(Re)Tracing the Everyday ‘Sitings’: A Conceptual Review of Internet Research 15 Years Later
In 2003, Kevin Leander and Kelly McKim made the argument for connecting scholarship on physical spaces with that of online spaces. They named this fusion of scholarly areas connective ethnography, termed by Christine Hine (2000, as cited in Leander & McKim, 2003). At that time, they asked: “How might we develop research practices and frameworks that allow and even propel us as researchers to travel with adolescents as they create and dwell in online and offline sites?” (p. 212). Before answering this question, they critiqued a misconception assumed in much of the scholarly literature that online and offline realms were separate. They argued that the online and offline were one realm. Their argument illustrated seven themes (pp. 218–223) “found to be particularly important for reconceiving Internet research as connective ethnography” (p. 218). These themes emerged from a small body of work that examined the on/off-line realm in 2003. Given the 15 years since Leander and McKim’s argument, has research using connective ethnography supported, extended, or countered their seven themes about connective ethnography?
