Meg Pickard, 10/98, MA (Econ) Social Anthropology Dissertation, University of Manchester.
At the time this paper was originally written in late 1997 and early 1998, anthropology in (and of) cyberspace was just beginning. We were just starting to understand some of the social consequences of life online.
When I proposed this research topic to my supervisors at the University of Manchester, they laughed and said “there’s no such thing as culture online. It’s a technology thing,” and then tried to persuade me to do fieldwork in Papua New Guinea instead.
How wrong they were.
I was very broke and holding down two jobs while I completed my MA: working weekdays for a magazine about intermediate technology and community building, and at evenings and weekends in a cybercafe - I just couldn’t afford to leave the country for nine months. So I stuck to my guns and insisted my fieldwork would be done from the crappy 28.8kbps connection in my bedroom. No mosquitos, no dysentry, no jetlag and no shortage of tea.
But there was plenty of culture shock.
Contents:
- Under Construction: Chapter One
1.1 What is the Internet?
1.2 Hard Hat Area
1.3 Research Objectives- Under Construction: Chapter Two
2.1 Connecting…
2.2 The Geography of the Internet- Under Construction: Chapter Three
3.1 Defining Culture
3.2 Defining Cyberculture
3.3 Social Structure and Culture
3.4 Webs of Significance
3.5 Transportation, Communication and Storage
3.6 Experimentation and Play
3.7 A World of Shifting Surfaces
- Under Construction: Chapter Four
4.1 The meaning of Community
4.2 A Rose-Tinted Past and a Fake Crocodile
4.3 Virtual Community or Real Community - a choice?
4.4 Virtual Community and Real Community - a reciprocal relationship?
4.5 Virtuality and Reality
4.6 Blurring the Boundaries
4.7 Participating in the Consensual Hallucination
4.8 Imagination and Construction
- Under Construction: Chapter Five
5.1 Always Home for Tea - Ethnography in Cyberspace
5.2 “To Whom It May Concern…” - Mailing Lists
5.3 “a/s/l, please” - Internet Relay Chat
5.4 “You suck” “Well, you suck more” - Newsgroups/BBS
5.5 “A game of all-in Royal Tennis” - Conferencing
5.6 “Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: This is Funny!” - E-Mail- Under Construction: Chapter Six: Conclusions
Summary of main conclusions drawn from research.- Under Construction: Bibliography
Bibliography of (re)sources used in research.- Under Construction: Appendix One
Annotated IRC transcript- Under Construction: Appendix Two
Commonly Used Abbreviations in CMC- Under Construction: Appendix Three
Active and Archived Topics Within Electric Minds Fundamentals Conference- Under Construction: Appendix Four
A comprehensive and continuously expanding list of online resources for humanities research into Anthropology, culture and community on (and of) the Net.
- Under Construction: Afterword
Dedication and inspiration
