Researching the street through the internet (and vice-versa): theoretical and methodological considerations on an ethnographic itinerary

Abstract

Having its starting point on a particular empirical object, the so called hip-hop culture, the present article will address, on the one hand, the main theoretical and methodological problems with which online observation (especially ethnographic approach) is confronted and its possible integration with offline observation, on the other hand, the challenges faced by the integrated  methodological strategy suggested in the itinerary followed on a particular research. Far from two domains apart, offline and online terrains of observation are intertwined in many ways, not only because its protagonists reproduce most of their offline activities online, but also because the internet is used, in distinct ways, on the elaboration of several hip-hop manifestations offline. It was precisely this back and forth between the street and the internet that the present research intended to grasp. From a practical point of view, this objective guided us to adopting a multiple and multisited strategy of observation, both offline and online.