SOC 302 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Cyber-Ethnography, Participant Observation, Ethnomethodology
Document Summary
Qualitative methods- methods, such as participant observation, intensive interviewing, and focus groups, that are designed to capture social life as participants rather than in categories the researcher predetermines. These methods typically involved exploratory research questions, inductive reasoning, an orientation to social context, and a focus on human subjectivity and the meanings participants attach to events and their lives. Designs focus on previously unstudied processes and unanticipated phenomena. Sensitivity to the subjective role of the researcher. Case study: beyond caring: field research- research in which natural social processes are studied as they happen and left relatively undisturbed. Ethnography: ethnography- the study and systematic recording of human culture. Netnography: netnogrphy (cyberethnography and virtual ethnography)- the use of ethnographic methods to study online communities. Ethnomethodology- a qualitative research method focused on the way that participants in a social setting create and sustain a sense of reality. How does participant observation become a research method.
