Comments on: #durbbu mini ethnography

By: Nikki Bourke

Nikki Bourke — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 22:49:11 +0000

Hi Candance,

This was a great read – it felt like a journey in itself. With a beginning, middle and end! It was really interesting to see the mechanics of the community classified into subcategories. Cheers for sharing this. Very enjoyable.

Nikki

By: cmeckenstock

cmeckenstock — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 17:25:23 +0000

Hi Candance, the ethnographer’s construct or narrative worked really well in Storify. The way you have broken it up with the tweets, and what you were thinking, and then grouping the tweets into different groups, followed by analysis, reflects the immersive experience well. It provides a good sense of being in a conference, and the use of tweeter, and the sense of community, though it probably will fizzle out after a week or two. But certainly, you were able to capture the feelings of the conference community in relation to the sponsors and prevailing theme of the conference. I had often wondered how I would categorise or describe the nature of the tweets when I see them. I like your groupings, it seems to have worked very well.

I am also very intrigued by the autoethnography aspect and the first part of my own ethnography talks about how I have gained or negotiated access, the arrival and also being there. I thought the reflexive strategy is really quite an interesting one to be used in the narrative. And you have done this really well.

By: Steph Carr

Steph Carr — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 13:52:46 +0000

Hi Candace, I thought you painted a very colourful picture of the event; I loved the story telling and I could almost visualise the conference suite and the participants.

I was really interested in the way you described different ‘communities’ bleeding into each other. I felt there was a sense of uncertainty and perhaps even discomfort where there was potential cross over into a physical meeting/viewing. (But I may well be reading this wrongly by projecting how I would feel in this situation.) I think that the bringing together of different groups, or having them forced together can be destabilising because one’s way of behaviour, status, etc. can be different in each one and trying to navigate a neutral path through a mix of them can be tricky. Adding in a different mode of interaction (i.e. RL instead of virtual) could perhaps make this even more unsettling? Especially if you don’t even have an official ‘introduction’ and could, like your boss, be chatting to someone that you actually know, but don’t know that you know!!!

By: Anabel Drought

Anabel Drought — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 15:27:09 +0000

Hi Candace, I really enjoyed this analysis and especially like the categorisation of the community members, It made me think about my own twitter accounts and the different styles of posting I adopt in each account which is based upon the community I am linked too which is kind of reflecting on the audience , however I sometime / often get this wrong “the tweets, while all positive, were sometimes ambiguous in their audience:”

I also enjoyed Hine’s arrival stories put together – iThese tweets are a way of feeling part of the community, an introduction so when we arrive we don’t feel so “new” we are already part because of this prior engagement

Very interesting, great work!

By: Giraf87

Giraf87 — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 22:33:29 +0000

oops, seemed to have double vision here,that’s why it would not let me post the second time…

By: Giraf87

Giraf87 — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 22:31:05 +0000

great read Candace, like a fly-on-the-wall documentary. It gave such a close-up view, almost like I had been at the conference and walked around with a handheld camera. I organise research conferences in a different discipline and the sight of a #sign for my group of academics would be similar to a rabbit caught by my car’s headlights!

By: Giraf87

Giraf87 — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 22:30:27 +0000

I loved reading this Candace, like a fly-on-the-wall documentary. It gave such a close-up view, almost like I had been at the conference and walked around with a handheld camera. I organise research conferences in a different discipline and the sight of a #sign for my group of academics would be similar to a rabbit caught by my car’s headlights!

By: Phil Devine

Phil Devine — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 20:58:28 +0000

Hi Candace – Love the idea of getting behind how twitter is used from a marketing perspective by institutions. On a bigger scale I’m sure this would provide valuable and useful information on how users interact with organisers – wanted to read more

By: sbayne

sbayne — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 20:18:29 +0000

I found this a compelling read Candace. I really like the way you approached this, and I thought the way you had begun to ‘cluster’ tweeters, and tweets, was a nicely-executed way of starting to make sense of them.

I wished this hadn’t been a ‘micro-ethnography’ in a way, because there were so many areas of it where I wanted to keep reading: the arrival stories were one (loved this!). Another was the sponsor issue. On this latter, I wondered if there were other examples similar to this one? In particular, how apparent engagement from the sponsor (who was actually tweeting as a simple participant) actually appeared to function to shut down debate. Some really interesting potential directions for thinking about how power in these communities operates through the (albeit pared down) discourse of the tweet…

I thought you situated yourself really well here too: the voicing of the ethnography from the position of slightly-peripheral-yet-confident-almost-insider worked really well!