Ardevolgomezcruz Digitalethnography
Ardevolgomezcruz Digitalethnography
Ardevolgomezcruz Digitalethnography
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Companions to Media Studies series. Angharad Valdivia (U. of Illinois), edited by Fabienne Darling-Wolf, Temple
University in Philadelphia.
Abstract
This chapter deals with ethnographic methodology used when studying digital media,
social contexts and cultural practices. The chapter starts with an introduction to
ethnography and its challenges when going digital. It then provides an overview of the
different approaches to digital ethnography depending on the object of study: (a) the
ethnography of online communities, virtual worlds and social media sites; (b) the
connective ethnography proposal through online and offline field settings; and (c) the
ethnography of everyday life and the issue of audiences and creative practices in
as well as digital tools for registering, analyzing and presenting data and ethical
considerations.
Introduction
especially since the spread of Internet use and the World Wide Web boom, scholars
and institutions have been interested in studying the social processes that accompany
(Wellman 2004; Silver & Massanari 2006). A growing body of work is comprised of
1
From many different disciplinary and theoretical perspectives, scholars have used
ethnographic methods as a research strategy to study uses of the Internet, online social
practices and how people engage in networked relationships and to account for the
moral order of their activities (Lindlof & Shatzer 1998; Mason 1999).
At the same time, the cultural turn in communication research has raised the
gender, family living and identity, in order to understand media as a cultural form
today among the social sciences and its different fields of research, including Internet
studies, the social studies of technology, and communication and media studies.
experiential point of view. Ethnographers must attend to people’s sayings and doings,
including their material condition of existence and their world views: how people
build meaning regarding their experiences and actions. Participant observation and in-
observation ethnographers gain access to people’s ways of life, not only by observing
behavior but also by sharing their daily life routines and social meanings. In this
construction of ethnographic knowledge (Lee & Ingold 2006). They are not factors
that should be avoided for the sake of greater objectivity but constituent elements that
have to be controlled and put into work in the data analysis and interpretation
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the cultural patterns that cross-cut different domains of social activity. Therefore, the
Moving this ethnographic approach to the study of the Internet poses many
there other related methods that are specifically needed to study Internet
communication? These kinds of questions have brought to the fore the need for
how they also imply different ways of understanding the Internet as a field and object
research approaches because it is more semantically neutral and more useful to refer
Digital ethnography
Christine Hine (2000) argues that the Internet, as an object of study for the
social sciences, has been theorized in two ways: either as a cultural form or as a
cultural practice. As far as the cultural form is concerned, she understands the
"cultures of Internet" as the study of the specific cultural forms based on the Internet,
and specific online norms and values. In other words, Internet cultures are cultural
3
forms that emerge on the Internet like virtual world’s players, webcam girls, hackers,
bloggers, and other collectives whose senses of self, belonging and group
suggests that, as happens with other creations, the Internet may be analyzed as a
"cultural artifact." This implies the study of practices which are not necessarily
specific of the Internet but acquire different dimensions online, as, for example, the
and Internet studies, we distinguish three different approaches, which can be defined
periods. The first starts from the Internet’s beginnings to the late 1990s, the second
coincides with the expansion of the WWW, and the third corresponds to the
from 2005 until the present day. However there is a close relationship between
ethnographic strategies, the fact is that, even today, these three ethnographic
Virtual ethnography
communication and media studies –and were based on triggering off metaphors that
4
‘cyberspace’ was conceptualized as an immaterial place where disembodied selves
could freely interplay, forming ‘virtual communities’, and where new social and
cultural patterns flourished and gave birth to a brand new ‘cyberculture’ (Shields
The notion of cyberspace, taken from the novelist William Gibson who
space of the mind" (Gibson 1984, p. 30), was used by activists such as John Perry
Barlow and academics like Michael Benedikt to refer to the ‘space’ made possible by
‘virtual space’ almost became synonymous with the Internet itself (Gómez-Cruz
2007).
culture and society was highly important. Thus, the first social studies of the Internet
disintegration and disembodiment were shaping new modes of social activity (Slater
2002). For example, considering that, at this time, computer mediated interaction was
mainly textual, anonymity was taken as an intrinsic characteristic of the medium. This
is illustrated by Steiner’s famous cartoon, in which two dogs are sitting in front of a
computer and one says to the other: "on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."
