What is "netnography"

Netnography is online ethnography conducted in a specific manner. It is an interpretive research method that adapts the traditional, in-person participant observation techniques of anthropology to the study of the interactions and experiences that manifest through digital communications (Kozinets 1998). The word "netnography" is a portmanteau combining " network" and " ethnography" and was a particular kind of research process which was developed and named in 1995 by Robert Kozinets during his dissertation research at Queen's University on Star Trek fans. Netnography was originally a consumer research method, but use of the method has spread to a range of other disciplines, including education, library and information sciences, hospitality, tourism, computer science, psychology, sociology, anthropology, geography, urban studies, leisure and game studies, and human sexuality and addiction research.

Netnography is similar to an ethnography in five ways:

1. It is naturalistic: it seeks to study online social interaction by participating within and observing it;
2. It is immersive: it involves the researcher as a the key element in data collection and creation;
3. It is descriptive: it seeks rich contextual portrayals of the lived experience of online social life;
4. It is multi-method: it can involves a range of other methods, such as interviews, semiotic visual analysis, and data science; and
5. It is adaptable: it can be used to study many types of online sites and technology-related communications and interactions

Netnography aims at a meaning-focused cultural understanding. Use of the term implies the ethnographic collection and interpretation of publicly-available, interactive digital communications as the main source of research data. However, depending upon need, researcher skills, and topical focus, netnographies can also extend to include a range of other data collection and analysis methods including content analysis, semiotic visual analysis, interviews (online and in person), social network analysis and the use of big data analytic tools and techniques (Kozinets 2015). Regardless of which particular data collection and analysis methods are used, the sine qua non of a netnography is the active search for a cultural understanding of interactive online communications and information.

Although earlier versions of netnography emphasized the link to online communities or virtual communities (e.g., Kozinets 1997, 1998), terms that were prevalent in earlier days of Internet research, contemporary netnography emphasizes that a focus on the study of online interaction and experience (Kozinets 2015). Miguel del Fresno writes about netnography as online communities consumption unrelated but online sociability based on the exchange of information (del Fresno, 2011). Whatever the particular orientation, netnography is invariably focused on cultural understanding and insight.