Larsen's thoughts on virtual ethnography field notes

I found Larsen's posting interesting (click on pic). Larsen reported on her online observations and experiences with several Danish social networking websites that formed part of her virtual ethnography. She found that by keeping the perimeter of her report solely around her online observations and experiences of the websites, she was not getting enough what Geertz calls "thick descriptions". She felt that she need to extend the perimeter to encompass her larger observations and learning experiences beyond the websites.

I believe she is likely to do grounded theory because her supervisor had asked her to explore the work of Adele Clark on Situational Analysis. The folklore theory is that everything is situated and to better address the complexities of social life, Clarke (2003) argues that we need to "situate research individually, collectively, social organizationally and institutionally, temporally, geographically, materially, culturally, symbolically, visually and discursively" (p. 554) to produce "thick descriptions" data. Clark's situational analysis is an adaptation to some aspects of Glazer and Strauss' classic grounded theory analysis, and which according to her can bring to light "the usually invisible and inchoate social features of a situation more visible: all the key elements in the situation and their interrelations; the social worlds and arenas in which the phenomena interest are embedded" (p. 572).

Putting Clark's Situational Analysis aside, I would like to reflect on the fundamental differences between traditional ethnography of qualitative research (Rock, 2001; Mohan, 2004) and grounded theory ethnography (Dey, 1999; Charmaz, 2006) based on Larsen's posting above, course readings and additional readings I had, and my writing of my methodology chapter.

What I realise immediately about comparative method analysis of grounded theory is that whatever you do in ethnography (taking down fieldnotes, intensive interviewing and textual analysis of elicited and extant text), everything is guided by theoretical concerns. The comparative method begets continuous comparing of new data with all prior data collected to draw out, if any, emerging conceptual categories. These categories are used to identify theoretical concerns and the theoretical sampling is then enlarged to address these theoretical concerns. The comparative analysis is then repeated with new data and data collection concludes when category saturation is reached. Category saturation is where no new conceptual category emerges from new data collected. As such, decisions on what kind of evidences, how they will be used, how data gathering will be designed and how the evidences will be collected, are continuously shaped throughout the process of simultaneous data collection and analysis.

Even if we have supplementary data sources, like in Larsen's case, data from these sources should be subjected to the same comparative analysis method with our ethnography data so that they can also be used to draw conceptual categories and theoretical concerns to direct where our research should go. You cannot find all these in traditional ethnography. That is why many researchers are attracted to include comparative analysis of grounded theory into their ethnography.

Traditional ethnography is focused on describing a setting. That is why you can afford to wait for a "fairy godmother (informant)" to come by "to help the forlorn ethnography" (Rock, 2001, p. 34) in traditional ethnography. There is also a danger in traditional ethnography that you will end up having a lot of data (more than you could probably digest) and it is not so much for the sake of "thick descriptions" but because you do not know when to stop collecting.

Grounded theory ethnography is concerned with a phenomenon or a process. Grounded theory ethnographer looks into what is happening in a setting, makes "a conceptual rendering of these actions" (Charmaz, 2006, p. 22), and creates connections between events to understand the studied process. He or she is willing to cover more grounds and expand access within a setting, in anticipating a possibility of more understanding of the studied process. So the direction is clear with grounded theory ethnography. Even at the start of the data collection stage, the ethnographer will find relevant information before coming up with an initial sampling. Theoretical concerns drawn from the initial sampling will guide in drawing up a theoretical sampling, and the comparative analysis method follows to shape the direction of the research.