Research and Impact

Robert Kozinets, professor of journalism, is netnography’s inventor. In the 1990s, Kozinets, the Hufschmid Chair of Strategic Public Relations and Business Communications coined the term — fusing Internet with ethnography — and developed the research method from the ground up. A subset of digital anthropology, netnography is a systematic, ethical approach to following the millions of bread crumbs scattered in plain view across social media platforms. This video explores how he came up with the term and what it means to us.