Along the same line, in 1994 Howard Rheingold inspired another powerful
electronic bulletin board system (BBS) known as The WELL, he argued that long-
term participation in these electronic forums creates a shared system of beliefs, values
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and norms, and specific behaviors. These enact a collective sense of belonging and
create a new kind of community, based solely on common interests, goodwill and
solidarity. Sherry Turkle (1997) coined a third compelling concept: virtual identity. In
Life on the Screen, and drawing on her research with Multi-User Domain (MUD)
users, she explained how people could perform different and alternative online
identities. The goal, then, was to establish whether computer mediated interaction was
changing our own understandings of self and self-identity, and to what extent virtual
identities were free from the social and cultural constraints of ‘real life.’
If the connection to the Internet was like "entering into cyberspace" and one
Firstly, ethnography was considered the proper method for describing an unexplored
territory (as the non-western cultures were for early western anthropologists), and,
Therefore, the Internet was conceptualized as giving birth to an entirely new culture
that was going to transform our culture at large —the new world of Cyberia (Escobar
1994). Meanwhile its population was studied as the “natives of the Internet Islands”
Islanders.
community bound to a single territory had long been questioned (see Marcus 1995;
ethnographic fieldwork on Usenet, BBS, chat rooms, electronic forums, etc., mainly
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focusing on social and cultural dynamics (Reid 1994; Markham 1998). The
ethnographic gaze was focused on how individuals come together via computer-
mediated interaction and develop common rules, collective norms and values and as a
sense of belonging (Jones & Kucker 2001,p. 217). Among these early ethnographic
studies, most were related to communication studies and audience reception research,
such as online fan communities of soap operas (Baym 2000) and television series or
films (Jenkins 1992), showing how audiences were constructing meaning by taking
The idea that prevailed was that the nature of those online communities was
metaphysical and, therefore, it was sufficient to merely study them by analyzing the
"life on the screen." This was translated into a limitation of the field site to a single
online community and into studying only online interactions. Scholars made
aprioristic assumptions about time, space and the differentiated nature of online
culture, online identity and online social ties. Virtual ethnographies were largely
unifying ethnographic field site to describe all kinds of social life occurring on the
Internet, aligning different artifacts, uses and practices. The concept of Cyberspace
has also contributed to the idea of the Internet as a unified object of study with
Throughout the 1990s and despite these conceptual constraints, the detailed
mediated interactions were culturally rich and users engaged in a fully meaningful
social life. Those studies were a first step to legitimize the ethnographic study of
online social relationships, given that some earlier conceptions considered computer
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mediated communication to be “less real,” socially weak or second-class
meta-verses, especially in online game cultures (Pearce 2009). So, more recently, we
pointing to the delimitation of their object of study to the “virtual cultures” that
emerge from online interaction. For example, Corneliussen and Rettberg (2008, p. 1)
clarify this position with the use of a metaphor: "Being new to the culture of the
problem is focused on studying the process of socialization that takes place through
online participation. In this sense, other authors propose that virtual worlds can be
studying Second Life, argues that the distinction between virtual and real is not an
players to set apart their “virtual world” from the “actual world” by the “worlding” of
Connective ethnography
concept of Virtual Ethnography coined by Christine Hine was a hallmark for the
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ethnographic study of the Internet, another book also opened a different understanding
and Don Slater. Both of these texts were published in 2000. These researchers, with a
background in material culture, media politic economy and social studies of science,
abandon the idea of Cyberspace in favor of a situated study of the Internet. Hine
1998 of the British nanny accused of murdering the North American baby she was
taking care of, while Miller and Slater locate it in the broader context of Trinitarian
culture. Both blur the divide between online and offline fieldwork. Instead of studying
Internet cultures as separated and independent features from the real world, these
multiple connections and the close relationship between these two social grounds.
