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Robert Kozinets is the creator of netnography and a key author in this area (1997, 2010a, 2010b, 2010c, 2015). Kozinets was the first published author to use the term netnography and he defined this as “the textual output of Internet-related field work” (Kozinets, 1997). He derived the term from an anonymous review he received from one of his studies. In a later study, he defined netnography as “ethnography adapted to the study of online communities. As a method, “netnography” is faster, simpler, and less expensive than traditional

ethnography, and more naturalistic and unobtrusive than focus groups or interviews” (Kozinets, 2002, p.1). In a post on his blog, Kozinets.net (figure below), he responded to a question of the difference between netnography and other terminologies (Kozinets, 2013).

Online ethnography and digital ethnography are generic terms for doing any sort of ethnographic work using some sort of online or digital method. When you use those terms, it is unclear what you have done in terms of what procedures you used, what the methodology is, such as what ethical guidelines you used for example. The literature base you will cite is also a bit amorphous.

Virtual ethnography is the term coined by Christine Hine, and it refers to a method that sees online work as only partial and incomplete. I would expect that if you called your online ethnography a virtual ethnography, then you would adhere fairly closely to the research attitudes and practices, in fact the methodology of combined research philosophy and actions, of Professor Hine as she demonstrated them in her book. Netnography refers to a specific set of online ethnographic procedures characterized by a particular methodology, including an epistemological background, analytic frameworks, and a consistent and evolving set of guidelines for entree, observation, data analysis, ethics, and so on.

Figure 20 - Blog post from Robert Kozinets regarding the differences between Netnography and other forms of online ethnography (Kozinets, 2013)

Another blog post from a scholar (Alessandro, 2014) asserted that netnography “focuses mainly on the study of the online consumer communities that usually belong to either one of these categories: brand communities (ex. Apple community, Nutella community, etc.) or communities of practice (ex. the community of IT experts, the community of chocolate

lovers, etc.)”. Kozinets has further developed the concept of netnography however in more recent times.

In 2015, Kozinets released a book entitled, ‘Netnography: Redefined’ (Kozinets, 2015). Rather than being simply a new edition of his earlier book, Kozinets re-evaluates and redesigns netnography. On the first page of the new volume, Kozinets stated that Netnography: Redefined “uses social science methods to present a new approach to conducting ethical and thorough ethnographic research that combines archival and online communications work, participation and observation with new forms of digital and network data collection, analysis and research representation” (ibid. p.1). This definition is stated as a new approach that has evolved over two decades. This PhD study follows the standards of netnography as outlined in Kozinets various works outlined in this chapter. This was found to be the most suitable approach to study football fans on social media to contribute to the discipline of digital marketing.

Kozinets asserted that when his earlier book was released in 2010, “Internet communities were still a bit of a novelty” (ibid, p.2). Kozinets noted the rapid growth of online

communities in terms of their increasing quantity and influence. Also, with new tools and techniques evolving, this provided an opportunity to redefine the meaning of netnography. Kozinets claimed that the “blind application of extant techniques to online social interactions will not work” (ibid, p.3). He distinguished between online and offline methods of

ethnography and outlined the need for netnography as a set of standards for conducting an online ethnography, which he classed as different to traditional ethnography.

There is clear influence and reverence from Kozinets (ibid.p.80) to the work of Hine (2000) on virtual ethnography, but one clear differentiator is Hine’s suggestion that ethnography is only real when it contains face-to-face interaction. Other researchers such as Sade-Beck (2008) and Isabella (2007) have also asserted that offline face to face interviews are a vital part of Internet ethnography. Without these, these authors believe that layers of meaning are potentially lost and it is hard to see how people think. These authors however do not address the widespread growth of technologies such as social media, Skype and Google Hangouts and they conflict with authors such as Kozinets in this area who also highlighted that ethnography can be conducted purely online if practised correctly. In the early days of

have some distinct advantages over their ethnographic counterparts in that they emerge “already transcribed” and thus may be less subject to the vagaries of memory”. This also frees up the researcher for introspective rather than retrospective reflection. Kozinets (1998) also highlighted that where communities exist as both real life (RL) and through CMC, that data captured from face to face or telephone interviews make sense in addition to Internet based fieldwork. Belk et al., (2012, p.107) supported this position “Because the technological interface alters the already variegated human interaction experience further, face-to-face ethnographic procedures do not always make sense when applied to understanding online cultural worlds”.

