ABSTRACT

This chapter presents 'netnography' or 'Internet ethnography'—a form of ethnographic research 'adapted to the unique contingencies of various types of computer-mediated social interaction'—as a productive method to study how media consumers, particularly amateur mediators such activist subtitlers, interact with audiovisual products and form communities based on their collaborative media consumption experiences. It focuses on a netnographer investigating a multi-sited online community of Chinese fansubbers, and explains how netnographic fieldwork is conducted—with special attention to issues encountered during the fieldwork and the strategies developed to tackle them. The chapter shows that how audiovisual translation (AVT) researchers can manage effectively the sort of methodological challenges that are likely to arise when studying these sites of AVT activity. It also shows that a netnographic fieldwork is a continuous, self-reflexive experience constantly negotiated between the researcher, research participants, and the research context. Netnographic fieldwork focused on a group of Chinese fansubbers based on the blog publishing platform WordPress.