The Internet has increasingly converged and connected global flows of people, information and objects across mobile and dynamic open social structures. In this environment, new formats of community are arising that require us to rethink the methodological approaches we employ to research them. When the ‘place’ of a community is globally dispersed, its population composition unknown and its boundaries unarticulated, the methodological journey in defining the site of study becomes impossible before the research has begun. Developing a robust research methodology within this context remains a nascent area due to this. Consequently, contemporary community formats have become difficult to research because of the limits of existing concepts and research methods to encompass their digitally-augmented and global nature.

This paper develops the concept of social ecology, which drives a mixed-method research methodology to reveal the imprint of a community through socio-technical space. To date, these foundations of community form have been largely invisible due to the digital dualism within research methods; the artificial separation of online and offline social practices. The convergence of technologies and their embedding in everyday life practices has made the conceptual separation of virtual and physical social experiences of limited utility. Particularly when gathering data on the cornerstones of community experience and function: participation and membership, social capital and exchange, social activism, sociability and social networks.

Using the case study of the Herper community, I develop a mixed-methods approach that reveals the environment through which the community coheres according to its technological layer, social layer and mediating culture. The case-study draws upon findings from participant observation across 14 countries, 90 in person interviews and an online survey across 47 countries and 1593 respondents. While the collective behavior of the Herper community is less visible to existing approaches towards studying online communities, they prove to be an effective case study through which to develop innovations in conceptualizing and applying research methods for contemporary forms of community experience.