I really enjoyed having Kimberly come to our class today. I feel like digital ethnography has been talked about very theoretically, making it hard to visualize what the process of digital ethnography, alongside participant observation, is actually like in real life. Having her explain her work with a visual presentation made the concepts we’ve been learning far more concrete.
During her presentation, another dichotomy – in addition to real vs. virtual, public vs. private, virtual home vs. physical home – showed up again: “offline” and “online.” Consequently, the idea of understanding the definitions of words by looking at the words’ opposite, like we did with virtual and real life, was prevalent again as Kimberly contextualized the “online” lives of her interlocuters by understanding their “offline” lives more in depth. I’m very curious how are able to draw the line between online and offline and how that line changes when we add in ideas about our public and the private lives. For example, in our “online” lives what is the difference between public and private? Are all our “online” lives always public in the sense that our data is being stored somewhere and can be used to extrapolate some pixelated version of ourselves? That would suggest that the ability to create some representation of ourselves from our online activity would make something public. If so, then what makes a private account on Instagram private: the illusion that we can control who has the right to our representations?
Emily – Very clear description of the labyrinthine logic we might be stuck in! I suggest that the larger question we might ask is not where is the line between online and offline, but what social facts persuade us that such a line exists? One approach would be to take Mitchell’s form of analysis and outline the actual “method of truth and order” that encompasses the domains in which this opposition operates. Another would be to return to Miller and Horst who argue that the gap between them, their opposition, is constitutive of digital humanity. Or, are then saying al something complementary that adds up to a fully anthropological approach that starts with the social? Also, I suggest looking at Rei’s post this week which is more skeptical of that line. Other posts this week also ask questions about how to account for personhood.