Digital Ethnography Research Articles

Educational research in (post-)digital spaces

Based on approaches of digital ethnography and using the work of Sofia da Silva as an example, we pose reflections on future shifts and innovations in the context of qualitative educational and biographical research: What methodological questions arise when current educational science objects are viewed from a (post-)digital perspective? We assume, among other things, that due to the interweaving of analogue and digital worlds new forms of biographization emerge, which require a theory-generating exploration of hybrid modes of experience as well as of the embedded interrelation of, for example, ‘body’, ‘education’, and ‘biography’. This could be achieved, for example, by a stronger mediation of ethnographic and biographical research approaches, or through an investigation of the connection between digital everyday practices, digitally mediated prefigurations and biographizations.

Analysis of Emotional Labor in Interaction with Idols and Fans

In the Internet age, when fans with technology empowerment pursue idols, they will not only make great investment in psychological level, but also make great investment in consumption level, thus giving birth to "fan economy". Weibo not only provided a platform for idol performances, but also provided a channel for fans to express themselves and actively participate, so the "emotional labor" of fans was formed in Weibo. This paper takes emotional labor as the research foundation, takes the Teens in Times and its fan groups as the research objects, and adopts the methods of online ethnography, questionnaire survey and in-depth interview, focusing on the behaviors of idols and their fans in Weibo, to study and analyze the two-way value generated by these emotional labors.

THE IMPACTS OF ASSIMILATION ON SECOND-GENERATION BATAK-AMERICAN IMMIGRANTS' PERSPECTIVES TOWARDS BATAK GENDER NORMS

Batak is one of the patriarchal ethnic cultures in Indonesia that has strong gender norms applied within its people. Second-generation Indonesian Batak-American that live in both Batak gender norms and Egalitarian gender norms might have a different perspective about their ethnic gender norms as assimilation in America impacts their views. This research aims to find the impacts of assimilation toward Second-generation Batak-Americans in viewing Batak Ethnic gender norms. This research is digital ethnography. In analyzing the data, the research applies segmented assimilation by Portez and Zhou to answer the research questions. The result, assimilation impacts second-generation Batak-American immigrants’ perspective about Batak gender norms where they adapt more to the American Egalitarian gender norms and American Egalitarian family structure because of the human capitals that they have.

Digital ethnography of an online professional learning community based on WeChat for Chinese early childhood teachers

Enhancing the professional development of early childhood education (ECE) teachers is an important step toward the goal of improving children's learning experiences. Building professional learning communities (PLCs) has been validated by previous works in the ECE domains. The proliferation of social media has catalyzed the emergence of online community, bringing with them their distinctive value in teachers' professional development. WeChat is the most popular social networking service in China. However, only limited attention has been paid to how ECE teachers engaged in online communities and how PLCs for ECE teachers are shaped online in the Chinese contexts. Thus, this study aims to investigate how ECE teachers engage in a WeChat-based community and shape the community as a PLC. Multi-sourced data were collected including excerpts and screenshots of discussions in the chat group and webinars, fieldnotes, and interviews with 12 participants. Key findings suggest that: (a) leadership is distributed through the practices of volunteer facilitators, (b) teachers' practices are shared through reflecting on professional reading and inquiring, (c) shared visions attracted and activated teachers in the online context, and (d) supportive relationships tend to mitigate the isolation of Chinese ECE teachers. This study addresses key challenges to the further development of PLCs based on SNS. The insights about how Chinese early childhood educators utilize the basic functions of social media can contribute to better practices for professional development in and beyond China.

'We will multiply the fires of resistance': The catalysts of dissent against institutional science and their interplay with refused knowledge communities.

Drawing on a 12-month virtual ethnography on the main online spaces of three refused knowledge communities (RKCs) in Italy, this study aims at contributing to the debate on emerging forms of science-related populism from a two-fold perspective. First, we identify and describe the main features and the role played by an understudied figure who we label the 'catalyst of dissent' - a public influencer who does not belong to the scientific community and contributes to the spread of science-related populist narratives within a grassroots ecosystem of resistance to institutional science. Second, our research highlights how RKCs - communities proposing visions of science and medicine denied acceptance or even consideration by institutional science - can appropriate some key resources produced by the catalysts. The analysis focuses on the interplay between the catalysts and three main RKCs during the pandemic crisis in Italy: The No-5G, the Free-Vax, and the 5 Biological Laws communities.

