Research on the Internet

As with the rest of the posts this week, I found the subject matter of this week’s readings to be eye opening. The internet is so taken for granted in my schooling experience that I have never paused to consider its infrastructure, or using the internet to conduct ethnographic research. I don’t think that the type of research that I am interested in conducting for my proposal relates to, or lends itself well to internet research. Many of the institutions (museums) that I am interested in interviewing don’t have websites or a web-presence. That being said, I can see how there are many facets that would need to be considered if I were to use the internet to gather data.

I enjoyed Star’s comparison of computers to sewers, rather than information highways. It gave me a tangible and understandable visual for the type of infrastructure that supports our information networks. Also, Star states, “infrastructure is generally invisible,” which we must also keep in mind when conducting ethnographic research studies. Since we cannot see the infrastructure, we have to at find a way to consider it in order to set the boundaries of our research. When I stop to consider the scope of the internet as a whole, it seems entirely overwhelming and impossible to study. I think that knowing this I would approach potential internet research with caution if I am faced with it.