Virtual Methods

From Online to Offline and Back • 53
accurate information than that generated by online interaction. Rather, the
rationale for combining offline and online interactions with informants should be
grounded in the research context and its goals. The researcher should ask him or
herself: would the offline interactions with informants reveal something significant
about their experience of Internet use that could not be obtained online? In what
ways might offline interaction with informants enhance the interpretation of the
data obtained through online interaction? What is being risked in moving from
online to offline with informants?
Notwithstanding the potential contribution of triangulating data generated from
both online and offline interactions, as Hine (2000) points out, there is also an
associated risk. Since most participants in online spaces have never met face-toface,
in instigating face-to-face interactions with them researchers might place
themselves in an asymmetric position, using more varied means of communication
to understand informants than those used by the informants themselves. Rather
than adding authenticity, researchers might thus actually threaten their experiential
understanding of the informants’ online world.
Bearing in mind this caution and the potential benefit of combining online
and offline interactions with informants, in what follows I discuss in more detail
opportunities and challenges involved in the methodological shift from online to
offline with informants. To go about this task I draw on my own study, in which
capturing both sides of the screen (that is, interacting both online and offline
with informants) was crucial for making sense of the context of Internet use that
was studied. The aim of the study was to inquire into the meanings of Internet
use in the lives of women with breast cancer. Patients’ use of the Internet is
deeply embedded in their everyday experience of chronic illness. Therefore, to
make sense of their perception of their Internet use, it was necessary to immerse
myself in the context in which they actually used the Internet. It was clear that if
we are to understand patients’ online context, we have to have knowledge of their
offline contexts – that is, of the everyday life aspects of their coping with breast
cancer.
The opposite is also fundamental: to make sense of patients’ experience of
breast cancer, we need to get to grips with their online engagement as a significant
part of their experience of coping with their illness. In short, at the heart of this
inquiry are the connections between users’ online and offline experiences, how
patients’ online participation affects their life offline, and vice versa, how their
offline world shapes their online experience.
Methodologically speaking, this focus boiled down to an acknowledgment of
the significance of gaining access to both offline and online environments of the
users. The study required a methodology that would sensitively capture the multifaceted
nature of users’ experience and encompass ‘both sides of the screen’, that
is, combine onscreen and offscreen methods.