a different kind of interaction in which body language and other kinds of social cues are absent or translated into signs and text. The character and level of access available to researchers of online communities are also particular to cyber-ethnography. Whereas face-to-face interactions are ephemeral as they occur, online social interactions are often automatically saved and archived, creating permanent accurate records. Also, distinctions between private and public spaces are often unclear in online communities. cyber-ethnography attempts to adapt participant-observation procedures such as making cultural entrée, collecting and analyzing data, and conducting ethical research to these computer-mediated contingencies. Cyber-ethnography has significantly developed with the emergence of new technologies. Almost since their inception, some researchers have acted as lurkers and conducted purely observational studies of online cultures and communities rather than as participant observers in an online community. This approach has been criticized by scholars who argue that researchers should fully participate as members of the online community. These scholars value the traditional ethnographic standards of participant observation, prolonged engagement, and deep immersion. Cyber-ethnography, like traditional ethnography often aims to produce a thick description that can help an outsider understand the meaning of behavior in a culture or community. This focus on participation and immersion makes these approaches quite distinct from qualitative internet research methods like online interviews, and online content analysis. Ethnographic methods are also quite different from quantitative Internet research methods like web usage mining or social network analysis. However some researchers complementary research methods along with cyber-ethnography in order to triangulate their findings. The range of methodologies Ethnographers have approached the study of the Internet in a range of different ways. A variety of terms refer to various formulations of methodological approaches to cyber-ethnography. Many of these seek to maintain their own dialog with the established tradition of ethnography. Each formulates its relation to the established anthropological tradition in different (and sometimes inconsistent) ways. Some think that ethnographies conducted online involve a distinctive methodological approach. Others think that cyber-ethnography is not a distinctive form of ethnography although researching the Internet ethnographically forces us to reflect on fundamental assumptions and concepts of ethnography. Methods choices need to be directly adapted to the kind of questions a researcher seeks to answer. The main advantage of cyber-ethnography reside in the scope and scale of the available data. Other advantages include seeking input directly from participants. For example, posting raw fieldnotes on a