Girls who like Boys who like Boys – Ethnography of ... - Yuuyami.com

different fandoms, as well as observing offline fannish interactions, I
attempted to depict a semblance of these individual’s fannish and everyday
realities. What was originally meant to be a cyber-ethnography, experimental
in that I had planned to solely utilize online means of observing, soon
progressed to a hybrid of cyber and offline ethnography. Similarly, my sample
of individuals, if they may be called that, was narrowed down to women
attending my own college. This means that the individuals I worked with
shared my own age range and possessed a certain level of education, both
aspects many fans may not have. If my project had had a different focus
and/or objective, this might have falsified my findings, but since my prime
purpose was to translate the meaning of “being a fan,” the limitations of this
sample only had a positive impact; it is because I had offline access as well as
online access to these fans, and furthermore because I had knowledge of their
lives outside of fandom (precisely because parts of our lives in college
overlapped) that I could map out a more complex picture throughout my
research.
My focus on offline ethnography was generated by the need to acquire
fuller information than electronic means such as AOL Instant Messenger
conversations and e-mail would allow me. Though these procedures yielded
satisfying results in quantity, the need for elaboration was soon apparent, as I
was always aware that besides talking to me in one Instant Messenger window,
my friends were most likely multi-tasking by doing homework or surfing the
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