Christine Hine herself was one of the first to reflexively apply the ethnographic
paradigm of the constructed nature of the field in anthropology (Marcus 1998) within
Internet studies, systematizing her “principles for virtual ethnography” from a multi-
sited and connective notion of ethnography (Hine 2000). Hine approaches virtual
links with the mass media system, breaking with the idea of community and place as
central for the definition of the ethnographic field site, understanding field site as the
At the same time, Internet demography and usage also changed, with a
network and the integration of the Internet into everyday mundane activities
above, other scholars began to do fieldwork “inside” and also “outside” the screen,
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exploring the relationships between online and offline interactions. As Bakardjieva
notes, the "Internet is exactly the place where the online and offline meet. Its study
should mean keeping the vision on both sides at the same time, especially because
very occasionally Internet is only a bridge between one offline and another"
(2008,54).
Authors like Leander and McKim, or later Hine (2007), use the concept of
and offline situations. Fields and Kafai (2008) also use the notion of connective
recordings and collecting online and offline social interaction data. For Jenna Burrell
combining online and offline strategies, but also of constructing the field site as a
heterogeneous network mapped out from the social relationships of the subjects and
their connections to material and digital objects and to physical or virtual locations.
(2008) notes that taking the Internet as a field for ethnographic research does not
10
imply using the notions of community or social networks but to understand that there
digital technologies. The technological landscape has evolved and is no longer just
about computers, Internet and platforms. Wireless networks, mobile phone apps,
video game consoles and so on, are all interconnected and we can say that our
multiple media has become a regular feature of everyday life and, quoting Mark
Deuze (2011, p.137): "media have become so inseparable from us that we no longer
design (Bijker and Law 1994) and the domestication theory in media studies. Both
highlight users’ agency in the innovation process and how technology is creatively
appropriated by users (Silverstone, Hirsh & Morley 1992; Haddon 2005). The move
practices.
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industries. From Cultural Studies approach, digital technologies are commodities that
have symbolic value in the “circuit of culture” (Du Gay, Hall, Janes, Mackay and
Negus 1997). In addition, this new media landscape forms new means of production,
practices of representation and reproduction of social identities. In this sense, the use
Several authors have explored the relationship between audiences and cultural
production in new media (Harries 2002; Marshall 2002, 2004; Jenkins 2004).
Although they define this relationship in different terms, they agree on the rise of a
productive audience and the blurring between the spheres of production, distribution
and consumption. For Nick Couldry (2004), theorizing media as practice implies a
change of paradigm in media studies. It changes the focus of media research: from
semiotic analysis of text content to the people’s doings and sayings, defining media
practices as the open set of practices relating to, or oriented around, media. One
points out, one of the main problems of studying media in relation to cultural
production has been that audience research has traditionally been based on the
should not be abandoning the goal of understanding real people, living real
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(…) Only ethnography can begin to answer questions about what people really
These authors put forward the potential for setting the analysis of media
ethnography involves studying media practices beyond the parameters set down by
them with, around and through digital technologies – relating to creative processes
other social agents with different goals and purposes. Coleman brings up that the aim
of media ethnography is, then, to explore: "the complex relationships between the
local practices and global implications of digital media, their materiality and politics,
and their banal, as well as profound, presence in cultural life and modes of
Summing up, this analysis of the relationship between ethnography and the
different fields and objects related to Internet and media research attempted to show
the complex relationship between a work’s theoretical framework, its object of study
and its empirical reference. On one hand, we have pointed out the importance of
theoretical concepts and epistemic approaches to shape the ethnographic field and
frame our object of study. On the other hand, we have highlighted the development of
Therefore, we propose to talk about digital ethnography as a way to engage with the
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central role of digital technologies in everyday life, and also to understand the
elements of the ethnographic endeavor (not limited to digital objects). Next, we will
see how the Internet has been conceptualized as a research tool and as a field for
Annette Markham (2004) argues that the Internet has been understood both as
a field site and a research tool. The first concept highlights the way in which the
Internet and its different platforms and technologies have become the context of
participant observation —that is, the field site or the locus of the social interaction
between the ethnographer and his or her respondents. The second puts the emphasis
on the Internet as a means for data collection. Several authors have explored the
Internet’s possibilities as a research tool (Mann & Stewart 2000; O'Connor & Madge
2003; Mason, Coffey, & Atkinson 2005; Fielding, Lee & Blank 2008) with which to
conduct surveys, interviews, network analysis and focus groups as well as presenting
research results (Hewson, Yule & Vogel 2003; Dicks, Soyinka & Coffey 2006).
