Understanding Online Communities in the Age of Digital Boundaries: What is Netnography?

Year 2023, Volume: 9 Issue: 2, 95 - 103, 31.12.2023

Ali Ekber Akgün , Muhammed Buğrahan Hatiboğlu

Abstract

Netnography, which has emerged in the last thirty years, is a qualitative research method that is widely used in the field of marketing and has recently spread to different disciplines. It has been widely used in the field of marketing and its field of activity has started to expand with the increase in technology-human interaction. With its ethnography-based starting point, Netnography traces the traces of the culture that people build collectively in the digital world. The fact that the culture shared in this online environment is becoming more and more wide-spread thanks to social media applications is the advantages that bring Netnography to the forefront. However, although it is a research field clustered in the field of marketing in terms of its emergence, Netnography has recently started to find a field of activity in different disci-plines. Therefore, this study reconsiders Netnography as a contemporary qualitative research method rather than a tool used in marketing. It examines the brief history of netnography over time, its philosophical and methodological underpinnings, how it differs from ethnography, how it can be applied, and how it has been and will be used in some areas of business studies.

Keywords

Netnography, qualitative research, business studies

Dijital Sınırlar Çağında Çevrimiçi Toplulukları Anlamak: Netnografi Nedir?

Abstract

Son otuz yılda ortaya çıkan Netnografi, yaygın olarak pazarlama alanında kullanılan ve son zamanlarda farklı disiplinlere yayılan nitel bir araştırma yöntemidir. Pazarlama alanıyla yaygın olarak kullanılmaya başlanmış ve teknoloji-insan etkileşiminin artmasıyla etklinlik alanı gittikçe genişlemeye başlamıştır. Etnografya temelli bir çıkış noktasına sahip olmasıyla birlikte Netnografi insanların çevrimiçi dünyada ortaklaşa inşa ettikleri kültürün izlerini takip eder. Bu çevrimiçi ortamda paylaşılan kültürün sosyal medya uygulamaları sayesinde gittikçe yaygınlaşması Netnografiyi ön plana çıkartan avantajlardır. Ancak yine de ortaya çıkış alanı bakımından pazarlama alanında kümeleşen bir araştırma alanı olmasına karşın son zamanlarda Netnografi farklı disiplinlerde etkinlik alanı bulmaya başlamıştır. Dolayısıyla bu çalışma Netnografiyi pazarlama alanında kullanılan bir araç olmaktan ziyade güncel bir nitel araştırma yöntemi olarak yeniden ele almaktadır. Bu makalede netnografinin zaman içindeki kısa tarihi, felsefi ve metodolojik temelleriyle etnografiden ayrıldığı noktaları, nasıl uygulanabileceğini ve işletme çalışmalarında bazı alanlarında nasıl kullanıldığını ve kullanılacağını incelemektedir.

Keywords

Netnografi, nitel araştırma, işletme çalışmaları

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