Abstract

GAMBETTI, Rossella C.  and  KOZINETS, Robert V.. Agentic Netnography. NTQR [online]. 2022, vol.10, e519.  Epub July 01, 2022. ISSN 2184-7770.  https://doi.org/10.36367/ntqr.10.2022.e519.

Over two decades after its introduction, netnography endures, shaped as an adaptive research practice, a “technological form of life”. In this chapter, we build on this idea of an enduring netnography and expand it by qualifying it as agentic. Agentic netnography is personified through the embodied materiality of Netno, an animist re-search being. This chapter aims to substantiate through the eyes of Netno the notion of agentic netnography concerning its fundamental research operations. This chapter does it first by illustrating the methodological principles inspiring the netnographic research procedures and then by plunging into specific contexts of consumer technoculture investigated through netnography. This manuscript converges on particular practices (i.e., investigation, interaction, immersion) and reveals how these have allowed researchers to achieve a deep cultural understanding of social media phenomena and experiences. The chapter provides a fluid, contemporary perspective on how cultural social media research alters and transforms in unison with evolving technoculture. It also offers a fresh look at how agentic netnography shapes and molds its practices and procedures to form a unique combination that is new and different for each phenomenon. In this capacity, netnography captures meanings that today can be increasingly obscure, elusive, slippery, and hidden in the depths of human interactions through and with technologies.

Keywords : Netnography; Social media; Qualitative methods; Technoculture; Agency.

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