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Due to its relatively embryonic status as a research methodology, virtual ethnography has not yet become a prominent methodology in higher education research. Considering the overwhelming popularity of social media among college students and its increasing use in the higher education community as marketing and communication tools, this methodology warrants further exploration in the higher education field. As modern technology and the prevalence of the internet have transformed daily life, virtual ethnography has recently emerged as a new frontier in qualitative research. With the aim of introducing virtual ethnography as a methodological lens, this chapter discusses logistical and ethical issues associated with it in the context of a research project that examined the interactions between a group of newly admitted students at a private university within a university-operated Facebook group. The chapter begins with the definition of virtual ethnography, and briefly reviews its emergence and use in the existing literature. Then it discusses the implementation of the methodology, with a focus on methodological difficulties in the higher education research setting. Finally, it offers the lessons learned from the research project and provides suggestions for future use of the methodology in the higher education research field.

As a result of the advancement of the online environment, several methodological proposals emerged to establish procedures for digital qualitative research. While the various online ethnography methods overlap, they are not equivalent in terms of their theoretical bases, procedures and goals. The purpose of this article is to add clarity to their main differences, depicting specificities, potentialities and limitations of each method.

This conceptual article results from an integrative literature review that brought together studies that proposed, debated or used qualitative research methods in the digital environment. The research focused on the primary indexed journals publishing cultural studies in the past 20 years.

The literature review highlights four methods – virtual ethnography, digital ethnography, netnography and the post-application programming interface ethnography. The integrative literature review adds clarity depicting the main premises and procedures of each method. The present analysis positions the different methods considering two dimensions: the focus on the boundaries of the group/culture investigated, and the focus on the platform agency, affordances and specific dynamics.

The article proposes a comparative framework outlining points of convergence and divergence to create a reference for researchers on topics of significance while designing and conducting a research study in a digital environment. This conceptual organization highlights and supports qualitative researchers on their methodological challenges.

The purpose of this paper is to systematically review online ethnography and its boundary challenges. The paper especially focusses on how researchers draw space boundaries, set time boundaries and engage their online field.

The authors perform a systematic review of extant literature and identify 59 papers in 40 different journals as online ethnographies from various management disciplines. The authors perform both qualitative and quantitative analyses on papers in the sample.

The paper identifies how online ethnographers both define boundaries and engage their online field. The paper shows that some of the advantages of online ethnography actually prompt researchers to favor-specific research designs over others.

The authors only focussed on articles adopting online ethnography in organization and management studies that are listed in Social Sciences Citation Index database. Online ethnographies in other research fields and indexes are not studied in this paper.

The paper makes suggestions on how to complement existing online ethnographies to reach a more comprehensive practice of online ethnography.

The systematic review may help researchers to locate useful online ethnography examples across various management disciplines and may contribute to the maturation of online ethnography.

The paper synthesizes emerging trends in online ethnography and identifies how specific advantages actually prompt online ethnographers to limit themselves in their research designs.

Research examining organizational diversity has largely ignored the role corporate web sites play in establishing the tone for diversity in organizations. Serving as “electronic storefronts,” corporate web sites are typically the first point of contact individuals have with an organization. The purpose of this paper is to centralize communication as a critical tool in understanding the strategies corporations use to communicate their diversity philosophy, practices and policies. This virtual ethnographic study examines corporate web sites (n=100) across industries and sectors to capture the strategies organizations use to strategically communicate diversity to a variety of stakeholders.

Taking a virtual ethnographic, this study examines 100 corporate web sites across industries to capture the methods organizations employ to strategically communicate diversity in their respective organization.

Results from this ethnographic study reveal that organizations typically use three strategies in their diversity messages: impression management, persuasion and strategic ambiguity. Strategic ambiguity and the persuasive use of selling, telling and framing their diversity message are ubiquitous in corporate diversity communication. The use of these strategies may have a profound impact on how diversity is perceived within organizations. Implications for practice and research are discussed.

