Report R4.3 Studying Online/Offline and Global/Local Intersections: Where the World is Actually not Flat Seminar Leader: Radhika Gajjala, School of Communication Studies, Bowling Green State University, USA radhika[at]cyberdiva.org, cyborgwati[at]gmail.com Report 1 The seminar leader teaches courses in communication studies for undergraduate and graduate students. The traditional ethnographers have studied the “other,” i.e., tribal, third-world peoples, and the so-called "backward peoples” from the standpoint of an outside observer. This, for them, constituted a method for studying societies in an “objective” fashion. The colonial rulers too had a similar mindset when they encountered new cultures. Eventually, this led to the poststructuralist and postmodernist viewpoints, emphasising the experiences of the people being studied and the researcher's involvement within their community. Marxism especially stressed that the implicit social power structure in society colours the experiences as well as the perceptions of the researcher. Those who are in a state of oppression, also comply with the power structure by their self-disciplining behaviour even in the absence of a visible observer. Feminism, in the western countries adopted an isolationist seeking of selfhood by rejecting the norms of their patriarchal society. In third-world countries, feminism was also a matter of voicing the suppressed narratives of women facing multiple forms of oppression at the individual and community levels. Dr Gajjala shared her strong conviction that research meant practice, i.e., teaching, learning, and applying continuously. For her, the goal of research is to disrupt the power structure by offering a critique of it. The teacher's role is to assist the students by giving them the tools to encounter themselves within the power structure and facilitate critical self-reflection. In one of her courses, students build environments and spaces in the virtual medium using a multi-user software system called MOO (i.e., multi-user object-oriented). As they do this, they observe themselves, recording these observations. Subsequently, the students share their experiences with each other. This process often unsettles the students' sense of identity and equilibrium. It requires building of new “selves” in new contexts. Most of the students experience uncertainty, anger, and tension as to who they are. If this leads them to question themselves in and at the interfaces in cyberspace, they encounter their biases and the criteria by which they identify themselves. In most cases, students go through a process of self-reflection and change within themselves. The students learn not just to be sensitive to the “other'” culture but actually engage with it. As regards the pre-existing hierarchy and disadvantages among the students, the above process may never lead to a removal of the hierarchy, but certainly creates an interface with an opportunity to understand of the social power structure at work. The role of the researcher is to reveal the power structure, the gamut of forces acting within a context, while being completely immersed in it. The complexities operating within a context cannot always be resolved, but we can examine our understanding of the forces at play. A similar thread of argument was echoed in the previous seminar by Dr Anupam Saraph on Change Research. He repeatedly emphasised that a paradigm shift was needed from “problem solving” to “designing” stable, resilient mechanisms which are very complex and self-regulatory in nature. We do not necessarily solve problems, but learn to bring forth supportive environments by extending our own capacities and repertoire of possible responses. Reported by Krishna Priya, Research Scholar, Utkal University (July 9, 2006), edited by DP Dash (July 22, 2006). Report 2 With the emergence of the Internet as a medium of communication, there is increased interaction among people irrespective of their location. These interactions in the virtual context have become a focus of recent research. “Identity” is a key issue in this disembodied world of virtual interactions. With the absence of the body, which is usually the “locus of identity,” cues on identity may be sparse in the virtual context, but not non-existent. One prominent approach for studying online communities is virtual ethnography. This approach attempts to maintain the values of traditional ethnography by providing a "thick" description through the "immersion" of the researcher in the life of the community. As a part of her teaching, the seminar leader uses a system called MOO (multi-user object-oriented) for her research examining issues of race and class in the cyberspace. Her students are assigned the task of interacting within the online interface of MOO. MOO, being a relatively older Internet technology, is mostly text-based. Participants can define objects and environments, with which they can interact. With very limited options for identifying oneself, students plunge into a state of uncertainty at the interface. In the process of establishing their identities, they produce “selves” within the limitations of the online system. The study of these selves is supplemented by oral histories, offline interviews, process papers, and weekly journals of students. The offline observations from these sources afford a more subtle understanding of the layered interplay of online and offline realities. For example, a student who is privileged due to race or gender in the offline reality may find oneself deprived of such privilege in the online world. Of course, the online world can also allows the production of privileged online identities. “Stereotyping” is one aspect, influencing the production of raced/classed selves in the online context. In one study, the effect of stereotyping surfaced when the students were given a task to interact with a local Mexican-American teenager group to analyse the user accounts of myspace.com--a social networking website. The students’ stereotypical perceptions about the local minority group and preconceptions by the media about the Web site resulted in some amount of reluctance in the students in the initial stages of the project. The local teenage group, instead of eliminating the stereotypes, contributed to the stereotypical prejudices. Inter-cultural communication has to negotiate the existing digital divides. Students undergoing the above processes not only learn to be sensitive to other cultures, but they engaged with them, overcoming their perceptual limitations. Thus, entering into cyberspace is not just about connecting to a technology, but an entrance to a cultural space. The behavioural dynamics in the cyberspace is one potential area for future research. The seminar also sought to emphasise on the importance of participant observations in ethnography. In this research method, the researcher observes based on participation and experience, thus crossing the classical boundary between the observer and the observed. The level of participation, however, can vary according to the nature of the research setting. References Gajjala, R., & Altman, M. (2006). Producing cyberselves through technospatial praxis: Studying through doing. In P. Liamputtong (Ed.), Health research in cyberspace (pp. 67-84). Nova. Gajjala, R. (2006). Production of raced and classed selves as (stereotypical) interface: Social networks at the intersection of online/offline, global/local. Unpublished manuscript.
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