Plan B... and that's final!

Well, it's been quite a while since my last post! I've been pretty active with my research since I last wrote here, but am completely guilty of not keeping you, my fellow Soci/Anth 498'ers, up to date with my research, insights, and findings. I promise to make it up to you all in the next few days. I've kept physical notes (pen & paper–yup, they still exist!!) throughout the process of my research and hope to post them here in the next few days either by transcribing them or simply scanning the notes, uploading them to my server, and posting the links.

After I last wrote, I kept spinning my wheels unsuccessfully trying to figure out a topic for my research. As noted earlier, I knew the research would be conducted in Facebook, it was just a matter of establishing an area of focus and determining the research question I chose to pursue. I had a real hard time narrowing down the topic and also formulating a plan to conduct my research.

It became apparent to me that the issues I was facing were founded in the nature of the research itself rather than the subject matter. I was not familiar enough with the process of conducting an ethnography to feel completely comfortable with pursuing that avenue. Perhaps it is because of my sociology background, or perhaps because, simply through chance or bad luck, I have never really covered the process and methodologies practiced in ethnographical research throughout my undergraduate studies. We touched on this type of qualitative research briefly during the Soci 310 research methods course, but really did not go into very much detail about the proper methods of conducting an ethnography. I've watched Tiger Woods win the Masters on television, it doesn't mean I'm ready to pack my golf back and head to Augusta for a round of 18! Instead I decided to explore the second option of research available for this course–reviewing a published ethnography in the field of cyberspace research.

The more I thought about this option, the obvious benefits became more and more clear to me. The advantages were two-fold. First I can gain insight into ethnographic research and the methodology employed to conduct the research. By keeping a keen eye open for the procedure employed by the author, I could learn more about the process as well as become aware of the advantages and, conversely, shortcomings of this research method and its' application by the author. The second advantage of reviewing an already published ethnography is that I can learn more about the subject matter of the ethnography, cyberspace sociology, without having to worry if the methods employed in my own research are being conducted properly. 

After speaking with Dr. Forte last month, and receiving the green-light on reviewing an ethnography, I narrowed the four choices available down to the ethnography Inuit in Cyberspace: Embedding Offline Identities by Neil Blair Christensen. Various factors came into play that led me to choose this ethnography over the others. I will get into the selection process during my next blog post, as well as share some of the intial thoughts, questions, and comments as I read through this thoroughly entertaing and inciteful ethnography.