Visual ethnography. Online ethnography

Visual ethnography

The visual ethnographic approach is becoming more common in anthropology and sociology. It is often used as an aid to participant observation in realist or interpre- tivist frameworks. Images can be supplied by research participants, or produced in partnership with researchers, allowing self-representation to become part of the research. Films and photographs are useful for eventual theory construction because they are permanently available for reanalysis. Visual ethnography can be enhanced by technological innovations in multimedia, such as small, portable video cameras and sensitive recording equipment. Pink (2007) argues for a multisensory ethnography that incorporates input from all the other senses, which might

compensate for the inadequacy of linguistic accounts and descriptive writing. The visual approach could be useful in criminology but at the moment it is hindered by the fact that only a limited number of groups are likely to allow visual access and recording. As in all ethnographic research, access is more readily granted to eth- nographers who might be able to help the group express and publicise either its pressing problems or its attractive characteristics. Thus, visual ethnographic work is eminently possible with sex workers seeking to avoid criminalization or victims wishing to express the harm inflicted on them (see Arfman et al., 2016), but the chances of criminals, police officers or prison officers allowing extensive visual recording are very low. The big problem with the visual ethnography is that a sin- gle image is almost always a synecdoche, a term that means the part that misrepresents the whole (or the whole that misrepresents the part). Media researchers have long warned us about the ideological power of the image, which, with all its possibilities of selective focus, presentation, manipulative editing, and so on, would allow ethnographic researchers to be more persuasive in their pres- entation of their preferred ideological positions.

Online ethnography

This is a new and useful addition to criminology. Essentially, it is participant observa- tion adapted for cyberspace. Some criminologists have realized that crime has mutated rather than declined and most new crimes or advanced means of committing traditional crimes and operating criminal markets are now associated with the inter- net (see Hall and Winlow, 2015). The internet accommodates virtual forms of economic, social and cultural interchange; therefore the ethnographer, far less ham- pered by initial problems of access, must learn the virtual community’s protocols to be accepted as a member. The internet hosts many different and specific forms of disembodied ‘community’ – markets, hobbies, identities, political groups, sexual preferences, and so on – that are in constant flux. As they attempt to join these com- munities, online ethnographers can use avatars to circumvent the ethical problems of deception, risk of harm, anonymity and confidentiality because in most cases mem- bers have already agreed that identities should be hidden in a ‘covert community’. Webber and Yip’s (2013) research into the online trade in fake credit cards and Davey et al. ’s (2012) research into online drug forum communities developed inno- vative methods for online research into the web and the ‘dark net’, including non-participant observation or ‘lurking’, and the collection of screenshots adds visu- als and records. Hall and Antonopoulos’s (2016) research into legal and illegal online pharmacies innovatively combined advanced online methods with advanced offline methods to research the global market in counterfeit pharmaceuticals. They were able to research the supply side of the market by using online methods whilst simul- taneously using traditional participant observation and interviews with consumers to research the demand side. However, the use of ‘honeypot websites’ and covert

research amongst users of pharmaceuticals bought online did involve some decep- tion, but difficulties in ethical clearance were overcome because internet research is low risk and the use of pseudonyms as avatars and the omission of locational details in the analysis and writing up provided ‘double anonymity’ (2016). This suggests that many ethical problems can be overcome with innovation, careful planning and the regulation of research practice. Today’s ubiquitous use of the internet has the potential to open up criminal practices hitherto closed off to researchers, such as paedophile networks, fraud, corruption, state crimes, tax evasion and far-right extremism.