Random thoughts from the Bolton conference
This is the first of a few posts of reflection on my current research. I am also trying to figure out how to upload my Bolton's presentation within a post. "Enjoy" this note on Virtual Ethnography.
Virtual Ethnography is based on the assumption that cyberspace is organised around the same social rules and norms as “real world”. Despite the old debate on whether Virtual Ethnography should be considered a real, viable disciple or not, this new field of research is spreading in the context of Internet study.
Virtual Ethnography applies to my research as the construction of identities is the golden thread for the whole project. The starting point is the definition of diversity. In the first stage, the exploration was linguistic: an inquiry about the language or, even better, the metalanguage used by the participants, all within the Autistic Spectrum, to define themselves. I soon discovered that the participants’ effort was not only linguistic. It was a narrative about themselves, an attempt to make sense of their past . Their discourse was a storytelling experience, sought and demanded in every synchronous conversation. I therefore slipped into the asynchronous, blogs and the strictly linked social networks. I am focusing on Facebook, in such a rapid expansion after its creation in 2004. People in the Autistic Spectrum colonised this territory, substituting the “outdated” forums with the more dynamic interchanges of pages, walls and online discussions. While Facebook is a magazine, the blog is the journal, the book, the autobiography. The blog allows a fuller narrative, the poetics and rhetoric of disability and difference. The search for meaning is more complete, more feasible. While the blog is the field for making sense of experiences, the social network allows new connectedness, new rapports that do not include face-to-face contact and non-verbal cues. The Internet is the realm of anonymity, avatars, dishinibition, is talking to lines of text, a reality constituted of words. Written communication gives security and shelter from the scary reality of face-to-face communication.
Virtual Ethnography can explore the online communication praxis that allows people with communication impairments to overcome a potential disability. There is no disability in the online world. John Suler defined the virtual interchange of written text as the ideal territory for people who love to write: people with Autism and Asperger Syndrome typically define themselves as good writers. The “word reality” is therefore a new territory where it is possible to interact with new methodologies and dynamics. The Virtual Ethnographer is a real ethnographer.
But more to come...
