Online Participant Observation Research Articles

Abstinence for the sake of modest success: a Chinese anti-masturbation group’s path to individualisation

ABSTRACT Based on three-month online participant observation in “Jie Se Ba,” a male-dominated pornography abstinence forum with 6 million users, this article explores how low-status men in China recode the requirements of Chinese individualisation by using China’s traditional ethics in order to make individualisation accessible to themselves. I examine their aspirations as desiring selves, their means of self-mastery and the community culture they have established. Due to a lack of financial power, educational background, and cultural resources, members of this group disengage from mainstream desires for financial success and middle-class-style self-fashioning practices. Instead, by appropriating traditional Chinese sexual ethics, they set more modest family-centred aspirations and adopt jiese, or masturbation abstinence, as a means of practicing self-mastery to build their striving selves. In their efforts to integrate themselves into Chinese individualisation, they accept and express a set of conservative gender-sex and familial ethics. This article argues that such a situation is caused, at root, by a social mechanism within Chinese individualisation that restricts, excludes and stigmatises low-status groups.

EXPLORING ONLINE COMMUNICATIVE ACTS OF A TEACHER IN A SECONDARY SCHOOL SCIENCE CLASS IN TURKIYE: AN ANALYSIS OF USERS’ PRACTICES AND PERCEPTIONS

<p>This qualitative case study explores how a teacher positions himself in a social networking platform to create a learning environment in a secondary school science class in Turkiye. Sixty-six students’ and their science teacher’s interactions on a social networking platform have been observed for one year and nine months. Online and face-to-face interviews, online participant observation, and documentation were used for data generation during the first nine months. The data was analysed with an inductive thematic approach. The results revealed that the teacher created a sustainable online learning platform through four main communication acts: Initiative, Reflective, Supportive, and Informative. In particular, the teacher’s initiative and supportive behaviours in the online platform increased student engagement and created a sense of care. Regarding the student’s engagement, the teacher’s communicative acts’ informal nature is perceived as more important by the students than the type of communication itself. It was underlined that there is a need to redefine middle school teachers’ presence in a social media platform where the effectiveness of learning increases if they become an `insider` rather than an instructor.</p><p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/soc/0057/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Cybernationalist authoritarianism: Fangirls’ peer production of the virtual celebrity ‘Oppa China’

This study has two research objectives. The first is to analyse a case of Chinese ‘cybernationalist authoritarianism’, which I define as the ideological articulation and practical conjoining of cybernationalism and digital authoritarianism. This intriguing case involves the peer production of a virtual celebrity called ‘Oppa China’ (阿中哥哥) by fangirls (饭圈女孩) in China. The empirical analysis contributes to ongoing debates on whether cybernationalists mainly serve or undermine authoritarianism in China. My second objective is to theoretically explore the rising phenomenon of cybernationalist authoritarianism. This exploration contributes to studies on the contemporary transformation of nationalism and authoritarianism. I approach the two objectives by analysing cybernationalist authoritarianism in terms of the interplay between cybernationalism and digital authoritarianism. I find that peer production is the key novel characteristic of cybernationalism and that authoritarian legitimation is the main imperative of digital authoritarianism. My analysis illustrates how the peer production of new and multiple cybernationalisms serves as well as undermines authoritarian legitimation. This study’s data include in-depth interviews, informal interviews, various documentary sources, big data from Weibo, and online participant observation.

The Chinese Diaspora and The Attempted WeChat Ban: Platform Precarity, Anticipated Impacts, and Infrastructural Migration

In August 2020, the U.S. President issued an executive order to ban the Chinese-based social platform WeChat, alleging that WeChat posed a national security risk. WeChat is a vital application for Chinese diasporic communities in the United States. The ban's status was uncertain for several months before it was temporarily halted and later revoked in 2021. Through interviews with 15 WeChat users and online participant observation, this study examines the anticipated impacts of the potential WeChat ban and participants' reactions. We find that participants described negative consequences of the potential ban, including adverse network and economic effects and disruption of community-building efforts. We also find that many participants considered WeChat to be critical infrastructure in the United States, as it has become an indispensable part of their daily lives. To frame participants' experiences, we introduce the concept of infrastructural migration-the process of users relocating to another digital media service that embodies the properties and functions of infrastructure or moving to an assemblage of different applications that meet their infrastructural needs separately. We then discuss implications for designing for infrastructural migration and future considerations for HCI research with diasporic communities.

