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Record W3207393327 · doi:10.1177/07591063211040229

Shall WeChat? Switching between online and offline ethnography

2021· article· en· W3207393327 on OpenAlexaff
Beatrice Zani

Bibliographic record

VenueBulletin of Sociological Methodology/Bulletin de Méthodologie Sociologique · 2021
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldSocial Sciences
TopicGender, Feminism, and Media
Canadian institutionsMcGill University
Fundersnot available
KeywordsEthnographyOnline and offlineMerge (version control)SociologySocialityMetaverseContext (archaeology)Computer scienceSocial worldsMedia studiesEpistemologyData scienceWorld Wide WebHuman–computer interactionSocial scienceAnthropologyVirtual realityGeography

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Drawing on the ethnographic work conducted inside the digital platform WeChat, this article contributes to the ongoing discussion about the multi-sited ethnographic tools and the digital methods available for investigating virtual worlds and online practices. It analyses the communications, interactions, sociality, and economic activities produced on the application WeChat by Chinese migrant women, together with the same practices constructed offline in Taiwan. Taking a close look at the offline context from which these digital practices are generated, the article shows that when studying online practices, it is essential to understand what corresponds to them in the offline worlds. By updating the four Goffmanian interactionist fieldwork sequences, this research provides some reflections on the necessity to mix and merge online and offline ethnographic techniques in order to apprehend the new practices and scales of interaction at the crossroads where online and offline social spaces intersect. Virtual ethnography cannot be exclusive. Rather, it needs to be designed and performed in dialogue with ‘physical’ observations.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.014
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.012
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesScience and technology studies
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Qualitative · Consensus signal: Qualitative
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.995
Threshold uncertainty score0.074

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0140.012
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0020.003
Science and technology studies0.0050.012
Scholarly communication0.0060.008
Open science0.0010.005
Research integrity0.0010.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0040.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.336
GPT teacher head0.434
Teacher spread0.098 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

Study designQualitative
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations7
Published2021
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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Same venueBulletin of Sociological Methodology/Bulletin de Méthodologie SociologiqueSame topicGender, Feminism, and MediaFrench-language works237,207