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 The Annual Conference of
The Australian Sociological Association
Refereed Proceedings of TASA
2016 Conference

Cities & Successful Societies

The Australian Catholic University
November 28 - December 1, Fitzroy, Melbourne
Editor: Mark Chou
ISBN: 978-0-646-96480-5
TASA 2016
Suggested citation: Mark Chou (ed) Proceedings of The
Australian Sociological Association Conference,
The Australian Catholic University, Fitzroy, Melbourne,
28 November 1 December 2016.
ISBN: 978-0-646-96480-5
TASA 2016

Netnographic research of online communities and

culture
Stephanie T. Jong

Flinders University, South Australia

Abstract
This paper explores the use of netnography, an online adaptation of the method ethnography, in
a study of online fitness culture on social networking sites (SNSs). For many millions of people
around the world, the Internet has become an essential communication and information medium,
mediated by SNSs, specialised networks, and eMail. The combination of text and images in
these communications presents new opportunities for research that can potentially offer a deep
investigation of participant behaviour in online cultures and communities. It is through these
computer mediated communications where community and culture are (re)produced/adapted.
In the provision of a common set of methodological procedures and protocols, netnography
contributes to the debate of researching online populations, transitioning traditional techniques
of cultural anthropology to an online setting, and innovation in appropriate settings. This
paper outlines the guidelines of netnography. Furthermore, it will discusses opportunities, and
challenges in exploring online cultures and communities with reflections from a netnographic
researcher of online fitness culture.
Keywords: Netnography, online culture, online communities, qualitative research

Introduction
Given the wide-ranging interest in academic publication output, researchers are increasingly
using the Internet as a research medium for data collection. A number of methodological tools
have been adapted from traditional methods to research an online setting. Netnography is one
adaptation that has emerged from the research method ethnography. Netnography draws upon
computer-mediated communications or network-based data (i.e. textual and visual) to arrive at
an ethnographic understanding of a social or cultural phenomenon (Kozinets 2010).
Online fitness communities are a social and cultural phenomenon that have transitioned to the
online platform of SNSs. These communities include general health and fitness, bodybuilding,
and wellbeing and healthy living. Although their goals may be diverse, specific, attention is
given to diet and food, inspiration, exercising, the body and body weight, and representations
of fit bodies (Andreasson & Johansson 2013a, 2013c; Smith & Stewart 2012). Previous research

Conference proceedings 2016 Return to Table of Contents 151

about online fitness communities has investigated the hash-tag fitspiration (an amalgamation
of the words fitness and inspiration) used within online fitness communities, the effect of
fitspiration tagged images (Boepple, Ata, Rum, & Thompson 2016; Tiggemann & Zaccardo
2015), body perceptions in a bodybuilding community (Smith & Stewart 2012), and gender
and the body in the blogosphere (Andreasson & Johansson 2013b, 2013c). Despite this, few
studies have explored fitness culture on SNSs, and more specifically, young females experiences
and expressions of online fitness culture.
This paper explores the netnographic process underpinning a research project of online fitness
communities. Furthermore, it will discusses opportunities, and challenges in exploring online
cultures and communities with reflections from the project.