gathering into a wider perspective of fieldwork. Ethnographic research does not make
a clear-cut distinction between data gathering and “being in the field.” Although plain
etc.) are part of ethnographic fieldwork, what characterizes the method is the
participatory approach: the social presence of the ethnographer “in the field.” In
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Fieldwork, its continuity and its results, depend largely on the relationships we build
methodology, as ethnographic fieldwork ideally must take at least one year in order to
develop a glimpse of the different rhythms and moments that punctuate our social life.
Here we will take into consideration how we manage our relationships and
conduct research in digital settings. While some authors argue that “virtual” worlds
are a different kind of social space than those created by face-to-face communication,
we will suggest that the nature of the social space does not depend on the
characteristics of the medium, but on the kind of social interactions that people are
engaged in.
tracing personal relations in different social contexts. Delimiting the field is not only a
question of finding a place or a community within which to conduct research, but also
of constructing our field site according to our research questions and objectives. As
developed in one context with those arising in another (Amit 2000, p. 6).
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Digital fieldwork requires adjustments in how ethnographers define the
obtain access to settings and research subjects? What ethical dilemmas do these
choose the topic of interest, and then define the field and how that topic involves
different modes of communication, people, things and locations. For instance, one
could begin fieldwork by attending a rock festival and end up participating in chat
rooms, visiting the blogs of musicians’ fans and sharing files with them through
instant messaging on mobile phones. As the Internet forms part of the daily life of
many of the collectives we study, and as they do not necessarily make a distinction
between their online, offline and indeed phone relationships, we follow our subjects
Digital ethnography does not establish fixed dichotomies between online and
offline realms. There are no substantive differences between “online” and “offline”
ethnographies but rather different kinds of environments and ways of social co-
through an array of digital technology devices and therefore must develop the
socio-technical contexts. As image, sound and movement are becoming more and
more common features of social interaction, not only for web design and online
communication, but also for instant messaging on mobile phones and GPS monitoring
systems, the digital ethnographer has to move between different research contexts and
methods. With this development, the division between “online” and “offline”
ethnographies tends to collapse even more and digital ethnography must be conveyed
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as a mediated practice, as a remix of methods that has to be engaged with the
ethnographic practice.
Digital ethnographers use digital media to generate data in two ways: first,
they use digital visual and sound recorders, notebooks or PCs to write their field notes
and, usually, the same devices to collect textual data, visual material, and sound and
movement created by the subjects of study (Garcia et al. 2009, p. 64). Moreover, the
interaction of the ethnographer with the participants of the research also takes place in
digital environments, and the whole interaction can be recorded and preserved.
