一

虚拟民族志又可以称为网络民族志，它是基于对线上田野工作的参与式观察，其建立在虚拟社区的实践基础之上。莱茵戈德首次描述了在线交互需要些什么才能够成为社区：

 

“People In virtual communities use words on screens to exchange pleasantries and argue, engage In Intellectual discourse, conduct commerce, exchange knowledge, share emotional support, make plans, brainstorm, gossip, feud, fall in love, find friends and lose them, play games, flirt, create a little high art and a lot of idle talk. People in virtual communities do just about everything people do in real life, but we leave our bodies behind. You can't kiss anybody and nobody can punch you in the nose, but a lot can happen within those boundaries.”

 

“人们在虚拟社区中，用屏幕上的文字来交换意见和争辩，参与到知识分子的话语中，进行商业活动、交流知识、分享情感支持、制定计划、集体讨论、闲话，世仇、坠入爱河、找到朋友和失去他们、玩游戏、调情、创造一点高雅艺术和闲聊。虚拟社区中的人们几乎可以做到人们在现实生活中所做的一切，但我们却把我们的身体留在了现实生活中。（在虚拟社区）你不能亲吻任何人，也没有人可以用拳头打中你的鼻子，但在这些界限内可能会发生很多事情。”

二

 

Social aggregations means that the topic should focus on collectivity.“Enough people”means that he number of people in the virtual community we study should be among 150-200. Robin Dunbar thinks that if the number of people of online communities is much larger than this figure,  we should separate this community into smaller parts.

 

社会聚合意味着这个话题应该聚焦于集体。足够的人意味着我们研究的虚拟社区中的人数应该在150-200之间。罗宾·邓巴认为，如果在线社区的人数比这个数字大得多，我们应该将这个社区分成更小的部分。

 

Here is the operating procedures of network ethnography:

以下是网络民族志的操作程序：

 

1.Define research issues, social networking sites and survey topics.

1.定义研究问题，社交网站和调查主题。

2.Identify and select communities.

2.识别并选择社区。

3.Community participant-observation and data collection.

3.社区参与式观察和数据收集。

4.Data analysis and interpretation.

4.数据分析和解释。

5.Compose and show the findings.

5.撰写并显示调查结果。

 

From the procedures we can know that participant-observation is a vital method to do network ethnography. All ethnographers face dilemmas in deciding how to be an effective participant observer in a particular culture. There is a spectrum between full participant and full observer, and each ethnographer has to find an appropriate way to be present for their own field site (Hammersley and Atkinson, 1995). This is an example:

 

从上述程序我们可得知，参与式观察是一种做网络民族志的重要方法。所有民族志学者在决定如何成为特定文化中有效的参与观察者时都面临困境。在完全参与者和完全观察者之间有一个范围，每个民族志学者必须找到适合他们自己的出现在现场的方式（哈默斯利和阿特金森，1995）。以下是一个例子：

 

 

This article can be found on Henry Jenkins’ blog. Henry Jenkins has been devoting himself on Fandom culture study and he also leads some young researchers to do more studies on it. William Proctor is a member of Star War project. He thought that journalists have misrepresented fan objections of the film. He got this conclusion by participant observation.

 

这篇文章可以在亨利·詹金斯的博客上找到。亨利·詹金斯一直致力于粉丝文化研究，他还带领一些年轻的研究人员对此做更多的研究。威廉·普罗克特是《星球大战》项目的成员。他认为记者误解了反感这部电影的粉丝。他通过参与式观察得出了这个结论。

 

三

 

Besides participant observation, research planning and “entering” is also important to network ethnography research. Robert V. Kozinets (the author of < Netnography: Doing ethnography research online > ) had chosen a totally wrong way to enter a community when he was a young researcher. He posted on a forum, telling the members of the community who he was and his study purposes, to request the members to help him on that research. But what Robert didn’t know was that that forum had been researched for several times before him. So that time, most members lost their enthusiasm and patience, and that few people were willing to offer help.

