This chapter includes details of research that has been carried out over a number of years. It’s perhaps not surprising that the research findings seem to mirror changing attitudes to ‘online’ and the evolution of new and different technologies for facilitating community networks. I can’t help thinking that the earlier researchers might have suffered from ‘confirmation bias’ and found exactly what they were expecting to find. However, the author attributes the difference in findings to the difference in research methods between ‘laboratory controlled’ and ethnographic, which does makes sense.
I’m sure there must be similar research being conducted now into the more recent incarnations of online networks, such as WhatsApp and Snapchat. To me these two examples in particular demonstrate the way commercial considerations and the user networks themselves both play a part in the direction of development these types of technology platform take, as the author highlights in the later sections of the chapter.
Kozinets, R. V. (2010) Chapter 2 ‘Understanding Culture Online’, Netnography: doing ethnographic research online. London: Sage. pp. 21-40.