Extreme ethnography: challenges for research in large scale online environments

Large scale online environments, such as social networks, present an emerging phenomenon where millions of people come together online to share and consume information and socialize. In the past, ethnography was used extensively to provide a nuanced understanding of the relationship between technology and humans. The ways of "doing ethnography" have gone through several changes in order to fit the spatial and temporal nature of online research. While these instantiations of ethnography are important, the scale and constant change of these environments pose considerable challenges for ethnographic research: users come and go, and so do applications and content. The contribution of this paper is in articulating the methodological challenges stemming from the characteristics of large scale online environments, and in calling for rethinking of the strategies and methods for effective ethnography in these environments.

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