Kozinets further explained the assertion that face-to-face interviews are crucial “perhaps charts where a particular conceptual boundary stood at a particular time” (Kozinets, 2015, p.80). Kozinets stated, “interviews allow netnographic researchers to broaden their

understanding of what they observe online” (ibid, p.61). Whilst this face-to-face element is accepted as part of a netnography, it is not always vital according to Kozinets. Skype calls, online chat or interview is also acceptable as part of a netnography with careful analysis and interpretation. Kozinets, (2010, p.65) outlines the concept of blended netnography. A pure netnography would use online data only, but the inclusion of face-to-face data with online interaction and data is a blended netnography. This is an appropriate strategy to use in order to extend the study beyond the online community under study. In this research study, both face-to-face and online interviews are used. This study also included offline, face-to-face interviews and can be therefore considered to be a blended netnography, which uses blended methods. This is explored in more depth in this chapter.

Kozinets outlined four types of netnography, which are, Auto, Humanist, Symbolic and Digital. These are outlined in the diagram and synthesis table below.

Figure 21 - Diagram outlining different types of netnography, auto, humanist, digital and symbolic (Kozinets, 2015)

Type Characteristics Voice

Symbolic Most common type, they represent the online social experience and interaction of particular groups

Technical using a human role

Digital Analysis of large volumes of data using tools using structure and form. Seeking principles and meanings in data patterns

Technical and computer assisted. More focus on tools than human roles

Auto Documenting our own personal network and highlighting personal experience

Plain and simple

Humanist Human insight and machine intelligence, highlighting

oppression and using social media to disseminate problems

Deploy any technologies but humanise them

Figure 22 - Table outlining different the four types of netnography, the characteristics and voice used (Kozinets, 2015)

There are elements of digital netnography in this study. It uses digital tools and large volumes of data from social media. However, it is not the ‘principles and meanings’ in the data that are core to the study and its research questions. Digital netnography for example, would have research questions firmly associated with the patterns and focussed on the tools and the results created. This thesis is more concerned with the human roles as outlined in the philosophy section.

Symbolic netnography represents the online experience and interaction of SCFC and people connected to football, which is at the core of this study. Online participant observation via netnography of the relevant websites and sources were used to gather rich insights into the behaviour and effects. Symbolic netnography is the most common type and it is the one adopted in this PhD study. Although this PhD study shares much in common with a digital netnography, its natural place is with symbolic netnography. Kozinets (2015, p.250)

represented this type using the symbol of the Tree of Life. “From the Tree echoes the world of whispers, the millions of conversations containing images, video, texts, sounds, captures, retweets”. It is from this ‘pot pourri’ of social exchanges that rich insights can be derived. The boundaries of this study and the blend of methods used are designed to derive data to answer the research questions from key conversations online.

Netnography originated with Kozinets from the marketing discipline but has also featured in a number of other disciplines such as IS. The application of netnography in IS was found by Baskerville and Myers (2015, p.17) to be innovative. They stated, “Most ethnographic research in information systems has been based on the traditional anthropological model of ethnography” … “netnography is perhaps the most recent methodological innovation with respect to ethnography”. Although its application in IS is relatively new, netnography has been used for twenty years in marketing research (Kozinets, 1997; Kozinets, 2015).

Examples of netnography in IS were limited, but one example is Germonprez and Hovorka (2013). They used netnography to study the digitally enabled social network (DESN) Digg and highlighted the potential of “netnography and impressionist tales for contributing to the on-going pluralistic investigations of DESN and also inform research on engagement and community design and change” (p.525).