Possibilities and constraints of rapid online ethnography: Lessons from a rapid assessment of COVID-19 policy for people who use drugs.

During the COVID-19 Pandemic, health care provision changed rapidly and funding became available to assess pandemic-related policy change. Research activities, however, were limited to contactless, online delivery. It was clear early on that some elements of online rapid ethnography were feasible and effective, while others would not approach traditional ethnographic depth. We conducted an online Rapid Assessment, Response, and Evaluation (RARE) project from August 2020 to September 2021 to understand how COVID-19 policy impacted people who use drugs. Our interdisciplinary research team conducted online ethnographic interviews and focus groups with 45 providers and community stakeholders, and 19 clients from rural and urban areas throughout Arizona. In addition, 26 webinars, online trainings, and virtual conferences focused on opioid policy and medication for opioid use disorders (MOUD) were opportunities to observe conversations among providers and program representatives about how best to implement policy changes, how to reach people in recovery, and what aspects of the changes should carry forward into better all-around opioid services in the future. Our RARE project was successful in collecting a range of providers' perspectives on both rural and urban implementation of take-home MOUDs as well as a wide view of national conversations, but client perspectives were limited to those who were not impacted by the policies and continued to attend in-person daily clinic visits. We describe challenges to online rapid ethnography and how online research may have allowed for an in-depth, but incomplete picture of how policy changes during COVID-19 policy affected people with opioid use disorders.

Moving Ethnography Online: Analysing the Social Meaning of Manglish in Youth WhatsApp Chats

This article contributes to the changing landscape of fieldwork practices within sociolinguistic research, specifically the practice of online ethnography. It makes a case for the significance of online chats in observing the construction of ethnic identities and social intimacy among young Malaysian English (henceforth Manglish) speakers. The rise of Manglish discourse has been hardly ignored in digital settings. Thus, the rationale for choosing Manglish as a language of communication within online spheres such as Instant Messaging is unclear. This article argues that the socially structured meanings that underlie Manglish practices deserve exploration as it would benefit from online ethnography. Drawing on Androutsopoulos’s (2008) discourse on online ethnographic approach, this paper shows how researchers could use WhatsApp chats to explore the linguistic and social behaviour of Manglish speakers. The findings suggest that the interrelation of speakers’ online behaviour and linguistic choice can denote their ethnicity, in-groupness, stances, and regional identity. Online ethnography is therefore significant and should not be limited to linguistic sources but also used as a mode of participating in, as well as observing, the construction of identity that reflects the ‘offline’ aspect of speakers’ social lives.

Roles and digital identities on Twitter and Instagram: An ethnographic study of Chilean journalists

On the basis of a digital ethnography and in-depth interviews with Chilean journalists, this study analyzes how news professionals reinterpret and redefine their professional roles on Twitter and Instagram through their practices and discourse, building different digital identities. The results of our analyses show that Twitter and Instagram strengthen and render a more complex construction of journalists’ digital selves, allowing them to build a multi-dimensional identity that goes beyond the framework defined by the media in which they work through the performance of emerging and more traditional roles: (1) the service role becomes a resource for creating community-oriented identities and for helping to resolve individuals’ everyday challenges; (2) the celebrity role supports the construction of an identity that plays with distances and social status, distinguishing and differentiating the journalist from others; (3) the promoter role allows them to promote their work and that of their media outlets as well as products and services, which generates a material benefit and gives the practices an instrumental meaning; and (4) the joker role allows them to entertain the audience and engage in a playful and critical way of observing the world through humor, irony, and sarcasm. Journalists make these roles compatible and decide which they want to use depending on their target audience and the specific platform used, validating certain practices and media strategies. In the case of Twitter, we observe a reinterpretation of traditional practices, and on Instagram we found a clearer redefinition of journalistic roles.

