This website is created as the Digital Artefact for the Digital Asia (BCM320) subject to investigate the role of translated Chinese netizens’ top comments in broadening cultural knowledge of outsiders, particularly Vietnamese youth on social media. From my independent autoethnography (the beta version of my Digital Artefact), I have extended the scope of my project. I have looked into not only my media consumption of translated comments but also others’ consumption and the production of such paratexts. 

As mentioned in the previous reflection on the beta autoethnography, I struggled to balance the “autobiographical” and “ethnographical” elements in my writing of autoethnography. My autoethnographic blog post seems to become either a pure “thick description” of Chinese gay-themed films on Twitter (tweets as my field notes) or pure “epiphanies” narration of cultural fan translation practices on Facebook. Such an imbalance was attributed to my confusion of field sites (contextual field and meta-field) in doing ethnography and my disengaging presentation of data in doing autobiography. 

Writing autoethnography: The problem of autobiographical inclusion

As I could identify the distinction between my main and sub-field sites, I then focused on improving my autoethnographic writing to deliver my epiphanies to the audience effectively. Despite the combination of “showing” and telling” techniques to create “spatialising narratives” for critical thinking in the audience (Couldry et al. 2014), I became worried about how much I should “show” and “tell” rather than simply how. A large amount of data I gathered in the ethnographic process and conducting research, as well as my habit of writing formal essays, could predominate my website, leading to the lack of autobiographic elements. 

“An autoethnography can therefore be redefined as an ethnography in which the researcher is a full member of the research setting, is visible in the text and is committed to developing sociological understandings of a wider phenomena”

Orton-Johnson 2007, p. 2.

Looking into the writing style of autoethnography, I found Van Maanen’s (1988) classification of ethnographic writings as a helpful guide in improving my writing skills. According to Van Maanen (1988), the writing style of autoethnography can vary, falling somewhere in the continuums between “realist” description and “impressionist” caricature and analytical description and “confessional” self-exposure. 

Realist tales	Confessional tales	Impressionist tales
– Claim authenticity – Written in the third-person voice – Recipe: “The x did this” – Style: documentary	– Claim honesty – Written in first-person – Recipe: “I saw the x do this” – Style: personal	– Claim both – Written in both – Recipe: Mixed both  -Style:representational

Figure 1. Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography by John Van Maanen (Review by Weick, K)
(summarised by me)

From the table, I think I leaned towards the “realist tales” and sometimes overlooked the “confessional tales” in writing my independent autoethnography. While I am more comfortable to adopt the “confessional” style in my reflection, I often try to sound objective and unbiased in my research, presenting more “realist tales” in my research. Despite my attempt to make my autoethnography more “confessional”, I must admit that I am more in favour of the “realist tales”, considering my emphasis on an analytical-first approach to autoethnography rather than an evocative one in most of my previous blog posts. Although my writing style so far has been acceptable for readers, thanks to the blogging format of my independent autoethnography, it can be a communication problem for a website, which demands more visualisation and story-telling elements to keep the audience navigate my project portfolio. To have an “impressionist tale”, I included more “confessional tales” on my website.

Conducting Ethnography: Ethical challenges 

During my time of doing fieldwork, I was aware of some ethical problems. The blurred boundaries between public and private online spaces regarding access to data and techniques for the protection of privacy and confidentiality pose an ethical dilemma to social media ethnographers like me (Garcia et al. 2009), considering my role as a lurker. Since I tried to follow the rules of translated comments pages, I silently observed the translated comments and people’s reactions instead of actively participating in debates or even the “likes and shares of threads” to avoid the risk of being “kicked out to the lone island” by page admins. Lurking allowed me to keep track of the strands of debate occurring, follow discussions on topic areas that interested me, or that I knew little about and sustain a level of involvement with topic developments, increasing my levels of participation if necessary or desirable. 

“Lurking is a term derived from CMC (computer mediated communication) literature describing the common and accepted practice of spending time in an online space observing interaction patterns and reading postings.” 

Orton-Johnson 2007, p. 5.

While I can observe others and capture their honest reaction to serve my research needs with my invisible presence, I initially felt guilty to conduct research without informing participants of their consent. However, thanks to Facebook’s open policies and the public nature of those translated comment pages, I could continue with my unobtrusive observation without infringing the privacy of other Internet users (Garcia et al. 2009, p. 74). Regarding the interview, I followed the code of conduct of the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA, 2019) to ensure the rights and protection for my interviewee. 

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(for references, please check the Reference page)

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