Over the last week, I have been focusing my attention on Digital Ethnography including different ideas and methodologies associated with the area.  Knowing little about the concept of ‘ethnography’ at the beginning of last week, I was able to research various methods of analysing online cultures, from the early days of the web to todays communication era and see how the process has developed.

From the early ‘cynicism’ around ‘cold and unsociable’ online discussions, to todays ‘rich and varied’ interactions (Kozinets 2010), online communities have co-determined and co-constructed their own culutre as technology has developed.  It strikes me that early online discussions would try and replicate that of traditional interactions and therefore  be compared (naturalistic fallicy?), however we can now see them as potentially different options for conveying opinions.  Emoticons and digital slang (lol, omg, #) have contributed to this change in discussion opportunites as well as the convenience of contributing to the different channels.

I also signed up for the recent MOOC around Vocal Recording techniques in preparation for the digital ethnography and I look forward to conducting my own analysis of online community behaviour.