Netnography
Kozinets describes netnography as primarily concerned with online communication as a source
of data to form an understanding of a cultural phenomenon (1997, 2002, 2010, 2015). It
adapts common participant-observation ethnographic procedures to an online context where
social interaction takes place. Like ethnography, netnography is natural, immersive, descriptive,
multi-method, and adaptable (Kozinets 2010). Through immersive cultural participation and
observation, netnography offers researchers the opportunity to focus on new areas of social life
(Nind et al. 2012), and to explore how communities and cultures are produced through computer-
mediated communications (Kozinets 1998). It is a means of researching online communities in
the same manner that anthropologists seek to understand the cultures, norms and practices of
face-to-face communities, by observing, and/or participating in communications on publically
available online forums (Nelson & Otnes 2005; Sandlin 2007).
There has been a growing use of netnography by researchers from diverse fields (1,300 results
in a systematic search of Google Scholar conducted by Bengry-Howell et al. 2011). Three recent
netnographies have been conducted in the field of sport and fitness, relevant to the study of
online fitness (see Andreasson & Johansson 2016; Kavanagh, Jones, & Sheppard-Marks 2016;
Smith & Stewart 2012). Several other studies have been conducted on online communities
using similar methods termed under a plethora of labels: virtual ethnography (Hine 2008),
online ethnography (Crowe & Bradford 2006; Crowe & Watts 2014), digital ethnography,
webnography, network ethnography and cyber ethnography (Grbich 2007). Aspects of these
online research methods underpinned the research process for the study (for example, the work
of Beneito-Montagut 2011; Chapman & Lahav 2008; Fortun et al. 2014; Gallagher, Wessels,
& Ntelioglou 2013; Paccagnella, 2012; Postill & Pink 2012; Underberg & Zorn 2013). For
example, Postill and Pinks (2012) social media ethnography played an influential role in helping
the researcher understand online interactions (e.g. weak ties), and the idea of media mixing in
order to maintain social relationships with potential participants across SNSs.
Key strengths of these online methods are the ability to conduct fieldwork from researcher
offices (Hine 2000), the ease and cost of data collection, the ability to connect with geographically
dispersed online community groups, and the ease of collecting various types of data (Kozinets
2010). They provide understanding of the online world, interaction styles, and lived experiences
of online users (Kozinets 2015).
While online ethnographic methods are burgeoning in the field, some discrepancies still remain
across the specific methodological practices employed by researchers1. In providing a common set
of procedures and protocols, netnography offers stability, consistency, legitimacy and the ability
to aggregate other netnographic research (Kozinets, 2010).

1 The PhD research commenced in 2013, however, digital ethnography is currently flourishing in the field, and
one important, recent publication is (Pink et al. 2016).

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The netnographic process
Kozinets (2010) netnography offers a rigorous set of guidelines including: research planning,
entre, data collection, interpretation/analysis, and research representation. Underpinning these
steps is the capacity to ensure ethical standards. Adapting Kozinets (2010:61) simplified flow of
a netnographic research project, a neat representation of the netnographic process is depicted in
Figure 1 below:
Figure 1: An adapted simplified flow of a netnographic research project

The study: Online Fitness culture

Adhering to the Kozinets guidelines2, the researcher conducted a netnography to explore the
experiences and expressions of online fitness culture with young females aged 18 to 24 on Facebook
and Instagram. In selecting netnography as a method fit for the study, it aimed to establish a
boundary of thinking about online fitness communities and culture through the observation of
photographs, videos, comments and general interactions on Facebook and Instagram.

2 After the completion of the study, Kozinets (2015) expanded on the original steps of netnography from five
to 12: introspection, investigation, information, interview, inspection, interaction, immersion, indexing, interpretation,
iteration, instantiation and integration. The steps include additions and explicit descriptions; however, the new steps
primarily subdivide the previous five phases. Notably, there is a greater emphasis on narrowing the community group
of interest, and the use of an interactive researcher website to add insight to netnography (an additional source), and to
surmount some ethical dilemmas with researchers as active participants (Kozinets 2015).

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 Following a year of observation of online fitness communities, and ethical approval, the
researcher created Facebook and Instagram alias researcher accounts in order to have full access
to the SNSs to conduct the netnography without the use of a personal profile, a method suited
to netnography (Kozinets 2010). The process followed Lambs (2011) recommendations from an
online research project based in the United Kingdom. The study included both archival data and
field note data. Hash-tags were utilised to obtain data pertaining to popular fitness trends, for
example, #fitspiration. Textual and visual data was captured through NVivo for Facebook, and
Microsoft Excel and Evernote for Instagram. All other relevant data were recorded in a Microsoft
Excel spreadsheet. Thematic content analysis was selected to analyse the data following Braun and
Clarkes six-step analysis model (2006).

Opportunities in exploring online cultures and communities

Netnography provides three main opportunities in research: (1) opportunity in researching
communities that may not exist without the Internet, (2) developed understanding of online
culture and meaning making processes, and (3) collecting data using an unobtrusive method to
explore sensitive issues.

