Welcome to the electronic version of The Virtual Campfire. Click "Table of Contents" to start from the beginning.
At the end of each section is a link to the next. Alternately, you may select a specific chapter from this menu or download the PDF (below).
A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Wesleyan University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Anthropology
Based on five years of participant-observation on the social networking sites MySpace, Facebook, and Tribe.net, The Virtual Campfire explores the increasingly blurred boundaries between human and machine, public and private, voyeurism and exhibitionism, the history of media and our digitized future. Woven throughout are the stories and experiences of those who engage with these sites regularly and ritualistically, the generation of "digital natives" whose tales attest to the often strange and uncomfortable ways online social networking sites have come to be embedded in the everyday lives of American youth.
Read what others have to say about The Virtual Campfire:
• 22 February 2009: Bil til 15000 kr og PC til 150 kr? (Danish)
• Winter, 2009: The Virtual Campfire has been incorporated on the syllabus for the course Cyberspace Ethnography at Concordia University!
• 19 January 2009: Teses e dissertações sobre adolescentes e sites de redes sociais (Portugese)
• 12 January 2009: "Tese sobre a interação de jovens em sites de redes sociais" (Portugese)
• 31 May 2008: Webnography and the firelight
• 21 May 2008: Ethnographic study: Social network sites are "virtual campfires"
© Jenny Ryan, May 2008