ABSTRACT
This chapter explores ground that is less well trodden by sociological researchers. In an era of Google books and escalating cases of online plagiarism among the student populace, and relentless popular and academic debate about the relative freedoms and dangers of the virtual environment, and as a place of research interest in its own right. Yet the methods for doing online research are in their relatively formative stages. David Bell’s contribution on ‘Researching Cybercultures’ is as much about defining what research on cybercultures might look like and identifying the broad approaches that might be taken when conducting that research, as it is about providing specific methodological tools. Computers have become valuable tools in information-gathering, especially they are networked and configured to be ‘user-friendly’. While any ethnography is methodologically risky, cyberspace ethnography is vulnerable to unique disruptions.
