Questioning “digital ethnography” in an era of ubiquitous computing

Abstract

AbstractThis article questions what “digital ethnography” is and how geographers may use it in an era of ubiquitous and pervasive computing. Unlike scholars from cognate disciplines, including the new subfields of digital anthropology and digital sociology, geographers have yet to adopt this term and associated methods on a significant scale in their own ethnographic studies of spatial practices in the digital age. The article asks what has become of an “analogue” or “conventional” ethnography in the digital age, and queries whether digital ethnography offers something new for geographers, or simply reinforces the problematic virtual/real, online/offline binaries that geographers have strived to pull apart over the past decade. Ultimately, this article aims to provoke a timely discussion about “the digital” and ethnographic research in geography. Surveying recent geographic theorisations of the digital, it suggests ways in which ethnographic research may respond to this work.