Wykorzystanie strategii emicznej w badaniach nad poradniczymi praktykami wspólnot wirtualnych

In the article the author shares her experience in research on counselling practices of virtual communities. The aim of the study was to understand the world of online communities, especially in relation to the advisory aspects. The author is interested in counselling, which in the age of the Internet has become public and personal experience. This text is not a presentation of research results. The author focused her attention on the research process, not on the final result. The specificity of the research was to agree with the perspective of the participant engaged in the virtual community and ethnographic description of the observed situation. Methodological inspiration for the author became the “emic” strategy by Kenneth Lee Pike. The “emic” studies emphasize the inner aspect of culture, the language, the participant’s perspective of culture. The adoption of such a research perspective has led the author to reflect on the difference between ethnography in the traditional sense and ethnography in the “emic” strategy. “Emic” strategy introduces some changes – the researcher is a member of the culture, his presence does not affect the others, he knows a lot more about the test culture, researcher is emotionally involved. The text ends with two diagrams showing the differences in the stages of research processes. The classical ethnographic research includes the following steps: 1) research plan, 2) entry into the research community, 3) observation, analysis, interpretation, description, 4) output from the research community. The author draws attention to the differences that are introduced by the “emic” strategy: 1) being a member of the community, 2) inspiration event, 3) the emergence of a research plan, 4) observation, analysis, interpretation, description, 5) will remain in the community.