Overview

The purpose of this ethnography is to join an online community and interact with the members and observe their behaviors in an attempt to understand why the members participate in these communities. The group I have decided to focus on is Chicago White Sox fans online. Among the groups I looked at the behaviors of were “South Side Hitmen” and “YouCanPutItOnTheBoard”, both of which I found by going to the sports groups section and searching white sox.

As of my joining of the groups, South Side Hitmen had 291 members and YouCanPutItOnTheBoard had 1412. South Side Hitmen is a private group that I had to apply to get in to, while YouCanPutItOnTheBoard is a public group that anyone can join.  I also looked at a blog titled “Inside the White Sox.”