1. Digital and Online
Ethnography
James Robson

2. Being a teacher in the digital
age: a digital ethnography of
religious education teachers’
engagement in online social
spaces

3. Research Questions
Aim: To investigate the meanings, related to their
professional lives and identities, that Religious
Education (RE) teachers derive from their engagement
in online social spaces.
How are RE teachers’ professional identities performed
through their engagement in online social spaces?
How are RE teachers professional identities constructed
through their engagement in online social spaces?
How is the engagement of RE teachers in online social
spaces influenced by power structures and the agendas
of related institutions, organizations, stakeholders and
interest groups?

4. Ethnography
Now embedded in academic culture as an appropriate
method of exploring the ways in which people use,
interact, engage and construct meanings on the Internet
(Hine, 2008:260)
Examination of use in a natural setting.
A method that valued users’ own perspectives and the
meanings they derived from their online engagement.
Enabling the researcher to place that within the context
of wider social and professional structures and academic
theory.

5. Ethnography of online contexts
Debate over how ethnography should be undertaken in
relation to online social spaces.
Novel methodology (virtual ethnography, netnography)
vs an extension of traditional anthropological approach
(Digital ethnography)

6. Field Boundaries: Online vs Offline
Early studies focused solely on online communities (Markham,
1998; Baym, 2000).
But the Internet is rarely a separate domain of virtual
experience (Miller and Slater, 2000).
Sharp dichotomous distinctions should be avoided between
online and offline (Horst, 2012). The Internet and offline
worlds are mutually related, intersecting contexts.
Internet research takes place in embedded contexts
(Bruckman, 2002). Therefore including offline contexts
improves understanding of phenomena within their
ethnographic context and add credibility to research findings.

7. Field as Multi-sited
A network of intersecting online and offline sites
(Marcus, 1995; Wittel, 2000)
A primary online site, with a wider field conceptualized,
linking other online spaces and offline ones (Orgad,
2006)

8. Digital Ethnography to me
I prefer the term digital ethnography as it avoids some
of the context specific connotations of more loaded
terms: netnography, virtual ethnography etc.
An extension of traditional anthropological ethnography
flexibly extending methods to fit changing contexts
rather than something novel.
Focused on online contexts, but conceptualizing the
wider field as including other online and offline sites.

9. Defining the Field
TES RE Forum
NATRE Facebook Page
Save RE Facebook Group
Offline sites (if not actually studied to be related to
primary field site when conceptually mapping the field)
– classrooms, schools, conferences, homes etc.

11. Entering the Field
Getting passed the gate keepers
 Started lurking
 Commercial interests in the project
Ongoing negotiations with the community
 Reminder posts; establishing ID as a researcher through
questionnaires etc.
 Using websites/ blogs to communicate with participants

12.  How much to participate
 Possibility of covert research online
 Participation risks influencing the nature, ethos or culture of field
site
 It risks loss of analytical clarity/ going native
 But
 Deepen experiences of sites
 Test concepts through direct experience
 Expose oneself to critique
 Ethical issues
 Peripheral-member researcher (DeWalt and DeWalt, 2002) – overt
presence, but maintaining sense of being an outsider
Data Collection Methods:
Participant Observation

13. Data Collection Methods:
Participant Observation
A year in the field: September 2011 – September 2012
Observing and participating in the spaces on a daily
basis for a year: reading posts, responding to posts,
starting threads, asking questions, privately messaging
users, forging contacts etc.
Checked three times a day (9:30am, 1pm, 8pm), using
desktop, laptop, iPad and iPhone.
Date as: fieldnotes, analyzable text (three 8 week long
samples), descriptive statistics

14. Data Collection: Interviews
 Semi-structured online and offline narrative interviews, rooted in
both ethnographic contexts.
 Modified life history approach
 Start online focused on people’s often rehearsed life stories, co-
constructing narratives that are jointly analysed and interrogated
with time and space for analytical insights to emerge.
 Moved offline where participants can be more spontaneous and
vulnerable.
 Builds trust, aids transition between ethnographic contexts, links
online and offline field sites
 Participants were recruited online, linked with observations, through
open calls or were specifically targeted. (8,7,5)

15. Other Sources of Data
Questionnaires
Conference attendance as a participant observer
Analysis of ‘grey literature’: main media outlets;
opinion pieces, political and educational blogs; Twitter
Elite interviews: NATRE executive committee; chair of
REC; Chair of REC PR sub-committee; Chair of NASACRE;
RE consultants and teacher trainers etc.

16. Analysis
Not necessarily a distinct stage of the research process:
embodied in the ethnographer throughout fieldwork
informing recruitment, interviews and direction of
fieldwork.
Data holistically analysed using Miles and Huberman
three main analytical steps: data reduction, data
display, drawing and verifying conclusion.
Nvivo, iAnnotate, Word Outline display

18. Group Task
Look at an online group/ community/ social space and
discuss:
What research questions you might ask/ what aspects of
that community would you study?
What data would you gather and what data collection
methods would you use?
What ethical issues might you encounter?
What can you tell about the community – what is its
social structure, what hierarchies exist, where are the
power relations etc?

19. Suggested communities
Wranglerstar YouTube Channel:
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMIjEnXruVHtvgSVf6TgfUg
Homebrew Forum:
http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/
Mudcat forum: http://mudcat.org/