Implicit, Explicit, and Structural Barriers and Facilitators for Information and Communication Technology Access in Older Adults.

Older adults’ usage of information and communication technology (ICT) is challenged or facilitated by perception of usefulness, technology design, gender, social class, and other unspoken and political elements. However, studies on the use of ICT by older adults have traditionally focused on explicit interactions (e.g., usability). The article then analyzes how symbolic, institutional, and material elements enable or hinder older adults from using ICT. Our ethnographic methodology includes several techniques with Spanish older adults: 15 semi-structured interviews, participant observation in nine ICT classes, online participant observation on WhatsApp and Jitsi for 3 months, and nine phone interviews due to COVID-19. The qualitative data were analyzed through Situational Analysis. We find that the elements hindering or facilitating ICT practice are implicit-symbolic (children’s surveillance, paternalism, fear, optimism, low self-esteem, and contradictory speech-act), explicit-material (affordances, physical limitations, and motivations), and structural-political (management, the pandemic, teaching, and media skepticism). Furthermore, unprivileged identities hampered the ICT practices: female gender, blue-collar jobs, illiteracy, and elementary education. However, being motivated to use ICT prevailed over having unprivileged identities. The study concludes that society and researchers should perceive older adults as operative with technologies and examine beyond explicit elements. We urge exploration of how older adults’ social identities and how situatedness affects ICT practice. Concerning explicit elements, Spanish authorities should improve and adapt ICT facilities at public senior centers and older adults’ homes, and ICT courses should foster tablet and smartphone training over computers.

Re-thinking virtual writing retreats in the Covid-19 higher education environment

This paper aims to explore the role of virtual writing retreats in supporting postgraduate students and enhancing the quality of their learning experience in the COVID-19 higher education environment. Besides treating the writing retreats as sessions exclusively organized to foster writing productivity for established academics and doctoral students, the first lockdown in April 2020 demonstrated the various ways in which virtual writing retreats can support postgraduate students. The discussion draws on a five-month intense (auto-)ethnographic work involving 15 Master’s full-time students and Graduate Teaching Assistants from the London School of Economics and Political Science (United Kingdom). From April to September 2020, we ran 44 writing retreats on Zoom for a total of 352 hours. Responding to concepts of community of practice, social support, productivity and isolation/alienation, we have explored virtual writing retreats as a way to: 1) build a community, 2) create a virtual library, 3) combat isolation, and last but not least, 4) maintain productivity, in a context of crisis (and beyond). According to qualitative feedback and online participant observation, virtual writing retreats can create communities and generate emotional support—something that has fostered student communication and interaction despite physical distance and social constraints. Writing retreats can create a virtual library that helps maintain productivity, overcome writer’s block and enhance students’ learning experience. Based on this, we propose that the emotional support and productivity enhancement that emerged through and by virtual writing retreats, improve the quality of student learning experience—catering to both students’ wellbeing and academic performance.

Digitally situated knowledge: Connectivism, anthropology and epistemological pluralism

The paper proposes that an effective response to the emerging paradigm of digital education entails a transdisciplinary approach, which integrates insights from education with concepts and methods from social anthropology. It argues that certain flourishing models of knowledge production in digital environments (communities of inquiry, communities of practice) can be comprehended by online participant observation and by critically interrogating dominant western models of formal education. It further supports that situated learning can shed light on the processes and dynamics of online collaborative learning in the digital era, in which theories of connectivism tend to overshadow human agency. Acknowledging the historically and culturally contingent character of our epistemologies, the paper introduces epistemological pluralism as paramount for educational research on digital education.