main methodological goals: to gain presence in a concrete social space, to define her
or his identity as a researcher in the field site, and to let respondents know about the
research interests in order to obtain informed consent (in the ethnographic method,
this consent used to be tacit and not necessarily expressed through formularies). The
last, but not least, important factor is to have a first-hand experience of a particular
technology, as any other participant would. Our experience doing digital ethnographic
research suggests that the participation observation depends largely on our skills in
managing textual, visual, sensory and kinetic components when interacting with
dealing with textual and visual information displayed on the screen, such as the use of
emoticons, pictures, colors, page layout and graphic designs, as key elements of the
an empirical example of the former discussion. The author’s fieldwork was conducted
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between September 2008 and March 2010 and was focused on digital photographic
practices based on the photo-sharing platform Flickr. After a few months of observant
geographically based in Barcelona, was very active and organized many physical
confident enough, he decided to send his first public message to the group introducing
Let me introduce myself. I'm Edgar Gomez, a Mexican based in Barcelona and
questions and fieldwork. Finally, you are the experts and the idea is to learn
from you, with you. Well, you will say what you think, for now, if you please,
regards
Edgar
The group welcomed him with jokes (“are we so weird that somebody wants
to study us?”) and warm hospitalary messages. Soon, it was clear that the group’s
communication was not reduced to Flickr but was actively open and experimenting
with different social media, apart from gathering together for photographic sessions or
simply hanging out around together. Members of SortidazZ tend to shoot, process,
show each other photos, videos and webpages, make comments on any platform while
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they are with other members, use whatsapp (a mobile chat application) as a group’s
backchannel, etc. All of this could easily happen while members of the group were
decided to follow and trace those connections which took him to Facebook, Twitter,
Gmail, SMS, phone calls, skype, as well as to some photographic walks and personal
encounters. Through these trajectories, activities and “sites,” the field was instantiated
At the same time, Gómez-Cruz’s profiles in all the social media sites had a
permanent link to his blog where, during the fieldwork, he wrote several reflections
on photography, his life as a PhD student and his daily experiences of the research
process. The blog was but one of many devices to develop a constant "presence in the
field." Although, at the beginning, the blog was only intended to be a "public face" for
his work and not understood as a research tool (see Saka, 2008), to his surprise, group
members began to leave comments on the posts, send him links or comment on the
content of the blog, in the blog itself and in other electronic forums. The ethnographer
was not only actively creating the field, but also weaving himself into it. Along with
Flickr, Facebook and Twitter accounts, the ethnographer’s blog served as a form of
heavy-use Flickr group, Gómez-Cruz observes that the photographic object itself is
changing from a memory device to a connective practice, and from having a primary
social cohesion role to becoming a key element in new group’s formations in daily
several practices (shooting but also processing, sharing and exhibiting). These
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production practices are more and more related to digital mediated socialization,
sharing sites.
collective life, norms, values and dynamics of a group, the in-depth interview is a
gateway to the perceptions and meanings that respondents attach to their actions. At
the same time, the interview is a unique setting that gives the research participants an
opportunity to reflect aloud on their own practices and express their thoughts,
are useful for contrasting the feelings, impressions and conjectures raised by the
researcher during immersion in the field. It is obvious that during fieldwork there are
many occasions for engaging in conversations with our respondents about the
ambiguities of social life and that these are a valuable source of understandings.
Although some conversations naturally occur while others are directly addressed by
In-depth interviews are explicitly set up by the ethnographer and are typically
being more focused than natural conversations. The nature of the questions depends,
again, on the research topic and the kind of contextualization that the ethnographer
needs for interpreting data, but it is useful to have some kind of script that helps to
conduct the interview. As happens with online conversations, online interviews can be
conducted through different Internet technologies, from chat or instant text messaging
devices. Some authors argue that the characteristics of the socio-technical context or
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medium impose communicative restraints, while others argue that they open new
research possibilities. For example, textual interviews (and specially those based on
anonymity) are considered useful for approaching sensitive or elusive topics, since
they tend to allow people to express themselves more freely (Orgad 2005; Illingworht
2001; Sanders 2005). Although this will pose problems of authenticity and
spontaneity, textual interviewing allows respondents to put more thought into their
responses. The anonymity factor may also balance the power relationship between
interviewer and interviewee because the latter may feel freer to challenge researchers
than they would in a face-to-face interview. In general, online methods allow the
interviewee to gain control of the course of the interview but, ultimately, his or her
commitment will depend on personal motivation and engagement with the research.
