Another look at the Informed Consent Notecard

This is how the Informed Consent Notecard displays. I give it to any avatar participating in an interview with me in Second Life. I also ask for confirmation that they have read it and agree to it at the start of the interview (in lieu of what would normally be a signature on an Informed [...]

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IRB Approval Steps Away

gslis-08-001-approval-pending-changes.doc
I’m happy to announce that I received this letter from Dominican University’s Institutional Review Board today. After a couple of minor tweaks, my IRB approval will be locked down. This puts me in prime position to move out of the testing phase I’ve been in for the past week and delve into the real thing. [...]

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Consenting Adults

No, not that kind of consenting adults! I’ve been busy over the last week doing pilot testing of my methodology – both interviews & fieldwork. As a result, I’ve been refining my protocols & tools.
The Informed Consent notecard I’ll be utilizing in SL reads as follows. Yes, a bit long, but all of the information [...]

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Fuzzy boundaries

One way to accomplish an ethnography with fuzzy boundaries is to consider an approach of following people, ideas, narratives, conflicts, etc rather than a spatially oriented outlook. (Marcus, 1995). This emphasis on connectivity recalls my hypothesis that sociability — people connections! — are a hallmark of information seeking behavior in virtual worlds like SL.
However, in [...]

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Flow

My blog posts have been all-Hine-all-the-time this week, but I can’t help it. She inspires me!
Back to the spaces and places debate. Hine points out, rightly by how I see things, that  ”We can usefully think of the ethnography of mediated interaction as mobile rather than multi-sited” (p 64) and:
By focusing on sites, locales and places, we may [...]

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In the heat of the moment

Yet another gem from Christine Hine’s Virtual Ethnography…
Virtual ethnography allows a researcher to review community communications, such as discussion boards or chat transcripts, after the fact. This departs from a traditional ethnographic approach because it denies the researcher the experience of living in the community, experiencing it and gaining a much richer perspective.
Experiencing a virtual [...]

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The problem with socially bounded spaces

Last night, I visited Gossip Girl as a part of my tromping around, searching for suitable sites at which to conduct my fieldwork. This place had promise: a socially bounded community, a seeming group of ‘regulars,’ a popular space that is highly trafficked, a courtyard to observe informal interactions plus regular events each evening.
Then, I [...]

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Why ethnography is important to me

Getting partially through Virtual Ethnography by Hine has helped me consider the ethnographic fieldwork component of my research. To start with, Hine’s words hit directly on why I am using participant observation as a method for studying information seeking behavior:
Ethnography holds particular appeal for studying ‘what people actually do’ with the technology. [...]

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Institutional Review Board (IRB) Application

I’ve worked out the kinks in my IRB application this week. It will hopefully be approved by the end of this month, just in time for the start of my research in March.
irb-form.pdf
I first felt that, while necessary, the IRB process involved a whole lot of administrative hoo-ha. As a got further into the process [...]

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Methodology, methodology, methodology

With my literature review firmly behind me, I can move on to the next immense task of fine tuning my methodology.Oh boy, more reading!
Research books Originally uploaded by librariandreamer

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