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作者

Florencia García-Rapp

来源

JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY ETHNOGRAPHY,Vol.48,Issue5,P.645–673

语言

英文

关键字

digital ethnography, online fieldwork, YouTube, online communities, interpretive epistemologies, cultural critique, diversity

作者单位

1Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain

摘要

In this article, I discuss methodological understandings around qualitative research and online ethnographic practice to bring forward a reflexive account on the particularities of doing fieldwork on YouTube. I draw from a multiyear ethnographic examination of YouTube’s beauty community that sought to understand online popularity framed by local norms and practices and shed light into the local significance of knowledge, expertise, and self-development. I argue for an epistemological perspective that acknowledges the diversity of viable, conceivable fieldwork experiences while distancing from prescriptive modes of argumentation. I propose seeing fieldwork in and through its richness and predicaments, persistently naturalistic while interpretive. I approach online popularity, fandom, and even YouTube itself from a perspective that tolerates ambivalence, contradictions, and embraces the complexity of social worlds and human interaction.