Mobilizing a pluralist theoretical approach to understand microlending digital platforms: the AfricaMC case

Purpose This study aims to explore how a microlending digital platform connects social investors in developed countries and micro-entrepreneurs in Africa. However, additional research is necessary to discuss how online auction models are designed and implemented and how existing theories can explain their use in the so-called developing countries. Design/methodology/approach The research is based on a single case study: an online auction model for microlending named AfricaMC. Two main methods collected empirical data, namely, online participant observation, i.e. real-time participation in the online auction market and in the forum of discussions, where the authors observed the processes of microlending transactions as registered members; analysis of online documents, by reviewing forum discussions, analyzing reports, blogs, chats and other materials. Findings The results suggest that using sociological and information systems theoretical lenses in a complementary manner could provide greater value than using economics. Originality/value The study makes two main contributions. First, it mobilizes a pluralist theoretical approach based on economic, sociological and information systems perspectives to improve the understanding of microlending digital platforms using online auction models. Second, it uses the understanding produced from data analysis of one particular African case to validate propositions derived from these three theoretical approaches that might be applied to other cases.

The discursive construction of blackness on WhatsApp status posts in Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT The paper unpacks the discursive construction of black Zimbabwean identities through multimodal WhatsApp status update posts by Zimbabweans on the WhatsApp social media platform. Cognisant that WhatsApp constitutes part of the public sphere where public discourses are generated and shaped, it explores and interrogates how status update content provoke and inspire identity discourses that perpetuate unequal racial relations that we argue are rooted in colonialism and its legacies. It deploys netnography to collect data through online participant observation over a one-year period. Theoretically, the data analysis deploys Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis and Coloniality to demonstrate that the analysed posts generate meaning through interactions across multiple modes and that racial stereotypes articulated in the data texts are rooted in notions of Western colonial hegemony. The paper argues that the WhatsApp status posts constitute semiotic modes that articulate and disseminate ideological value-positions that ridicule blackness and extol white racial supremacy. It is concluded that hidden in the status posts are white racial hegemony and negative attitudes against black racial identity, widely consumed and which, if left unchallenged, undercut what anti-colonial struggles sought to correct.

Shifting from offline to online collaborative music-making, teaching and learning: perceptions of Ethno artistic mentors

ABSTRACT Turino’s ([2008]. Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.) distinctions between live and recorded fields can act as an effective framework for furthering academic understandings of how music teaching and learning has been impacted by the shift to online musical practice due to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. This study investigates the effect this has had on Ethno World, JM-International’s programme for folk, world and traditional music. They support youth folk music gatherings in over 23 countries and responded to the restrictions by devising ‘The Hope sessions’, online tune learning workshops, and the ‘Exchange sessions’, online folk music collaborations. This research is a hybrid ethnographic investigation of these two programmes. Hybrid ethnography is situated in a digital and physical environment (Przbylski, [2021]. Hybrid Ethnography: Online, Offline and In Between. SAGE Publications.). Data was gathered through online participant observation and interviews with artistic mentors and co-ordinators of the online programmes. Findings reveal a tension between values of inclusivity and aesthetic quality suggesting artistic mentors have needed to adjust their goals, conceptions and roles within the musical practice. These findings provide timely insight into how pedagogical approaches change when they shift from an offline to online context.

Public self-censorship in WhatsApp intra-group communication in Zimbabwe

The social networking sites have been lauded for their ability to offer mediascapes that enable the full exercise of individual rights and freedoms; such as the right to privacy on social networking sites, freedom of expression and association, among others. This is significant given that the majority of the world’s population now has a significant presence on social media. Communication trends indicate a shift from interaction in the real/physical world to more interactions andtransactions occurring online or in virtual space. This necessitates an exploration of the extent to which privacy and freedom of expression are guaranteed in online interactions. The study reveals the perpetuation of a spiral of silence whereby participants in intra-group communication engage in public self-censorship. Using online participant observation, in which the researcher used data collected from four WhatsApp groups, and the Censorship regimes model, the study interrogates how public self-censoring is implicated even in spaces where no such censoring is otherwise not required.

A digital promised land? Digital landscape as a heterotopia for disabled people in China

ABSTRACT This article applies Foucault’s concepts of heterotopia and governmentality to further explore the complexity of the relationship between disability and the digital landscape. To do so, we focus on the digital disability practices in China, where there are 85 million disabled people in residence. Based on ethnographic online participant observation, we explain why and how China’s digital landscape serves as a heterotopia of disability governmentality through practices of ‘conduct-of-conduct’, ‘counter-conduct’, and ‘self-conduct’. This qualitative research demonstrates why and how the Chinese government utilizes the digital landscape to govern disabled people, while the disabled people in the country resist this governance and attempt to self-govern. This study’s results suggest three theoretical implications for future studies – a possible spatial turn in disability studies, a need in disability research to highlight the state’s role, and a heterotopic imagination when researching disability and the digital landscape.

