My First Ethnography

For the first time ever in my academic career, I have been assigned to create an ethnography on an online community for my intro to new media class. Before this, I didn't even know what an ethnography is, but later learned that it is a research method central to knowing the world from the standpoint of its social relations. I began analyzing some websites to look for a group to research, but I couldn't find any. I then decided to focus my ethnography on an online group that I am already a part of. The group I decided to analyze is on Facebook and is titled Robinhood Penny Stock Traders. This group has about 45,000 members and many posts per day. I learned about this group from a friend of mine named Charlie that lives in Patterson Hall with me, he too showed me Robinhood and taught me the basics and introduced me to this Facebook group. The main focus of this group is sharing earnings, interesting stocks, and advice for stock trading off of an app called Robinhood, which I am also a member of. I have been a member of both for a little over a month and thought it would be the most interesting and enjoyable group I could write about. In my personal experience, this group is very lively with many new posts each day about many different things. This group is not strictly about stocks, but people post updates on their lives, what they're up to, where they're going, etc. People also post articles from various news outlets on stories and events that could hurt or help a companies stock price and initial public offerings that have a lot of potential. This page is very intriguing to me because I just started trading and there is such I can learn from other members of this group as many people also post articles with tips and ideas on how to be successful. I think this project will be very interesting and will help me become a more active member of Robinhood Penny Stock Traders and expose me to more helpful information for my hobby and possible an online friendship with some of the other group members.