This is one of the first social science/humanistic studies to examine diversity messages on corporate web sites and advances a conceptual framework for electronic diversity communication. Additionally, this project employs a virtual ethnographic approach, a novel, yet contemporary, method.

While netnography was established to study virtual communities from the traditional ethnography methodology, over time it has evolved and moved away from standard ethnographic practices. The modifications are especially prevalent in hospitality and tourism research because of the nature of experiential and service-based goods. This gap has created exciting new opportunities for researchers. As netnography has matured into its own methodology, it has provided the opportunity for researchers to use netnography techniques or more traditional techniques by following ethnography methodologies. This paper aims to analyze the differences between these two methodologies within hospitality and tourism literature enabling researchers to choose the methodology that is most suited for their project.

This study reviews netnographic research in hospitality and tourism and compares current uses of netnography against traditional ethnographic methodologies.

There are four major differentiating points between netnography and ethnography: online community definitions, data collection methodologies, ethics in research and data analysis techniques.

In comparing ethnography and netnography in hospitality and tourism research, this analysis provides a foundation to evaluate the best use and best practices for these two distinct qualitative methodologies in the field. The study also provides references to how other hospitality and tourism researchers have used netnography.

Ethnographic principles grounded in the foundation of anthropological doctrines are important and distinct from netnography. The ability to use the diverse tools in the qualitative methods toolbox will help hospitality and tourism researchers understand the transforming marketplace.

This paper introduces two methodological innovations for qualitative research. We apply these innovations to holistically understand youth peer cultures and improve participant-driven qualitative methodology.

It moves the methodological frontier forward by blending technology with the “go-along” approach used by ethnographers to prioritize participants’ perspectives and experiences within their socio-cultural contexts.

We introduce the youth-centered and participant-driven virtual tours, including a neighborhood tour using Google Maps designed to explore how youth navigate their socio-spatial environments (n = 64; 10–17 year-olds; 2013) and a social media tour designed to explore how youth navigate their networked publics (n = 50; 10–17 year-olds; 2013), both in relation to their local peer cultures.

Applicable to a wide range of research populations, the Google Maps tour and the social media tour give the qualitative researcher additional tools to conduct participant-driven research into youths’ socio-cultural worlds. These two innovations help to address challenges in youth research as well as qualitative research more broadly. We find, for example, that the “go-along” aspect of the virtual tour minimizes the perceived threat of the researcher’s adult status and brings youth participants’ perspectives and experiences to the center of inquiry in the study of local peer cultures.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the context and the content of the six papers that follow in this special issue on “New Forms of Organizational Ethnography”.

This editorial explains the burgeoning interest in organizational ethnography over the last decade in terms of several favourable conditions that have supported this resurgence. It also offers a general view of the nature and diversity of new forms of organizational ethnography in studies of management and organization.

New forms of organizational ethnography have emerged in response to rapidly changing organizational environments and technological advances as well as the paradigmatic transformation of ethnography and ascendency of discursive and practice-based studies.

The editorial highlights an “ethnographic turn” in management and organization studies that is characterized by a renewal of the discipline through the proliferation of new forms of organizational ethnography. A focus on new organizational phenomena, methodological innovation and novel ways of organizing fieldwork constitute the three main pillars of new forms of organizational ethnography. It encourages researchers to develop forums and platforms designed to exploit these novel forms of organizational ethnography.

This paper argues that, by focusing on the use of the Internet for one‐to‐one communications, marketers are in danger of ignoring the many‐to‐many communications that are taking place as consumers interact with one another. The authors explore the increasing proliferation of Internet discussion groups and chat rooms that are often market‐orientated in their focus and discuss how the study of virtual communities can provide rich insights for marketers. Detailing how ethnographic research methods can assist the understanding of such online environments, they consider the theoretical and methodological differences between offline and online ethnographic research.