(1) Opportunity in researching communities that may not exist without the Internet
Nind et al. (2012) claim that netnography offers researchers the opportunity to focus on
new areas of social life. According to Kozinets (2002), the Internet provides opportunities for
participation in social groups that are united around the achievement of particular lifestyle goals
and characteristics.
Importantly, netnography is appropriate to those communities that would not exist without
the Internet. Online communities are considered no less real than their physical counterparts,
leading to consequential behavioural effects (Kozinets 2015). The use of netnography in
researching these online communities broadly allows researchers to examine human society and
social relationships online, as well as providing an insight in to peoples online behaviour, and an
understanding of how people negotiate their Internet activity. Beneito-Montagut (2011) affirms
that netnography is particularly relevant for understanding new forms of human interaction and
how people create and maintain personal relationships online.

(2) Developed understanding of online culture and meaning making processes

Culture and community are at the centre of netnography. Following anthropological and
sociological contested and shifting notions, the term culture is referred to as commonly held
beliefs, norms, values and ways of doing things (Wagner 2001:121) shared by a population, in a
particular place at a particular point in time (Jackson 1998). Culture is understood as a world of
shared social meanings (Hall 1996) and values (Wagner 2008), created by interacting individuals,
where there is a momentary construction of common ground (Amit & Rapport 2002:11).
It is vital to understand that these concepts are fluid worlds of meaning (Kozinets 2015).
Netnography has the potential to gather first-hand naturalistic data from computer-mediated
communication in exploring how culture and community are adopted, understanding worlds
of meaning. Through the researcher becoming a participant online within a specific culture or
community, not only do they see worlds of meaning created by interacting individuals, but they
are also offered the insight to understand their meaningfulness, and continuance. Netnography
offers the ability for the researcher to become involved in online communities, in order to provide
a thick description of peoples worlds (Langer & Beckman 2005:192). It is through the interactive
nature of netnography that researchers can begin to understand the online world, interaction
styles relative to the exchange of meaning, and lived experiences of online users (Kozinets 2015).

Conference proceedings 2016 Return to Table of Contents 154

 Specifically, linking to the study of online fitness communities, netnography allowed the
researcher to come to terms with new interactions, understanding rituals and norms from within
the created culture, and to note the transition from fitness culture to an online platform. Through
fieldnoting, the researcher documented peoples online behaviour within the community, as
well as language used, and the meanings given to some of the new neologisms. It was through
participation within the community that the researcher was also able to note developed social
hierarchies, for example, through large follower bases, and through popularity in posts (shown
through a thumbs up button on text or an image).

(3) Collecting data using an unobtrusive method to explore sensitive issues

The use of netnography offers the opportunity to explore sensitive topics within online
communities that may be difficult to access by more traditional means. Netnography offers
researchers a potentially less obtrusive method to research sensitive topics compared to other
methods of social investigation (Isupova 2011). For example, research in pro-ana (short for
anorexia) online communities has gained traction through using netnography (Brotsky & Giles
2007; Crowe & Watts 2014), as well as cosmetic surgery (Langer & Beckman, 2005), sex and
porn on the Internet (Jacobs 2010), and male bodybuilding (Smith & Stewart 2012).

Considerations and challenges of netnography:

Whilst the development of online communities and cultures brings innovation through
the adaptation of method techniques, such adaptations also bring potential methodological
challenges. Reflecting on previous research and the current researchers netnography, three main
issues arose: (1) lack of face- to-face interaction, (2) size of data set, and (3) ethical justification.

(1) Lack of face-to-face interaction

Lack of face-to-face interaction is a common objection to online research (Beaulieu 2004;
Liamputtong 2013). Some researchers suggest that the online environment, where the data is
represented as text-only, reduces social cues such as expression, emphasis and movement (Mann
& Stewart 2000). This limitation is also apparent in offline research pertaining purely to text.
The challenges created by a lack of face-to-face interaction are refined by Kozinets (2010) who
argues that where the research focus and questions are specific to online content, a netnographic
approach is sufficient. Furthermore, these limitations can be somewhat ameliorated by a blended
netnography where the data collection methods connect online and offline research in a systematic
manner (Kozinets 2002). Kozinets (2015) strongly advocates the inclusion of an interview stage
within the new 12 phases of research. In using a blended netnography, including interviews with
online fitness participants, the study offered a deeper understanding of the culture.

