	p. 87
The timing and duration of participant observation	p. 88
The experimenting attitude	p. 90
Interviews and Virtual Worlds Research	p. 92
The value of interviews in ethnographic research	p. 92
Effective interviewing	p. 94
The value of group interviews in ethnographic research	p. 104
Size, structure, and location for group interviews	p. 106
Transcription	p. 110
Other Data Collection Methods for Virtual Worlds Research	p. 113
Capturing chatlogs	p. 113
Capturing screenshots	p. 114
Capturing video	p. 116
Capturing audio	p. 117
Data collection in other online contexts	p. 118
Historical and archival research	p. 120
Virtual artifacts	p. 121
Offline interviews and participant observation	p. 124
Using quantitative data	p. 126
Ethics	p. 129
The principle of care	p. 129
Informed consent	p. 131
Mitigating institutional and legal risk	p. 135
Anonymity	p. 136
Deception	p. 142
Sex and intimacy	p. 144
Doing good and compensation	p. 146
Taking leave	p. 148
Accurate portrayal	p. 149
Human Subjects Clearance and Institutional Review Boards	p. 151
Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)	p. 151
Preparing a protocol for KB review	p. 153
Working with IRBs	p. 155
Informed consent and anonymity	p. 156
Data Analysis	p. 159
Ethnographic data analysis: flexibility and emergence	p. 159
Preliminary reflections while in the field	p. 160
The role of theory in data analysis	p. 162
Beginning data analysis: systematize and thematize	p. 164
Working with participant observation data	p. 168
Working with individual and group interview data	p. 170
Working with images, video, and textual data	p. 172
The end of the data analysis phase: from themes to narratives and arguments	p. 174
Generalization and comparison	p. 176
Writing Up, Presenting, and Publishing Ethnographic Research	p. 182
The early stages of writing up: conferences, drafts, blogs	p. 182
Written genres	p. 185
Dissemination	p. 186
The writing process	p. 190
A quick trip back to the field?	p. 192
Tone, style, and audience	p. 193
Conclusion: Arrivals and New Departures	p. 196
References	p. 201
Index	p. 223
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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Ethnography and Virtual Worlds

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