Netnography

Abstract Netnography is a specific approach to conducting ethnography on the internet. It is a qualitative, interpretive research methodology that adapts traditional ethnographic techniques to the study of social media. As discussed in this entry, Netnography adds specific practices that include locating communities and topics, narrowing data, handling large digital datasets, analyzing digitally contextualized data, and navigating difficult online ethical matters and research procedures. The nature of researcher immersion and ethnographic (or “netnographic”) participation is also treated rigorously within netnography. The new approach has gained wide acceptance within business research and is spreading to other fields.