http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
Overcoming access issues with online ethnography and the archival turn
This case study provides a brief framework for overcoming fieldwork access issues in various social disciplines using methodologies popularized in the history field's "Archival Turn." The research methodologies behind the descriptive and analytic essay, "Walls and Cows: Social Media, Vigilante Vantage, and Political Discourse," display how interdisciplinary methods can be used to gain access to otherwise unavailable subjects. Like all ethnographic practices, these methodologies require rigorous reflexivity, documentation, and embedded observation. Likewise, ethical and safety concerns for both the researcher and the subject are no less applicable, particularly when studying extremist communities like the vigilantes discussed in "Walls and Cows." By applying ethnographic observation and reflexivity to archives and text, historians gain access to temporally "unavailable" subjects and study them with the nuance and embedded nature of an ethnographer. This use of these "Archival Turn" methodologies in online spaces can complement and complete online ethnography, particularly of communities that may be hostile or pose a danger to the researcher, by approaching social media content as an archive that can be studied both traditionally and ethnographically. Considering the access issues faced by junior scholars, the dangers of fieldwork in extremist spaces, and any researchers contending with travel restrictions due to geopolitical or public health events, this methodological framework is valuable for junior and senior researchers across disciplines.
SAGE research methods: doing research online