July 21-22

Netnography is an evolving method designed to gain cultural understanding through the systematic, immersive, and multimodal use of digital traces, elicitations, and observations. It is a unique adaptation of existing ethnographic procedures to gain this understanding from digital environments such as social media, online communities, ephemeral online spaces, and virtual reality. Established over 25 years ago, development of the approach has been crowdsourced to the global academic community and is continuously updated to reflect new cultural and technological realities. Unlike digital ethnography or online ethnography, general terms whose procedures tend to be unspecified, netnography is a concrete set of research practices that has been honed over decades. It now provides a clear and flexible yet structured approach to key practices such as research design, use of technology tools, data collection, and research ethics.

During the course, the method’s inventor, Dr. Kozinets, will provide participants with a deeper understanding of netnography and how it works that includes exactly how and why it adapts ethnographic methods, and what distinguishes it from other approaches. Participants will then be guided through the six movements of the netnography process and important topics relating to the process will be presented and discussed.

Over the course of the two days, we will cover topics that include:

1. Netnography Fundamentals

• Appropriate Research Questions and Topics
• Beginning a Netnography Project
• The Importance of Immersion Journals

2. Ethnographic Aspects in Netnography

• Ethnographic Participation in Netnography
• Research Ethics, Privacy, and Data Ethics

3. Challenges and Advanced Techniques

• Working with Private and Closed Social Networks
• Researching with Immersive Technologies
• Multi-Person Researcher Collaborations

4. Expanding Boundaries

• More-Than-Human Netnography
• Auto-Netnography and Its Applications

5. Data Analysis and Presentation

• Key Challenges in Data Analysis
• Incorporating (Audio)visual Media
• Emerging Trends: AI-Assisted Netnography

6. Dissemination and Impact

• Presenting Netnographic Research
• Publishing Netnographic Findings

The course will provide participants interested in netnography with the latest frameworks and thinking about netnography and the digital cultural research techniques it encompasses. With clear, coherent guidelines for the use of new Generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney, the workshop will empower researchers to either utilize, or better utilize, netnography and its various operations in their own research.

The course draws on material from:

• Kozinets, Robert V. and Gretzel, Ulrike (2023), “Qualitative Social Media Methods: Netnography in the Age of Technocultures,” in Denzin, Norman and Lincoln, Yvonna, The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, 6th Edition. London: Sage Publications, 403-420.
• Kozinets, Robert V. (2020), Netnography: The Essential Guide to Qualitative Social Media Research, London: Sage.
• Kozinets, Robert V. and Rossella Gambetti, eds. (2021), Netnography Unlimited: Understanding Technoculture through Qualitative Social Media Research, New York: Routledge.
• Kozinets, Robert V. (2023), “Immersive netnography: a novel method for service experience research in virtual reality, augmented reality and metaverse contexts”, Journal of Service Management, 34(1), 100-125. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOSM-12-2021-0481