Network ethnography and the hypermedia organization : new organizations , new media , new methods

Social scientists are increasingly interested in the new organizational forms known as epistemic communities, knowledge networks, or communities of practice, depending on the discipline. These forms are made possible by new communication technologies, but they can be difficult to study qualitatively, often because their human, social, cultural, or symbolic capital is transmitted over significant distances with technologies that do not carry the full range of human expressions that a researcher using participant observation or ethnography hopes to experience. Qualitative methods are desirable for rendering rich data on human interaction but alone are ill equipped for studying community life conducted in diverse formal and informal organizations and over many new media. Social network analysis is desirable for rendering an overarching sketch of social interaction but alone is ill equipped for giving detail on incommensurate yet meaningful relationships. I propose ‘network ethnography’ as a synergistic research design that synthesizes these two methods, using the strengths of each to make up for the weaknesses of the other. Network ethnography uses social network analysis to justify case selection for ethnography, facilitating the qualitative study of the varied organizational forms of knowledge networks.