 

除参与式观察外，研究计划和“进入”对网络民族志研究也很重要。罗伯特·V·库兹奈特（《如何研究网络人群和社区：网络民族志方法实践研究》的作者）在他还是一位年轻的研究人员时选择了一种完全错误的方式进入一个社区。他在论坛上发帖，告诉社区成员他是谁和他的研究目的，请求成员帮助他进行研究。但是罗伯特不知道的是那个论坛在他之前多次被研究过。在那时，大多数成员失去了热情和耐心，很少有人愿意提供帮助。

 

 

So doing some planning and know about how to enter a community is necessary. Here are some tips can be used as reference:

 

因此，做一些规划并了解如何进入社区是必要的。这里有一些建议可以作为参考：

1.Know about the focus of the research.

2.Read related researches and even get in touch with other researchers in this field.

3.Choose a proper virtual community: you had better not choose those websites which have been recently researched.

4.Be familiar with the website you want to research: know about their members、language and interests.

5.Improve your questions again and again.

 

1.了解研究的重点。

2.阅读相关研究，甚至与该领域的其他研究人员取得联系。

3.选择一个合适的虚拟社区：你最好不要选择那些最近被研究过的网站。

4.熟悉你想研究的网站：了解他们的成员，语言和兴趣。

5.一次又一次改善你的问题。

 

四

 

Ethics is a focus issue which has intrigued violent controversary. Online research has tended to be construed as human subjects research, and thus to fall within existing frameworks requiring that subjects be provided with information to enable them to make an informed decision whether to participate or not (Frankel and Siang, 1999). 

 

伦理是一个引起激烈争议的焦点问题。在线研究往往被解释为人类受试者的研究，因此属于现有框架，要求向受试者提供信息，使他们能够作出明智的决定是否要参与其中（弗兰克尔和司尚，1999）。

 

Some researchers threw out these suggestions:

一些研究人员提出了这些建议：

1.informed consent: this means that the researchers should let the members of online communities know they are researchers and their study purposes. Researchers can only carry out their study plan after they get the members’ agreement.

 

1.知情同意：这意味着研究人员应该让在线社区的成员知道他们是研究人员和他们的研究目的。 研究人员只有在得到成员的同意后才能执行研究计划。

 

2.Signature: this means online aliases should be treated as real names. Some members of online communities post their works on that, their copyright should also be well protected.

 

2.署名：这意味着在线昵称应被视为真实姓名。一些在线社区的成员发表了他们的作品，他们的版权也应该得到很好的保护。

 

3.Avoid harming people in the community.

 

3.避免伤害到社区人员

 

五

 

Ao3 is a fandom community whose full name is “Archive of our own”, fans of movies, novels, real people etc. can post their fan works (most are slash fictions). In order to do  network ethnography on this online community, I need to know about it and obey its rule firstly. As an example, slash fiction focuses on the depiction of romantic or sexual relationship between fictional characters of the same sex, so it is a little improper to post too many romantic stories between a boy and a girl. The members of Ao3 usually regard this as a consensus, but outsiders may hardly understand this rule.

 

Ao3是一个粉丝社区，全名为“我们自己的档案馆”，电影、小说、真人等的粉丝可以在这个网站发布他们的粉丝作品（大部分是同人文）。为了在这个网上社区做网络民族志，我需要先了解它并遵守它的规则。举例来说，同人文侧重于描绘同性人物之间的浪漫或性关系，所以在这里发布太多男孩和女孩的浪漫故事是有点不合适的。Ao3的成员通常认为这是一个共识，但局外人可能很难理解这个规则。

（The picture is the screenshot of Ao3 home page 图为Ao3网站首页截图）

 

The number of members of Ao3 is beyond 10000 (in fact there are still over 30000 people waiting online to get an Ao3 account)，which is far bigger than 200, so we had better separate it. It has a “movie” part, and in “movie” part there are also many sub-sector. Movie “Avengers” is an instance, it has enough fans and adequate discussion, so it is proper for virtual ethnography. Through the messages left under a post and the author’s reply, researchers can have a better understanding about fandom culture.

 

Ao3的成员人数超过了10000人（实际上仍有超过30000人正在在线等待获取一个Ao3账户），远远超过了200人，所以我们最好将其分割开。它有一个“电影”板块，而在“电影”板块中也有很多子板块。电影“复仇者联盟”是一个实例，它有足够的粉丝和充分的讨论，所以非常适合虚拟民族志研究方法。研究者可以采用虚拟民族志，并通过对留言和作者回复等内容的分析，更好地了解粉丝文化。