‘Making friends with the neighbours’: Blogging as a research method

Abstract

During my research about women and surfing, I have found writing a blog useful as a tool for doing research in the cultural context of surfing. More than a simply a space to increase transparency in my ethnographic research process, blogging became a method of its own. Linking Elizabeth St Pierre’s discussion of research ‘folds’ with Elspeth Probyn’s encouragement to ‘think the social through myself’, blogging helped to address feminist concerns that research remains relevant to lived cultural understandings and experiences of the women participating. Blogging also helped in developing a language and a style of writing that reflects the experiences of surfing in a culturally meaningful way, and to provide a way of locating my own subjectivity within the research space. Through blogging I have been able to keep fieldnotes and ideas alive, engaged and in exchange throughout the project, moving and shifting through both theory and culture.