Performing consanguinity: Lesbian family photography practices

Drawing on interviews, autobiographies, and online ethnography, this paper explores the ways in which nonbiological lesbian parents and their family members use photographs to articulate their family relationships with their nonbiological children. Although a biogenetic link to children was perceived as unnecessary, even irrelevant, to their love for their children, nearly all the participants expressed exhilaration when the nonbiological offspring looked like or acted like the nonbiological parent. Many nonbiological parents composed and displayed photographs in ways to highlight similarity between themselves and their children. In this way, nonbiological parents “perform” consanguinity—a blood connection—for critical audiences, including themselves. Yet, the “display work” of queer family analyzed in this paper never fully masks their difference from the norm. The lesbian photography practices discussed in this paper suggest that while genetic thinking shapes family practices, they are also creating new meanings. Through photography practices, lesbian families demonstrate how doing queer kinship transforms heteronormative belonging.

Adapt and Adjust: Doing UK-Based Ethnographic Fieldwork During the Covid-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT The Covid-19 pandemic has required many anthropologists to do fieldwork differently: research that would otherwise have been done face-to-face has been shifted online, sometimes very quickly. When doing research with people with chronic illnesses, it is important to acknowledge both the histories of online ethnography and the way that disability studies has engaged with the internet over time. This article uses the example of my PhD fieldwork, based in Northeast England, to explore how living in an increasingly digital world may impact how medical anthropologists could, and perhaps should, do ethnography.

Care During Pandemic Times: Digital Ethnography with Mental Health Professionals in Equatorial Guinea

SUMMARYThis article discusses how the COVID‐19 pandemic impacted my anthropological research inquiry of care among mental health professionals at a community shelter and a psychiatric hospital in Equatorial Guinea. The rapidly evolving changes required the methods of digital anthropology, which allowed an understanding of embodiments of care. Under volatile conditions and intersections between the personal and the public, mental health professionals carried and invested care in communities and (re)discovered new challenges and vulnerabilities. Medical agencies revealed symbolic roles, meanings, and qualities of care. This article proposes opportunities for the discipline of public anthropology to serve as a medium for the engagement of collective solutions. [anthropology, mental health care, Equatorial Guinea, COVID‐19]

한 초등학생의 유튜버 경험에 대한 디지털 문화기술지 : 미디어 리터러시 역량의 변화를 중심으로

The purpose of this study is to explore implications for media education through digital ethnography about an elementary student's experience as a YouTuber. The participant of this study is the researcher's daughter, a 4th grade elementary school girl. The research period is from January 11 to October 11, 2021, and the research method is a digital ethnography.
 The research results are as follows; First, the research participant, name Jang-mi, her ability to produce media contents is developed. Second, her ability to accept media contents has developed. Third, responsibility is created as the subject of media enjoyment of her. The implications of this study is that media literacy requires empirical education of ‘learning while doing’ rather than theory-centered education of ‘learn and do’. And media literacy competency is fostered when ‘reflection’ on media products takes place. Fianlly, it suggests the need for communication between digital natives and digital migrants.
 As such, the reflective media enjoyment of elementary student YouTuber, Jang-mi suggests the possibility of cultivating subjective media literacy. In addition, actual-based media education should be conducted at school sites so that media literacy competency can be cultivated as a 'phronesis'.

The communication pattern in prosumption practices through free e-books at membacacepat.com

This study explored the occurrence of a free e-book titled Speed Reading for Beginners that can only be obtained by signing up for an email newsletter at MembacaCepat.com. Through Web 2.0, the Internet facilitated the emergence of a new culture centred on shifting consumer relationships in which individuals both consumed and produced the products they consumed. The purpose of this study is to carry out further research into the communication pattern regarding how the practices of production and consumption, also known as prosumption, occurred at the same agency via the web manager or web owner and e-book downloaders. This study employs virtual ethnography by interviewing informants and observing artefacts as data via the Internet. This study aims to utilise the circuit of culture as an analytic framework, similar to the consumption circuit outlined in continuing consumption practices. The findings indicate that the pattern of production and consumption can be mapped as a collaborative effort between website owners and visitors, with the Speed Reading for Beginners e-book catalysing increased visitor participation.

Feminist Activism in Digital Culture: Problems of Class and Ethics

Social media is a platform used by feminist activists for activism. It overcomes spatial and temporal barriers, and helps spread the movement's message more quickly and efficiently. The participatory culture encourages the feminist movement to develop more massively. Many argue that social media helps feminist activists to empower women. Related to the statement, this study observes how activism practices in social media represent women's voices and problems. This study also seeks to reveal the problems in the movement. The researcher observed five accounts of feminist activists on Instagram (@Indonesiafeminis, @lawanpatriarki, @perempuanfeminis, @muslimahfeminis, @perempuan.merdeka). Through the virtual ethnography method, the researcher found a representation problem when digital feminist accounts published the problems experienced by women through their content. These accounts only represent middle-class women's problems. There is also an ethical problem because these accounts tend to be reactive by ignoring the ethics of doing activism.