the person before the interview and has previously established a rapport. Besides, it is
not imperative to acknowledge the “real” name of the person when studying online
of the photo they were referring to, not only from their own streams but also from
other’s people’s photos, blogs or webpages. At the same time, while dealing with the
respondents were more comfortable talking about their experience online with a sense
of trust in the interviewer and, at the same time, with the feeling of being protected by
their own private space. Interestingly enough, this is exactly the way these individuals
produce photos in their private/intimate space to then upload them to the “public”
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space of social networks. One of them even preferred to create a diary of her thoughts
about her practice than to be interviewed. Here is a pair of short examples of the
different narrative styles about online self-portraits that arose in the research:
For me public photos are those on the web and private are not?? Hehehehe No,
this is not true ;) There are private public photos, but do not know if the right
word is private = S
Pictures of Emma [her own pictures uploaded] are to me almost like the
personalities). In any case, the nudes are of her ... It's not the same to see the
image of a woman to see her in person. Even many people who know me
personally cannot believe that I'm the one shown in these pictures.
While in chat interviews, the ethnographer must deal often with emoticons and
short and no-grammatical sentences, email interview answers resemble more to the
epistolary genre. These different narratives bring up the fact that in the social
sciences, the instruments with which we investigate are always part of the context of
research and shape the textures of our data, but this does not necessarily mean that
online interviews are better or worse than face-to-face ones for ethnographic analysis.
Furthermore, online interviews may generate new interview genres, since it can take
the form of an epistolary genre, as shown in email interviews, or it can enter the
The flexibility of online techniques allowed the ethnographer to gather important data
that could probably not have been gathered any other way.
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Digital data analysis and the ethnographic description
Field notes and field diaries are essential to ethnographic research. Traditional
field notes, tables and drawings are handwritten, and some online ethnographers still
employ this method in addition to the multiple forms of capturing and registering
information as audio and video records, printouts, screen captures, navigation videos
Some ethnographers also use wikis and blogs as their fieldwork diaries. Online field
notes or logs, however, should not be confused with the web pages, blogs, wikis or
social media profiles that ethnographers create to present themselves and to share
their research with participants and respondents. These online sites are usually open
Field notes help researchers catalogue, describe and develop theories from
their observations, as well as record their emotional reactions and impressions. For
fieldwork diary while, at the same time, he used his smart phone to take notes and
photos on (and of) the field. The smartphone was, at once, field, data gathering tool
and a constant connective device with the group members. Another example of new
ways to carry field notes was the use of “annotated screenshots”, which became very
own self-portrait photography in order to create a threat in his fieldwork Flickr site.
The answers he got included accounts about self-portraits, but also several
At the end, the results of the ethnographic fieldwork are an array of very
different kinds of data, from field notes to visual, aural and textual data or transcribed
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interviews. To analyze them, we must consider our theoretical assumptions as well as
the broader context in which the data has been extracted and objectified. Qualitative
Data Software Analysis may help us in that process, such as Atlas.Ti or Nvivo. This
software is useful for archiving, coding, hyperlinking, sharing and representing visual
and other digital ethnographic material but it does not replace analysis and
reflective and heuristic figure that bridges the gap between the reliance on
theoretical framework from those that come directly from the field; that is, the
distinction between “etic” and “emic” terms, categories and conceptualizations. For
the sake of clarity we say that the role of ethnographers is to meaningfully explain the
studied universe, taking into account the vernacular categories of their research
subjects (emic) and developing theoretical frameworks that help to organize them
(etic), so that they can bring some light to their research questions. It means to
displace the researcher from her or his own vernacular categories, even when these
may be largely shared with their correspondents in the field. As Coleman explains,
"the fact that digital media culturally matters is undeniable but showing how, where,
and why it matters is necessary to push against peculiarly narrow presumptions about
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Ethic dilemmas
following our subjects’ practices in different field contexts. Thus, ethnographers must
make decisions about how to present research findings to their respondents, taking
into account online audiences (Bakardjieva & Feenberg 2001). This raises ethical
issues regarding the fact that, in most digital ethnographies, the field is constructed
and maintained through online interaction that is open to the general view. Keeping
privacy and anonymity on the net is not only difficult but may enter in conflict with
the ethnographic task. This was the case with Gómez-Cruz’s ethnography of digital
photography practices that was mostly carried out through social media platforms. He
contacted the group under study via their site profile and the process of gaining
acceptance by the group could be followed by any outsider, as well as all the
fieldwork interactions that took place in his profile and in his field blog. This being
the case, the ethical requirements of informed consent might be clearly exposed but
respondents were very aware that full anonymity could not be guaranteed.
