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Contains fulltext : 198768.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) The future of ethnography in the Big Data era: By taking an ethnographic viewpoint, Beuving explores knowledge claims about Big Data (BD) as discussed in Seth Stephens-Davidowitz' best-selling book Everybody Lies (2017). It portrays BD in a way that evokes affinity with ethnography: as a naturalistic research practice that makes small subpopulations visible and discloses people’s hidden motives. But for Beuving this threefold assertion appears to rest on misguided conceptions. For the ethnographic researcher, naturalism refers to a reflexive practice, yet the BD researcher associates it with researcher invisibility. And the term population, which has a statistical meaning in BD, has a strong theoretical connotation in ethnography. Finally, motives in BD are about direct interpretation of revealed preferences as social facts, whereas the ethnographer considers them to be expressions of social behavior that require a Verstehende interpretation. Bosch sees the relation of ethnography and Big Data research as a new form of Methodenstreit, which urges qualitative researchers to develop and apply user-oriented analysis techniques. Gigengack stresses that ethnography and Big Data are in fact incompatible. They should not be seen as methodological rivals in understanding society and social conduct. Ethnography and Big Data analyses are different perspectives on the social world. Ethnography should study the world of Internet behavior as it studies religious rites or societal identities. 11 p.

Ethnography in the virtual world: a methodological struggle (with introduction and debate) Ethnography in the virtual world: a methodological struggle (with introduction and debate) The author discusses problems in the ethnographic study of online, virtual worlds through a presentation of his research of the internet game EVE Online. It attracts many millions of players worldwide, who navigate in a sciencefiction type of environment in which they compete for dominant positions and scarce resources. The author problematizes three aspects of EVE, that are relevant for discussions of ethnography in online, virtual worlds: (1) the place of interaction, (2) the design of the game, and (3) access to the EVE corporations: organisational units in which players collaborate. Based on this, the author advocates a novel methodological approach in the study of online, virtual worlds, which he terms ‘virtual-organisational ethnography’. It combines elements of organization science and Christine Hine’s virtual ethnography, and that presents a step away from classical ethnography. Fred Wester and Joost Beuving present a reply to the article, and the author responds to this.