Ethnographic Fieldwork on the Internet

Ethnographic Fieldwork on the Internet
   
   By Jen Clodius (U Wisconsin)
   
   In _Stranger and Friend_, Hortense Powdermaker wrote "The industrial
   revolution has hit anthropology!" when describing the uses of
   computers. Little could she realize that, thirty years later, people
   would be forming "communities of interest" on the InterNet and not
   using computers solely as tools for statistical analysis.
   
   My "field" is DragonMud which, after five years, is the oldest
   continuously running Multi-User Domain on the InterNet, my "tribe"
   consists of a stable core group of about 500 people and an
   ever-changing peripheral group of about 1500 people. The core players
   describe themselves as being a "family" or a "community" and log on to
   DragonMud from all over the world. DragonMud's inhabitants, the spaces
   in which they dwell, and the objects they create and manipulate all
   exist within a realm comprised solely of text. Interactions occur
   "real time", and any number of people can participate simultaneously.
   Conversations scroll up one's screen looking like a play script. For
   instance:
   

Bedouin says "Dunno if Jops and I are renting a car or doing the T - but I'll
        get directions and instructions from ya'll closer to December."
wapini says "What's the T?"
Randall says "MTA"
Michael says "the T is the subway system."
wapini ahhs.. thanks!
Randall says " ... poor Charley and the MTA ..."
wapini says "He never returned?"
Bedouin says "Did he ever return?"
Randall nods nods at wapini and Bedouin - No, he never returned
Bedouin says "And his fate is still unlearned...?"
Randall says "He may ride forever 'neath the streets of Boston"
Celeste has never heard this song.
Randall says "Kingston Trio"
Michael says "it's about a guy who was on the T when they raised the fare 5
        cents and he didn't have the money to pay on the way out."
Michael says "so he got stuck...."
Malacar heard the Tangled Up in Blue cover.
Celeste says "reminds me of the DC metro"
Michael says "The song I think was written for a  political campaign."
Randall says "vote for George O'Brien - get poor Charley off the MTA"
Malacar says "O'Brien lost..."
Randall says "of course - he had the better song"

   
   
   Conducting ethnography on the InterNet presents a whole new series of
   challenges and problems for the anthropologist. In addition to
   questions of how DragonMudders use the InterNet as a Goffmanesque
   "backstage" to practice attributes which they want to incorporate into
   their lives away from the InterNet, and how they use textual
   descriptions to create the illusion of "space" in a non-geographic
   community, one of the areas that most fascinates me is how gendered
   roles are complicated in a variety of ways. In spite of the diverse
   cultures from which people log on, the InterNet seems to operate, for
   the most part, on Western perceptions of "proper" behavior.
   
   I've been on DragonMud for four years, in a variety of roles - as a
   participant, as an observer, as a "core" character, and as several
   anonymous "peripheral" characters, both male- and female-presenting.
   In what has become an anthropological cliche', when I first started
   the "village chief" took me under his wing and taught me the rules of
   the then still-unformed community. I conduct interviews both on-line
   and face-to-face, with the explicit permission of DragonMud's
   administrators.
   
   The first thing a player does when logging on for the first time is
   "create" themselves. Their character's description and their gender
   (or lack of gender) is solely the product of their choice and
   imagination. Because there is no definitive way to verify who,
   exactly, is at the keyboard (though the administrators can make some
   good guesses) the player's presentation of "self" is necessarily
   somewhat ambiguous. The implicit ability to be "anonymous" provides
   players with the opportunity to experiment with genders and roles.
   
   Players who choose to run opposite-gendered characters do so for a
   multitude of reasons, but some initial generalizations can be made.
   Commonly, real-life males will run a female character to "see what
   it's like". Real-life females will run a male character because
   they've had previous negative experiences on other areas of the
   InterNet when they've run female-presenting characters. I find it
   interesting that the illusion can rarely be maintained for long;
   "gender-bending" players give themselves away through forgetting which
   gender they're presenting and by missing subtle (and occasionally,
   remarkably un-subtle) social cues. After multiple observations, it's
   fairly easy to detect "gender-bending" - for instance, any character's
   description that mentions "nipples" is almost assuredly an
   undergraduate male running a female character. (One question I have
   yet to explore is, is this how late adolescent males think females
   act? Or how they wish females would act?)
   
   On the other hand, a player's real-life gender has considerably less
   import in matters of status and hierarchy on the InterNet. Although
   there are more real-life males than females in DragonMud's "core"
   group, fully half of DragonMud's active administrators are female.
   Moreover, rules of interaction, where high-status persons tend to
   guide a group's dynamics (whether or not they have the expertise or
   information necessary to give that guidance) is complicated by the
   fact that everyone is typing at the same time - so whoever "speaks"
   first is determined solely by who finishes typing their comment and
   hits the key first. In the snippet of conversation excerpted above,
   for instance, the reader might assume that Bedouin, Randall, Michael,
   and Malacar are males and that wapini and Celeste are female - and be
   partially correct. But the reader has no way of knowing which of these
   "core" characters is a (female) senior administrator, which are junior
   administrators, and which are unranked players.
   
   To a great extent, the DragonMud community democratizes and blurs
   perceptions of status boundaries. A player's professional title,
   grade-point average, physical appearance, age, or gender have minimal
   impact on perceptions of status on DragonMud. Rather, friendliness,
   wit, creativity, the ability to communicate via text, and a
   willingness to share information are valued characteristics.
   
   
     _________________________________________________________________
   
 from: _Anthropology Newsletter_ Vol. 35(9) (December 1994)
   
   (copyright Jen Clodius and American Anthropological Association1994)   
   
   jclodius@students.wisc.edu