Networked Remembrance in the Time of Insta-Memories

Since its invention, photography has always maintained a close relationship with the concept of preserving memory of the past and stopping the passage of time. In the digital age, this function is influenced by the arrival of the internet, social media platforms, and smart phones. Considering recent technological developments, this article explores the practice of photosharing on Instagram and how this popular platform is changing the way people think about and practice visual remembering. To do so, this article explores these issues qualitatively, using netnography, computer-mediated interviews, online participant observation, and visual content analysis. Findings show that digital photography does not walk away from its traditional function of maintaining memories of the past—instead new and creative practices have developed. In allowing users to share visual narratives, Instagram has led to the creation of “networked archives” of both personal and collective memories.

Seeking Seclusion, Embracing Decline: A Qualitative Enquiry Into the Long-Term Development of a Private Online Community

This article analyzes the development of a message board–based online community between 2002 and 2016. It examines a private online community that actively secluded itself from online publics and has welcomed no new members in over a decade. Drawing on online participant observation, offline fieldwork, online and offline interviews, as well as archival research of 12 years of online interaction, the article provides an in-depth qualitative account of the “aging” of an online community that focuses on its internal dynamics and member narratives. A portrait of a community that survived years of apparent “decline,” it enquires into the durability of online socialities and cultures. Specifically, the article identifies three interlinked factors that shaped the long-term development of the community: (1) structural and cultural continuities, actively achieved through user and administrator efforts, established the online community as a coherent and recognizable social aggregation that persists over time; (2) forum members do not uniformly perceive decreasing levels of community interaction as negative but reframe it as an expression of in-group familiarity and side-effect of a consolidation process; and (3) interweaving of online and offline interaction is a primary source of familiarity among members and factor benefiting community longevity. As study of a message board tracing back to 2002, the article examines a remnant of an earlier online culture and speaks to increasing scholarly interests in online pasts. As a study of a closed forum, the article further contributes to an emerging body of research on private and secretive modes of online interaction.

Is the chronicity of HIV/AIDS fragile? Biomedicine, politics and sociability in an online social network.

Objective:to understand how the relationships between chronicity and politics shape sociability and mutual help among people living with HIV/AIDS.Method:This is a virtual ethnography in a closed group on Facebook. To collect the information, on-lineparticipant observation and documental analysis were utilized. 37 posts were analyzed using the softwareNVivo 12 Pro and the thematic coding technique.Results:Two thematic categories emerged: Do the treatment and time will take care of the rest: Mutual help and HIV/AIDS as a chronic condition; and Yes, there is danger around the corner, my dear: Politics, conflicts and sociability in the group. The most relevant aspect of this study concerns the evidence of the fragility of the discourse on the chronicity of HIV/AIDS.Conclusion:Through the analysis of sociability and mutual help produced among the members of the investigated group, it was possible to apprehend the ways in which, in their experiences on living with HIV/AIDS as a chronic condition, the relationships between health-disease, politics and time showed the dependence between chronicity and the State, and its impacts on daily life.

Lifelong learning ecologies in online higher education: Students' engagement in the continuum between formal and informal learning

AbstractLifelong learning opportunities are readily accessible through the hybridization of digital learning contexts—from formal to informal—in today's globally networked knowledge society. As such, expanded learning opportunities generate a continuum of learning contexts and experiences mediated through digital technology. Consequently, there is an urgent need to actively examine the interconnections and complex relations between what is learned in formal university scenarios and the everyday learning that happens outside of the classroom, particularly the informal learning that is afforded through expanded and emerging digital contexts. The current research problem illustrates that expanded and emerging professional development scenarios require new pedagogical designs for empowering lifelong learners to harness the affordances of the web across both formal and informal contexts and practices. This study outlines ways in which students shape their learning ecologies in virtual contexts to support formal academic learning in online higher education. The paper presents qualitative results from a larger mixed methods interpretive case study. The multicase and multisite study examines three fully online graduate programmes in Education and Digital Technology during the 2017–18 academic year, collecting data in the form of online programme documentation, student interviews and online participant observation. Purposeful and criterion sampling were used to select 13 participants across three sites in Spain, the UK and the USA. The study was underpinned by a lifelong learning ecologies theoretical perspective to analyse learning processes across a continuum of practices and contexts. Findings illustrate how students conceive of, as well as how they organize their learning ecologies through a unique configuration of activities, digital resources and networked social support, indicating that academic programmes and teachers have an essential role in empowering student learning ecologies across contexts, recognizing past trajectories and supporting the development of valued disciplinary practices and perspectives across a continuum of learning.

