Theoretical approach of how to conduct ethnographically-inspired audience research of web-based fandom of the soap opera Lindenstrasse

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Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject Sociology - Methodology and Methods, grade: A-77, University of Canterbury (Department of Mass Communication and Journalism), course: COMS 402 New Media And Contemporary Theory, language: English, abstract: Ethnography is the central method of anthropology. Nevertheless, it has often beenborrowed and adapted by other disciplines. While there is a central body ofmethodological texts within anthropology, this is not the case in relation to the use ofethnography outside the discipline and in relation to online fandom in particular.This “absence of a central corpus of methodological texts” (Ruddock 1998, p.297)results in a broad range of diversity in so-called ethnographic writing. Harry F.Wolcott’s struggle (in Van Maanen 1995:92) to decide whether to call his study TheMan in the Principal’s Office (1973) ethnographic or not, characterises very clearlythe fuzziness and complexity of the method. Even when contemporary ethnographies,such as virtual ethnography, are intended to feature a much narrower focus, some ofthese difficulties remain.The first ethnographers in the middle of the 19th century were the so-called“armchair-ethnologists.” Often their only sources of information were travelogues ofmissionaries. They accumulated their information without coming to direct contactwith the human beings that were their objects of investigation. The research scientistonly evaluated the data. This impersonal, anonymous basic approach resulted indistorted, superficial and extremely notional representations of societies. Around1918, the “Malinowskian revolution” in ethnography demonstrated an approach ofparticipant observation. The previous segregation between fieldworker and scientistceased, which resulted in a single person acting as reporter, researcher and analyticalscientist. Malinowski suggested that it is important not only to record the actions ofthe subject of exploration but also to understand the underlying motivations.“Ethnography has changed a lot since its origins as the method anthropologists usedto develop an understanding of cultures in distant places” (Hine 2000, p.41). One ofthe last relics may be the original core approach of travelling to a foreign place andintegrating into a community or society with the aim of understanding the actions andunderlying motivations of its members. “It (ethnography) refers to a style of researchthat seeks to describe and interpret a cultural or social group or system, and involvesthe participation of the ethnographer(s)” (http://staff.bath.ac.uk/psssr/courses/mresethnography.html). [...]