"In this chapter I reflect on my experience of researching digital politics while physically absent from ‘the field’. I argue that there is nothing inherently inferior or illegitimate about researching local issues remotely (e.g. via Twitter, live streaming, web cam, email, online archives), or...Read more
"This review surveys and divides the ethnographic corpus on digital media into three broad but overlapping categories: the cultural politics of digital media, the vernacular cultures of digital media, and the prosaics of digital media. [...]"
This introduction will propose six basic principles as the foundation for a new subdiscipline: digital anthropology.
This review examines studies of the affordances of digital technologies that produce virtuality. What we can call a “technological turn” in the literature considers technology a first-order analytical object rather than blackboxing it or subsuming it under social process. J.J. Gibson’s original...Read more
"[...]this chapter touches three issues: 1) it responds to some of the issues raised by Fabian concerning the status of eth- nographic materials and data, and of commentary as a “genre” of ethnographic writing after the Internet; 2) it distinguishes conceptually the practices of coordi-...Read more
"[I]n the online environment direct interaction with participants is replaced by computer-screen data that are largely textual, but may include combinations of textual, visual, aural, and kinetic components. We show how the online environment requires adjustments in how ethnographers define the...Read more
Blog post by Crystal Abidin from her series "Private Messages from the Field" with Gabriele de Seta. This post features an introduction and backstory to this colelction of essays.
Here’s a first confession about ethnographic work: All professional things have personal
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"[...] What types of field relations stem from such social media-driven ethnography? And what kinds of data do these relations present to the ethnographer? [...] I argue that ethnography is already in possession of the methodological tools critically to assess the validity and value of data...Read more
[This article examines] Influencers’ engagements with selfies on Instagram and their appropriations of selfies as salable objects, as tacit labor, and as an expression of contrived authenticity and reflexivity.[...]" Read more
Oxford Bibliographies article on the topic of Virtual EthnographyRead more
An ethnographic survey conducted over five years in a free software developers’ « community ». [...] A classical way to take this characteristic into account is to conduct surveys from a distance [...] and sometimes complementing them with direct inquiries with the participants (interviews or...Read more
danah boyd uncovers some of the major myths regarding teens' use of social media. She explores tropes about identity, privacy, safety, danger, and bullying.Read more