The ‘Auld Enemy’? Exploring the England vs. Scotland rivalry from the perspective of soccer fans

A long-standing and persistent rivalry is said to exist between England and Scotland in the context of international soccer. In this essay, we seek to test common media representations emphasizing division against the opinions of English and Scottish soccer fans themselves. The complexity of English views towards Scottish people both inside and outside of soccer is explored using examples from an online participant observation study with English fans. Moreover, the extent to which anti-English sentiment constitutes an element of Scottish national identity in soccer and society more broadly is also explored using examples from semi-structured interviews with Scottish fans on the topic of the rivalry between the two nations. We argue that via representations in the media soccer has both provided the context for reinforcing broader divisions between these neighbouring nations as well as creating specific memories in the minds of soccer fans that enhance divisive feelings amongst some English and Scottish fans. However, we also note the extent to which the stereotype of division is perpetuated by the media and how this is sometimes at odds with the views of both Scottish and English fans alike. We conclude that so long as the media perpetuate division between the two nations in a simplistic manner the reality of the complex and evolving relationship between Scottish and English fans will remain unclear and misunderstood.

Tracing and archiving ‘constructed’ data on Facebook pages and groups: reflections on fieldwork among young activists in Zimbabwe and South Africa

This study triangulates offline and online research methods to examine how and why young activists in Zimbabwe and South Africa use Facebook for political purposes. It demonstrates that like traditional participant observation, which was popularized by classical anthropologists, algorithmically ‘occurring’ data gathered through social media ethnography provides some of the richest information to burrow into the everyday political lives of young activists (who are generally presented in mainstream literature as having disengaged from traditional forms of political participation). Building on Postill and Pink’s (2012) typology of social media ethnography, this study proposes a seven stage criteria for conducting online participant observation on Facebook in the era of data ‘deluge’. These stages include: background listening, friending/liking, interacting, observing, catching up, exploring, and archiving. Based on the author’s multi-sited fieldwork experiences in Zimbabwe and South Africa, this study argues...

Cam Models, Sex Work, and Job Immobility in the Philippines

ABSTRACTUsing online participant observation, ad hoc conversations, and off-line interviews, this study explores the work of Adult/Asian Cam Models (ACMs) in the Philippines – women who present themselves live via Internet webcam to solicit customers to view the women naked or engaging in sexual activities. ACMs are commonly construed as trafficked pornographers or (digital) prostitutes. But, the models do not identify their work as prostitution or even as sex work; nor are they trafficked. Thus, ACMs challenge common perceptions about sex work and agency, revealing a range of possible social stigmas and self-identities associated with such work. The study goes on to a comparative exploration of several forms of sex work and presents reasons for a lack of occupational mobility within the Philippines’ sex industry for each form. In particular, because ACMs do not necessarily identify as sex workers, they are unwilling to move to other forms of sex work.

Using Netnography to Explore the Culture of Online Language Teaching Communities

Netnography (Kozinets, 2010) is an ethnographic approach to study communities that exist primarily online. Engaging in online participant observation, the netnographer connects to the online community through a computer screen, and the field takes place inside the screen. Although having been used in marketing research extensively, netnography is a relatively new methodology in educational research. In this paper, I overview netnography and its applicability in studying online language learning and teaching communities. Drawing upon a netnography of a globally-distributed online community of practice of English language teachers, Webheads in Action, I provide detailed accounts of my experiences as I made particular methodological considerations during data collection in netnography in order to shed light on the often untold aspects of an ethnographic design in online research that involves participant observation. I conclude with a discussion of possible benefits of participant observer approach in netnography in understanding the culture of online language learning and teaching communities, and invite CALL researchers of such online communities to consider netnography and online participant observation in their future studies.