Faraway, so close! Proximity and distance in ethnography online

Abstract

This article argues for a revised importance of distance, besides the much emphasized closeness, in the debate on and use of ethnographic methods in online environments. When returning to the founding fathers of ethnographic methods, distance is often put forward as a core aspect of ethnographic methods, something widely forgotten, or even rejected, in the current debate in the field. Space has been restructured by digital media technologies, and the spatial and temporal proximity of digital media cultures present new challenges for research methodologies. Based on the author’s own experiences of ethnographic fieldwork in digital cultures, and with Henri Lefebvre’s theory of everyday life as a rhythm as vantage point, it is here argued that distance, dialectically interlinked with closeness and proximity, should be given further attention in current research and debate on ethnographic methods used online.