Textured Connectivity: an ethnographic approach to understanding the timescape of hyperlinks

Abstract

The methods illustrated in this paper address one particular kind of ‘trace’, the
\nhyperlink, and the use of this trace to help constitute a field of study. We
\nsuggest that an ethnographic treatment of hyperlinks can be a useful way to
\nunderstand the Internet as a space for knowledge production. Via a
\nconsideration of hyperlinks as both functional and symbolic, this approach
\nsuggests how traditional elements of ethnography might be adapted in order
\nto constitute an online field site for the study of infrastructure. The methods
\ndiscussed in this paper were elaborated in the course of two projects using
\nvirtual ethnography (Hine, 2000). Both focused on new infrastructure for
\nknowledge production (databases) which had a web interface. Common to
\nboth projects was the notion that these databases might be involved in shifts
\nin the locus of knowledge production. In other words, the lab as a ‘site’ may
\nbe an increasingly networked, digitised setting. If part of the original
\nmotivation for going into the lab for studying science was to visit the place
\nwhere knowledge was said to originate, the same holds for taking online
\nsettings seriously, as a site where knowledge is also arising. Networked
\nknowledge production, however, challenges the traditional approaches to
\nconstructing the field for lab studies. The traces chosen as constitutive of the
\nfield in our research, hyperlinks, led to a complex, multilayered understanding
\nof interpretive context around the various databases investigated. Paying
\nattention to aspects of connectivity (specificity, origin, timescape, and
\nsymbolic and infrastructural dimensions of hyperlinks) may help to build a
\nricher notion of various instantiations of the Internet. The focus in this article
\nis on the notion of time, and on the ways knowledge about various aspects of
\ntime may be investigated ethnographically, using hyperlinks as traces