(Paper presented at Social relations in turbulent times: 10th Conference of the European Sociological Association, Geneva, Switzerland, 7th-10th September 2011) Although the history of the internet, and the social web in particular, is comparatively short, numerous publications have strived at establishing an understanding of what it means to undertake qualitative research on the internet. Early accounts of virtual ethnography or "netnography" focused mainly on the possibility to make use of web communities for researching identity performances and consumption patterns among other themes. During the last few years, the emergence of social network sites (SNS) has heavily redefined the social landscape of the internet since it involves a shift from thematically orientated communities to networks that are centred around the activity of the individual actor. Increasingly, these networks form the basis for a new way of interaction by means of user-generated content since people engage in social activities such as sharing, reviewing and commenting upon the information that each and other user generate. Taking these fundamental changes into account, Beer och Burrows (2007) point at the importance of adjusting research strategies to the conditions of the social web while at the same suggesting that users of SNS are to some extent already involved in a sort of vernacular sociology as part of their social practices. Taking these thoughts further, this paper sets forth to understand in what ways recent developments of SNS have provided a shift in the ways in which the social actor can possibly be delineated. Since SNS allow for a self-presentation and social interaction that largely depend upon the social connections to others, the conditions for communication and social interaction have been fundamentally altered and this state of affairs challenges the assumptions that underlie qualitative research in general and ethnography in particular. Theoretically elaborating on these thoughts, the overall objective with this paper is to explore the tensions between ethnographic practices on the internet and the fact that users of SNS are not only preoccupied with a vernacular sociology but are also, and more importantly, to a large extent delineated by their interpersonal actions and social connections. Beer, D., & Burrows, R. (2007). Sociology And, of and in Web 2.0: Some Initial Considerations. Sociological Research Online, 12(5).

1. VERNACULAR SOCIOLOGY
AND NETNOGRAPHIC
EXPLORATIONS
Martin Berg

2. Who’s talking?
Martin Berg
PhD in Sociology 2008, Lund University, Sweden
Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Halmstad University,
Sweden
(Corporate) Senior Researcher at Good Old with
financial support from the Bank of Sweden
Tercentenary Foundation (3 year post-doc)

3. Main objectives
Internet and the social web: technological development
and social appropriation are always one step ahead of
research design
This paper highlights core issues, challenges and
benefits involved in doing qualitative research on the
internet and, more specifically, the social web
What is at stake for future netnographic research?

4. Researching... what?
Netnography (Kozinets 1997)
Virtual Ethnography (Hine 2001)
Digital Ethnography (Murthy 2008)
What are nethnographic practices supposed to study?
The virtual? The ‘Net’? The digital? Or simply deeply
intertwined social and technological flows? Or perhaps
questions of hegemony?

5. Earlier accounts
’The formulation of the online world as a new territory
for social research also created a perception that
nothing can be taken for granted’ (Hine 2005: 5).
The netnographic researcher should ’be both an
explorer and cartographer of this exiting new cultural
terrain, and also an anthropologist, an explorer who
respectfully and thoroughly studies the people who
rise so quickly to inhabit and colonize these new
online worlds.’ (Kozinets 2010: 179)

6. #timeflies

7. Social Network Sites (SNS)
A shift in social organisation: from communities of
interest to ‘egocentric‘ networks (and, to some extent,
back again through FB Pages, hashtags and so forth).
SNS: ’web-based services that allow individuals to (1)
construct a public or semi-public profile within a
bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users
with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and
traverse their list of connections and those made by
others within the system.’ (boyd and Ellison 2007)

8. Entering what field?
The social web is often described from the viewpoint
of the users by illuminating a perceived utility value,
core interface features as well as its offline integration
The status of user-generated content (often claimed to
be the very cultural motor of the social web) needs to
be situated and, indeed, questioned.
How are we to understand the properties and
boundaries of the field?

9. They’re already researching
'Wikizens' are already engaged in sociological research
of sorts /.../ SNS /.../ reveal a sociological tendency in
web users as they search and browse through profiles
of their fellow 'wikizens' /.../ This engagement in a
vernacular sociology – an ongoing interest in the
mundane lives of other people – could be read as a
potentially positive thing’ (Beer and Burrows 2007: 4.5)
But: ’Conversation is King, content is just something to
talk about.’ (blogger Cory Doctorow)

10. An institutional account
Users ’are expected to process digital objects by
sharing content, making connections, ranking cultural
artifacts, and producing digital content’ (Gehl 2011: 2)
’[T]he architecture of participation sometimes turns
into an architecture of exploitation’ (Petersen 2008)
It is increasingly complicated for people to understand
the externalities of the social web and thus attention is
paid to what is visible and graspable: the interface

11. Major changes
Actor: relational self-presentation bound up with
complex social networks
Field: social space, network and technology
Content: is textual content important per se or simply
an object to which social relations are attached?
Structure: (commercial) algorithms are increasingly
important for the structuration of online activity

12. Future netnography
Structural sensitivity: How do we account for back-end
processes entering the realm of front-end social
interaction as well as their (commercial) raison d'être?
Are people generating content because they are told
to? What status should such content be ascribed?
In what ways should the tension between forms of
interaction (relationships) and content of interaction
(conversations) be conceptualised and integrated in
the netnographic practice?

13. Thank you!
martin@goodold.se
twitter.com/martinberg
+46 735 46 50 10