In the last days I was discovering a little mistake in my (and others?) concept of Cyberethnology: As I know, researchers were always or often thinking about internet culture as a new culture, which has differences to offline cultures. For example, you compare commodification in online games to commodification in real markets, and discover similarities and differences (see also older story). Or a fellow student at our institute does research about democracy in the internet compared to the offline world, another one about ethnical conflicts in the internet (also with comparing or measuring it to the offline world). But taking internet culture serious means, that we are always aware that it's nearly as complex as the offline world and that there are really huge differences inside the internet. I mean, the differences of it to the offline world are really obvious and most of them (definitely not all!) are most likely based only on the technical difference, not in the cultural. The cultural interesting thing rather is: How are the differnces inside? As "inside" the technical difference is lesser. So taking internet culture serious means, that we are aware, that the internet is a own social space with it's own rules, of course affected by the offline world, but meanwhile maybe more affected by itself. So, what I would do to understand the internet, will rather be comparing different internet cultures. For example, commodification in one online game community compared to another (ok, this is stupid as it's most likely influenced by the game programing code). Another example: Comparing forum tradition and use and habits of one community to another. Intuitive I would guess, this would be more interesting as comparing it to offline communication of communities. Of course, this means not that comparing to the offline world is senseless. I think, at the moment it's only less interesting. Comparing to offline worlds is necessary for adapting our theorys. But then - as researches interested in culture - we should look at the different cultures inside the internet space.

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