Tales of social internactionism during research at the Couchsurfing Collective
Ethnographic reseach conducted July-August/2005 in Montreal
By Paula Bialska
Let’s begin with the the project I was about to study: Couchsurfing.com – a web-based hospitality exchange network which, for the past year prior, occupied my academic endeavours – using the ‘community’ as my go-to-it card when exploring issues on trust, social network theory, and online/offline communication (see “Turystyka Emocjonalna”).
In March, 2006, Casey Fenton, the founder of the website, contacted me to be part of the first ‘Couchsurfing Collective’ – a sort of work-camp-cum-social experiment-cum-hippie-commune in which active website members from around the world came to work on the website and ‘build deep and meaningful connections’ (a phrase which, given the verbal tradition of qualitative research, later became the slogan of the summer). Casey actually ‘surfed’ on my couch the year before, and came to know my bizarre scientific take on his project, and invited me along. Enthusiastic, I packed my suitcases at the beginning of July and took off from Warsaw to Montreal, ready to interview, research, and fully become immersed in the local context of what I wanted to study – the way a online-community can meet the post-modern individual’s intrisic needs to ‘find themselves’ through intense interaction with another human. I also wanted to explore the process of friendship-building with this community – it’s instant nature, the way friendship is regarded as a commodity, how it becomes fluid and very temporary.
The Couchsurfing Collective filled the top level of a row-house located in the artsy area of Monreal. It was a hippie commune of modernity in every sense of the word. People were coming in and out of the house like little ants bringing fresh food and bread, some were washing the dishes, others sat around computers which lined the walls in one of the main rooms. There were so many people coming and going I couldn’t keep track. A sociologists paradise.
Continued in next blog….
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