Virtual methods for understanding technologies of leisure

1
Virtual methods for understanding technologies of
leisure

• Christine Hine
• University of Surrey

2
Defining technologies of leisure

• A blurred boundary
• Technologies inhabiting work and leisure contexts
• - from design to use
• - flexible use in work or leisure
• - as a commercial leisure transaction
• The Internet as a leisure technology, and as a
  mediator of other forms of leisure

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Virtual methods in leisure research

• Virtual technologies as research sites for
  understanding technologies of leisure
• virtual leisure
• virtual media as a route to leisure
• Contemporary leisure entails both aspects of
  mediated technologies few forms of leisure are
  untouched by virtual technologies (although not
  all leisure research need be virtual)

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Virtual Methods

• New technologies as cultural sites
• New technologies as cultural artefacts
• - meanings developed in context
• - expectations unevenly socially distributed
• Research methodologies using virtual technologies
  need to be sensitive to the situated meaning of
  the mediation used

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Virtual Methods

• Potential discontinuities with existing
  methodological approaches
• Innovative possibilities to be deployed
• Pitfalls to avoid
• Research relationships
• Research sites and strategies

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Research relationships

• Using mediated communication to form
  relationships with research subjects
• Exploring constituencies who use technologies of
  leisure, or who use the Internet for leisure
  purposes
• How to form relationships and gather appropriate
  data?

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Research relationships

• Adam Joinson
• Online disclosure
• People may disclose more about themselves online
  media effect, adaptive response or strategic
  decision
• A resource for the researcher but at a price in
  terms of the need for careful and ethical design,
  and potential for applicability to offline
  settings

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Research relationships

• Joëlle Kivits
• Online interviewing
• Long-term interview relationships with informants
• Adapted and shared interview agendas
• Dense and intimate questions
• The elongated interview as a process of extended
  reflection

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Research relationships

• Shani Orgad
• From online to offline research relationships
• The move from online to offline as a means to
  make sense of Internet use, develop trust
• The artificiality of the online/offline
  distinction

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Research relationships

• Teela Sanders
• Researching online sex work
• Observing web sites and chat rooms, interviewing
  participants
• Establishing a presence as a bona fide researcher
• Disclosure is not automatic, and the means for
  establishing trust not obvious

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Research relationships

• Smith and Rutter
• Ethnographic presence in nebulous settings
• The merits of building on traditional approaches
  to ethnography dont leave it all behind
• The strength of offline contact

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Research relationships

• Max Forte
• Web site design as an immersion strategy
• Understanding the flows surrounding a web site
• Tensions arising from active participation as
  broker, and from broker overload

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Research relationships to summarise..

• Online relationships can be highly potent ways of
  conducting research
• The online/offline distinction should not
  necessarily be adhered to as a research strategy
• Researchers have to pay considerable attention to
  their self presentation
• Online presence can be a means to enhanced
  understanding

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Research sites and strategies

• Mediated communications providing new sites for
  research
• Exploring leisure sites that inhabit, or partly
  intersect with the Internet
• How to define a research site, how to visualise
  and analyse it

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Research sites and strategies

• Martin Dodge
• Maps in virtual research
• Spatial representations of networks and
  information spaces
• Provocative ways to conceptualise research sites
  and explore interactions
• Exploiting the visibility and traceability of
  online activity

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Research sites and strategies

• Hugh Mackay
• New media in domestic settings
• A traditional ethnographic approach
• Informants have an integrated approach to online
  and offline activity
• Ethnography of the virtual can usefully begin
  with the domestic context

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Research sites and strategies

• Mario Guimaraes
• Ethnography of an online graphical environment
• A network of social relationships not confined to
  a single platform
• The necessity of gaining access to participants
  social networks

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Research sites and strategies

• Anne Bealieu
• Ethnography of data sharing infrastructures
• Following connectivity, by observing the traces
  left by use and linking
• Developing a sensitivity to the way spaces of
  knowledge sharing develop

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Research sites and strategies

• Steve Schneider and Kirsten Foot
• Web sphere analysis
• A way of exploring online spheres of activity
• E.g. presidential election, 9/11
• Needs tools for archiving, annotating and
  analysing

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Research sites and strategies

• Han Woo Park and Mike Thelwall
• Hyperlink analysis
• Bridging qualitative and quantitative approaches
• Studying what hyperlink patterns emerge
• Studying how hyperlink patterns emerge meanings
  and motivations

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Research sites and strategies to summarise

• Appropriate sites for research are not obvious in
  advance
• Mapping and archiving techniques and hyperlink
  analysis provide new means of visualising and
  exploring social situations
• Traditional contexts remain important
• Technologies are not research sites in themselves

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Virtual methods to explore technologies of
leisure take-home messages

• Immersion as a route to reflexive understanding
• Innovation as a means to explore
  taken-for-granted features of the setting
• Technologies as potent figures for researchers
  and research subjects
• Virtual methods as powerful routes to
  understanding contemporary leisure

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Virtual Methods

• The web site
• www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/virtualmethods/vmesrc.htm
• The mailing list
• virtual-methods
• To join, visit www.jiscmail.ac.uk
• The book
• Virtual Methods Issues in Social Research
• on the Internet. Forthcoming from Berg.