Creating and Using Facebook Groups for Collaborative (Auto)ethnography and Ethnographic Sensemaking

Abstract

Much computer-mediated communication (CMC) literature has focused on how technology can influence interpersonal relationships and, in turn, lived experiences in social networking sites (SNSs) and offline. Throughout this article we aim to provide a foundation for readers engaging in research on SNSs, specifically Facebook—though our findings here are movable to other text-based platforms, such as Twitter and Reddit. We used a private/hidden Facebook group to facilitate and store the contributions of a mother–professor research collaborative. We focused on autoethnographic and ethnographic narratives and artifacts to collaborate with other academic mothers during the COVID-19 pandemic. This group created a data set for all of the mother–professors interacting in the group on Facebook. This article details some of the methodological strengths and limitations associated with engaging in online platforms and categorizing or coding data. We aim to provide readers with suggestions and best practices geared toward moving any publication using a text-based online platform toward rigorous initial setup, data collection, and data analysis.

Keywords:

• Collaborative ethnography
• COVID-19
• Facebook
• methodology
• online group