Use of Social Media for Implementing Diagnoses, Consultation, Training, and Case Reporting Among Medical Professionals to Improve Patient Care: Case Study of WeChat Groups Across Health Care Settings.

BackgroundHealth professionals in low- and middle-resource settings have limited access to up-to-date resources for diagnosing and treating illnesses, training medical staff, reviewing newly disseminated guidelines and publications, and preparing data for international disease reporting. A concomitant difficulty in high-resource settings is the need for continuing education and skills up-training in innovative procedures on unfamiliar social media platforms. These challenges can delay both patient care and epidemiological surveillance efforts. To overcome these challenges, health professionals have adapted WeChat Groups to implement timely, low-cost, and high-quality patient care.ObjectiveThe primary study aim was to describe the processes taken by medical professionals across their diverse physical and virtual networks in adapting a bottom-up approach to collectively overcome resource shortages. The secondary study aim was to delineate the pathways, procedures, and resource/information sharing implemented by medical professionals using an international publicly available popular social media app (WeChat) to enhance performance of facility-based procedures and protocols for improved patient care.MethodsIn-depth interviews, observations, and digital ethnography of WeChat Groups communications were collected from medical professionals in interconnected networks of health care facilities. Participants’ WeChat Groups usage and observations of their professional functions in interconnected networks were collected from November 2018 to 2019. Qualitative analysis and thematic coding were used to develop constructs and themes in NVivo. Constructs incorporated descriptions for the implementation and uses of WeChat Groups for professional connections, health care procedures, and patient care. Themes supporting the constructs focused on the pathways and venues used by medical professionals to build trust, to establish and solidify online networks, and to identify requests and resource sharing within WeChat Groups.ResultsThere were 58 participants (males 36 and females 22) distributed across 24 health care settings spanning geographical networks in south China. Analysis yielded 4 constructs and 11 themes delineating the bottom-up usage of WeChat Groups among clinicians, technicians, nurses, pharmacists, and public health administrators. Participants used WeChat Groups for collectively training hospital staff in complex new procedures, processing timely diagnoses of biological specimens, staying abreast of latest trends and clinical procedures and symptoms, and contributing to case reporting for emergent illnesses and international surveillance reporting. An unexpected strength of implementing clinical, training, and research support on a popular app with international coverage is the added ability to overcome administrative and geographic barriers in resource distribution. This advantage increased a network’s access to WeChat Groups members both working within China and abroad, greatly expanding the scope of shared resources.ConclusionsThe organic, bottom-up approach of repurposing extant social media apps is low cost and efficient for timely implementation to improve patient care. WeChat’s international user base enables medical staff to access widespread professional networks across geographic, administrative, and economic barriers, with potential to reduce health disparities in low-resource settings.

The Invisible Suffering of Young People during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Spain and the Collateral Impact of Social Harm

This article seeks to demonstrate how the lack of institutional involvement with young people during the pandemic had negative effects, stemming from a lack of clear and precise rules for the adolescent population. The consequences manifested themselves in such important areas as social relations, physical and mental health, affective–sexual relations, self-image and overexposure to social media. We present the results of two complementary pieces of research that provided us with insight into the behaviour of young people during lockdown. The young people were divided into two groups based on age: (1) middle adolescents aged 13 to 18 and (2) late adolescents aged 18 to 23. We adopted an integrative methodological approach based on surveys, digital ethnography and focus groups to extract the results, which produced the following findings: (1) an increase in social inequalities due to the technology gap; (2) a growth in mental health risks stemming from hyperconnectivity and overexposure to social media in order to avoid social isolation; and (3) an assimilation of anti-normative behaviours as valid in the absence of any points of reference.

Convivial Quarantines: Cultivating Co-presence at a Distance.

