Life Online: Researching Real Experience in Virtual Space

Ethnographic Alternatives #6

by Annette N. Markham

Alienating for some, yet most intimate and real for others, emerging communications technologies are creating a varied array of cyberspace experiences. Nowhere are the new and old more intertwined, as familiar narratives of the past and radical visions of the future inform our attempts to assess the impact of cyberspace on self and society. Amidst the dizzying pace of technological innovation, Annette N. Markham embarks on a unique, ethnographic approach to understanding internet users by immersing herself in online reality. The result is an engrossing narrative as well as a theoretically engaging journey. A cast of characters, the reflexive author among them, emerge from Markham's interviews and research to depict the complexity and diversity of internet realities. While cyberspace is hyped as a disembodied cultural arena where physical reality can be transcended, Markham finds that to understand how people experience the internet, she must learn how to be embodied therea process of acculturation and immersion which is not so different from other anthropological projects of crosscultural understanding. Both new and notsonew, cyberspace provides a context in which we can ask new sorts of questions about all cultural experience.

Genres: Academic

Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[John Carter McKnight · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting work to read late in my studies. It's quite early - 1997 - and very different from the endless MUD ethnographies of the period. Markham sets out to learn about MUDders from structured interviews, and through the process comes to a fascinating set of insights about ethnographic work.

This short book would have benefited from a Part 2, showing lessons learned in practice, through more participatory work, but on its own it's quite an interesting little meditation on methodology.

(And I have to add, I've never before read an ethnography that's given me a crush on one of the interviewees - good work!)

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

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