(2) Size of data set

Paechter (2012) described potential size of the data set as a methodological challenge faced
by researchers concerned with studies of online communities. At the commencement of the
current study, the category of online fitness culture was broad and difficult to define. This lack
of specificity made the size of data collection difficult. Searching hash-tags and key word searches
also proved difficult with a high abundance of data available. Each page and profile that was
visited created new avenues within the fitness community to look at, enlarging the data set. As a
consequence of this large dataset, the process of data analysis can be extremely time-consuming
(Kozinets 2010), calling for the use and literacy of Computer Assisted Qualitative Data AnalysiS
in order to manage, tag, name, sort and classify the abundance of data.

Conference proceedings 2016 Return to Table of Contents 155

 (3) Ethical justification
SNSs are proving to be an ethically problematic field for researchers in the collection and
confidentiality of data and deceptive undercurrent in the method. However, ethical guidelines
have not yet been fully developed for research of online social interaction. Some emerging
literature is beginning to provide useful insights (James & Busher 2015; Zimmer 2010). Previous
research has emphasised ethical concerns of privacy, confidentiality, respectful representation,
protection and safety and falsification of research data (Association of Internet Researchers Ethics
Working Group 2012). Although ethics laws and policies developed in the context of offline
research apply to online investigations, questions about the need for and means of obtaining
informed consent, anonymity, and the conceptualisation of public versus private information
pose certain problems for conducting netnographic research.
The debate over who owns the data posted to public forums is also important when referring
to an online setting, as well as the distinction between public and private spaces. On the Internet
or SNSs, the lines between what is private and what is public are blurred, and ownership of data
is contentious (Henderson et al. 2013). Some researchers have concluded that data that can be
accessed without site membership can be considered in the public domain (Attard & Coulson
2012; Whitehead 2010). Although Facebook and Instagram require membership to access some
accounts, most accounts are still searchable via the Internet (e.g. a Google search). It must also be
recognized that SNSs also maintain part ownership of images posted by their users (see Facebook
2014). However, ethics for accessing comments on SNSs has been granted for other research on
SNS data in a public space (see Attard & Coulson 2012; Barnes et al. 2015).
The researcher approached ethical approval from the Flinders University SBREC following
the four principles from the National Statement on Ethical Conduct: respect for human beings,
research merit and integrity, justice, and beneficence (National Health and Medical Research
Council, Australian Research Council, & Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee, 2007 updated
May 2015). Ethics approval was granted for the project by following the procedures outlined by
the University Ethics Committee.

Conclusion
The aim of this paper was to provide an overview of the guidelines of netnography, and to reflect
on the study of online fitness culture and communities in order to raise a number of opportunities,
and considerations for future netnographers. In the provision of a common set of methodological
procedures and protocols Kozinets (2015) offers researchers new to researching in the online
environment a clear and prescribed method, allowing aggregation of netnographic knowledge in
different online cultures and communities.
Netnography creates opportunities in researching communities that may not exist without the
Internet, allows for the development of an understanding of online culture and meaning making
processes, as well as providing an unobtrusive method to explore sensitive issues. Reflecting
on the current study, the researcher was able to utilise these opportunities to participate in a
community that has adapted to an online platform. It is through the use of this method that
experiences of participants within the communities themselves had the opportunity for their
voices to be heard. Netnography also allowed the researcher to have an in-depth understanding
of the rituals, norms, meanings, neologisms, language, and behaviours that are produced through
the community. Collectively, the application and blend of netnography with other methods will
improve the quality of insight in this online area of social life.
Within the study netnography also brought methodological challenges. Retrospectively,
refinement of the research process, including narrowing the field site to one online fitness
community would have limited the data set, and provided a more narrow data collection space.

Conference proceedings 2016 Return to Table of Contents 156

 It is vital to continue to invest in netnography and online research methods in the field of
digital sociology. SNSs offer one area that is yet to be completely explored by researchers as a
rich source of qualitative data. Qualitative research methods such as digital ethnography (Pink
et al. 2016), as well as netnography (Kozinets 2015), provide valuable tools for understanding
constructed online spaces.

Conference proceedings 2016 Return to Table of Contents 157

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