This working paper introduces key issues and challenges for ethnographic research of digitally saturated social environments, online social contexts, or digitally-mediated phenomena. It focuses on empirical approaches used by ethnographers and sociologists studying digital culture. In the context of digital social research, this may involve observing or collecting actual behaviors and actions in social networking platforms or studying use and interactions with and around digital devices, technologies, and media in naturalistic environments. It might also involve recording and observing in contrived settings, like workshops, focus groups, experiments, or interviews. The target of one’s study could include people in their physical forms or just data produced through human behaviors, movements, or flows of information. The study might seem small scale, whereby one is looking at a single case, instance, individual or small group, or largescale, when exploring patterns in aggregated datasets, analyzing upswells or shifts of interest in events or crisis, examining how ideas flow or emerge through various groups, platforms, or networks. With such a broad range of topics, approaches, choices, there will obviously be different theories, concepts, methods, ethics, and best practices. This paper provides a good starting point. It is a variation of a chapter for a forthcoming Handbook of Qualitative Research.
Doing digital ethnography in the digital age
