Agentic Netnography

Abstract

Over two decades after its introduction, netnography endures, shaped as a “technological form of life”: an adaptive research practice that stretches out, expands, opens up, flattens out, lifts out, speeds up and slows down. In this chapter, we build on this idea of an enduring netnography and expand it by qualifying it as agentic. We conceptualize agentic netnography as an energized, electrified research force that incorporates both human and non-human shapes and sensitivities, senses and sensibilities, which act to self-perpetuate and establish increasingly meaningful and expanded connections with surrounding sociotechnical worlds. Agentic netnography is personified through the embodied materiality of Netno, an animist re-search being. The aim of this chapter is to substantiate through the eyes of Netno our notion of agentic netnography with reference to its fundamental research operations. We do that first by illustrating the methodological principles inspiring the netnographic research procedures and then by plunging into specific contexts of consumer technoculture investigated through netnography. We converge on particular practices and reveal how these have allowed researchers to achieve deep cultural understanding of social media phenomena and experiences. Our 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 on 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.