Turning ethnography on its head in research about internet sexual offending

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on methods from a 17-month ethnography in UK group programmes for 81 users of online child sexual exploitation material. It analyses the affordances and restrictions of conducting research in a defined programme/service and professional setting segmented from participants’ everyday lives, as well as procedures put in place for enhanced participant anonymity, confidentiality, privacy, and boundaries. The article demonstrates that the setting and methods resulted in limitations that were simultaneously assets, arguing that information about online sexual offending would likely not have been gleaned otherwise. As a result, the typical ethnographic trajectory was turned on its head: sensitive information rarely told to anyone was divulged in detail, while basic elements about participants, their social networks, and their lives were not. This invites researchers to consider which tenets of ethnography are immovable versus flexible, and the types of information that can/should be obtained through certain methods for specific topics.