Possibilities and Limits of Virtual Ethnography as a Research Technique for Political and Corporate Communication

Abstract

The emergence of virtual environments as a context, as a tool, and as a research objective (in other words, the Internet as a new anthropological space), has led to the adoption of new specific techniques to apprehend these new fields, and not only as sources. Virtual environments are also seen as universes in which take place communication processes that, without entirely disengage from those produced in physical settings, have some pecularities that require a new approach methodology. Therefore, this theoretical article is intended to serve as critical review of the virtual ethnography, while analyzing the limits and possibilities of this technique in the fields of political and corporate communication, since this tool can be very useful in this fields.