Sociology’s focus on sociality and co-presence has long oriented studies of commensality—the social dimension of eating together. This literature commonly prioritizes face-to-face interactions and takes physical proximity for granted. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 largely halted in-person gatherings and altered everyday foodways. Consequently, many people turned to digital commensality, cooking and eating together through video-call technology such as Zoom and FaceTime. We explore the implications of these new foodways and ask: has digital commensality helped cultivate co-presence amidst pandemic-induced physical separation? If so, how? To address these questions, we analyze two forms of qualitative data collected by the first author: interviews with individuals who cooked and ate together at a distance since March 2020 and digital ethnography during different groups’ online food events (e.g., happy hours, dinners, holiday gatherings, and birthday celebrations). Digital commensality helps foster a sense of co-presence and social connectedness at a distance. Specifically, participants use three temporally oriented strategies to create or maintain co-presence: they draw on pre-pandemic pasts and reinvent culinary traditions to meet new circumstances; they creatively adapt novel digital foodways through online dining; and they actively imagine post-pandemic futures where physically proximate commensality is again possible.

The Expertise of Patient Organisations: Making Patients’ Voices Heard

The article discusses how the Russian patient organisations work on making patients’ needs, experiences, and grievances visible, acknowledged and used by state health governing officials and other experts. First, we present a health governance knowledge hierarchy that reflects different value assigned by healthcare governance actors to different knowledges. At the bottom of the identified hierarchy are the 'lay' experiences of individual patients, whereas policy-­making knowledge ranks the highest. Each type of knowledge is distinguished from others with its own language, logic and, most importantly, material world and forms of action. We advance the two key arguments. First, patient organisations work to facilitate interaction between different actors and co-creation of health governance. Second, a crucial element of this work are organisational operational practices. Several major patient organisations are the key actors being recognised by state institutions. These organisations facilitate collaboration via project and event management, as well as aggregate 'lay' expertise-by-experience of their members and produce knowledge understandable and recognisable by decision-­making actors. Methodologically, the article is based on the descriptive coding of available textual data of the key policy documents, legislation, methodological materials and other documents produced by the Russian patient organisations, as well as online ethnography of project activities, patient surveys, schools of patients and other knowledge disseminating vocational training, public council meetings, and other patient community engagement with state officials. In conclusion, the article summarises how Russian patient organisations strive to make their participation in health governance possible. They do so via reliance on organisational operational skills in maintaining collaborations with other actors, as well as wider knowledge production activities.

An integrative review on online ethnography methods: differentiating theoretical bases, potentialities and limitations

PurposeAs a result of the advancement of the online environment, several methodological proposals emerged to establish procedures for digital qualitative research. While the various online ethnography methods overlap, they are not equivalent in terms of their theoretical bases, procedures and goals. The purpose of this article is to add clarity to their main differences, depicting specificities, potentialities and limitations of each method.Design/methodology/approachThis conceptual article results from an integrative literature review that brought together studies that proposed, debated or used qualitative research methods in the digital environment. The research focused on the primary indexed journals publishing cultural studies in the past 20 years.FindingsThe literature review highlights four methods – virtual ethnography, digital ethnography, netnography and the post-application programming interface ethnography. The integrative literature review adds clarity depicting the main premises and procedures of each method. The present analysis positions the different methods considering two dimensions: the focus on the boundaries of the group/culture investigated, and the focus on the platform agency, affordances and specific dynamics.Originality/valueThe article proposes a comparative framework outlining points of convergence and divergence to create a reference for researchers on topics of significance while designing and conducting a research study in a digital environment. This conceptual organization highlights and supports qualitative researchers on their methodological challenges.

The 'Myth of Zero-COVID' Nation: A Digital Ethnography of Expats' Survival Amid Shanghai Lockdown during the Omicron Variant Outbreak.

This study presents a digital ethnography of expats’ survival amid the Shanghai lockdown during the Omicron variant outbreak. This study drew insights from studies on resilience and secondary coping within the context of global migration to comprehend the diverse emotional challenges faced by expats in a series of lockdowns and persistent nucleic acid amplification tests. Thus, this study asks what the major emotional challenges expats faced and what sources of social support they could draw from citizens in their host country during the Shanghai lockdown. Accordingly, this study collected WeChat group conversations to draw empirical findings, promoted scholarly conversations about fundamental survival necessity, and traced the process for establishing intercultural collective resilience with citizens from their host country. Overall, this study emphasized the significance of host country members who can promote certain coping mechanisms for their visitors in the specific regional and geographical context of China.