public space, as it is publicly accessible, yet interactions that occur within that social
their research subjects carefully and to be aware of the fact that some of their online
interactions are permanently and publicly exposed. The digital ethnographer should
negotiate the level of anonymity that participants wish to maintain when data is fully
elaborated and results presented in different formats. Not all the interactions with the
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participants during fieldwork have been carried out in public social spaces, and the
We propose, along with other authors such as Forte (2004), to think of digital
ethnographic ethics from the point of view of reciprocal and mutual collaboration.
The co-production of the field is an activity that can also afford ethical values, such as
sharing knowledge and experience with our respondents. Ethnographers use different
in contrast to quantitative research that would traditionally use the term “subject” to
refer to the people that participate in their research. These different terms tell us
something about the relationship between researchers and researched as they describe
the kind of involvement that the ethnographer is expecting from the research subjects.
What is important to note is that, in any case, the people that participate in the
ethnographic research not only are familiar with the ethnographer but they also
knowledge of the empirical situations. They are more than passive subjects of study,
but active respondents and somehow, co-participants of the research process with the
ethnographer. This collaborative aim must be transferred to the ethical concerns when
for sharing information at distance and it makes easy to let participants know about
the final product. As we have seen, Edgar Gómez-Cruz shared his own findings along
the way through his blog and profile in Flikr and later, he allowed participants to
comment the chapters of the monograph related with the group experience. This
practice is not exempt of conflict as people may not agree with the results. The
researcher has to ensure that the participant’s opinions are treated with respect and the
26
"emic" interpretations accepted, but the "etic" part of the analysis depends entirely on
research, it is important to highlight the fact that ultimately, is the ethnographer who
controls the process of interpretation, the theoretical framework and the accountability
study of media. It goes beyond the qualitative and quantitative audience studies
economy. On one hand, from a critical perspective, the close study of media
and rights and the processes of moral valuation (Lindlof & Shatzer 1998, p.172-173).
On the other hand, ethnographic studies of digital media particularize the role that
digital media play in the different spheres of social activity and among a great variety
industries and government bodies. Indeed, digital media ethnographies are central to
accounts complement other kinds of studies, not only by representing people’s hopes,
what extend these “other means” transform ethnographic practice. We must ask, with
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Sarah Pink, how “the developments in digital, mobile and locative media challenge us
to rethink the ways in which media(ted) research and the ethnographic encounter is
understood” (Pink 2012, p.12). On one hand, we have demonstrated that the digital
ethnographer needs to be co-present in the field using the same technological devices
as her o his subjects of study. On the other hand, digital ethnography incorporates new
technologies of recording, analyzing, sharing and presenting data and results along
side with new specific ethical challenges. Last but not least, digital ethnography refers
to the emergence of new topics of research –f.e. virtual worlds- and the
transformation of our objects of study –traditional media studies have to deal with
how digital media modifies media practices and the new dimensions of our notions of
knowledge and technological shifts not only have implications in the way we
experience and research media, social relations and cultural formations, but also how
they are theorized (Lapenta 2012, p. 131). Sarah Pink addresses this point by saying
new ways theoretically which in turn reflect back on how we theorize old media and
methodologies may be fueled with old understandings but, at the same time, they
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