Kendall, L. (2002). Hanging out in the virtual pub: masculinities and relationships online. Berkeley and London, University of California Press.
This is a relatively early online ethnography of a male-dominated Internet forum comprising primarily computer/IT workers, based on virtual fieldwork from the mid 1990s. This online ethnography examines how men and women negotiate their gender roles on an online forum on the Internet which the author calls Blue Sky. The author uses the virtual pub 'the Falcon' as a metaphor to describe the social relations and interactions in the online community, particularly because the majority of the Blue Sky participants were male (related to the demographics of people using this type of online forum in the late 1990s), and the Falcon provides the space for them to enact and negotiate their masculine identities. The online ethnography focuses on participants' performances of gender, race, and class identities through their online interactions and negotiations, along with their understanding of these performances. Contrary to the assumption that men and women take on unrealistic identities through Internet forums on the Internet, the author finds that the Blue Sky participants adopt online identities which closely resemble their actual lives and personalities. This online ethnography has parallels with other studies of virtual communities such as Boellstorff* and Reingold*.