Nethnographic Research Report on Families with Members with Disabilities in Social Media and Facebook

Abstract

Article presents nethnographic qualitative research report partially based on the research completed in 2017 as thesis at the Chair of Disability Studies, Faculty of Education Sciences, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Poland. The research was conducted within 4 online open groups, organizational cultures of families with children, youth or adults with disabilities who are participating in social media in Poland. The primary focus of the research was the law and legal issues’ perception by families. However, in this paper we refer to wider aspects of general online activities undertaken by the members of researched 4 groups, that in fact form online organizational disability cultures. Presented results of analysis contain categories as: basic cultural artifacts (material and symbolic), values of 4 analyzed groups and underlying assumptions, according to the model of organizational culture by Edgar H. Schein (2010). Furthermore we discuss the general activities of participants in the context of the core research topic that was law and legal aspects of public online discussions. The main research question was formulated as follows: how families (from 4 organizational cultures online) with members with disabilities are active on social media in the context of the law and legal issues? Collected qualitative data was elaborated on the ground of the organizational culture model according to 3 levels of organizational culture indicated by Schein (2010) as: 1. artifacts, 2. espoused beliefs and values and 3. cultural underlying assumptions