Social Media Ethnography Research Articles

From online to offline: Getting ready for in-person fieldwork through social media ethnography

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a significant emphasis on finding solutions to continue academic research in light of closed borders. The inability to travel has prompted academic researchers to reconsider their approaches to fieldwork, with a particular focus on utilizing modern technology effectively to conduct accurate ethnographic research even while working remotely. This has entailed navigating the vast expanse of the internet carefully and acquiring additional tools in the field of ethnography. The primary concerns surrounding conducting remote fieldwork and ensuring the proper selection of data can be summarized by exploring strategies to overcome the challenges imposed by restrictions, as well as leveraging modern technology to study distant cultures without compromising comprehension. Taking into consideration my research on the Japanese experimental noise music scene and the necessity to collect information about the response and activities of these artists at the brink of the pandemic, I challenged my need to collect data by practising through the internet and modern technologies new ways to undertake ethnographic research through distance. In this sense, social networks demonstrated how modern ethnographic methods can be effectively applied to conduct functional social media ethnography, mitigating the challenges brought about by physical distance constraints. Specifically for my research, Reddit’s feature of organizing communities into subtopics named “subreddits” provides me with the possibility to keep in touch with reliable users and information by selecting specific subreddits related to Japan and music topics (e.g. “r/japaneseunderground”, “r/noisemusic”). Along with the existing literature and the constant online research for news related to my project, social media ethnography played a functional role not only in collecting relevant data but also in providing me with more clarity about how to further move my fieldwork once I can travel to Japan. By emphasizing the potential of social media as a valuable avenue to enhance research strategies in times of crisis, this paper aims to consider how online fieldwork created to overcome the impossibility of fieldwork travel can result in a profitable social media ethnography not only to collect data by distance but also to gain appropriate preparation for following in-person fieldwork by relying on our primary findings. By retracing step by step my research project on Japanese noise music, I will explain how undertaking online research provided me with further ideas to achieve more findings and add clarities to my research intent once I had to switch to offline fieldwork.

#TheAfricaTheMediaNever ShowsYou: An Afrodiasporic Subaltern Counterpublic

Media representations of African underdevelopment are central to the communicative potential and reach of international development in the mainstream public sphere, but they are not without sustained critique and confrontation. By conceptualising the humanitarian-themed campaign – #TheAfricaTheMediaNeverShowsYou on Twitter, as an Afrodiasporic Subaltern Counterpublic, this article considers how UK African diasporic communities have utilised this digitalised environment to oppose the popular but problematic ‘face of development’. Applying Nancy Fraser’s counterpublics theorisation and drawing on social media ethnography and multiple participant interviews, it shows how oppositional counter-discourses among these online diasporic communities challenge problematic African representation within ‘white media’. This is realised in three distinct but interrelated discursive practices: (1) Afrodiasporic solidaristic orientations; (2) Diasporic solidarism as an assemblage(d) response to development’s institutionalised whiteness; and (3) Countering Africa(n) misrepresentations.

“You have raised me between two worlds”: Mothers, daughters, and emotions in the Sahrawi digital diaspora in Spain

The theoretical development of the concept of diaspora accounts for almost any transnational population that maintains strong emotional ties based on nostalgia and memory with their territories of origin, but also affects and ties with their territories of destination. These processes are generated through intrinsically diverse experiences that are constructed in-between both social realities. The emergence of digital technologies has provided these populations with a new scenario wherein the past and present homes are connected by immediate communication, which currently reduces distances, and uprootedness. However, few investigations have analyzed the frequent communication paradoxes that occur within these communities based on not only the need to be connected but also the failure to meet family expectations. Most studies have focused on the experience of mothers and the role they play in maintaining traditions linked to their places of origin, leaving behind the experience of daughters and their mutual relationship. This article addresses this gap while exploring the challenges that these contradictions present for the Sahrawi digital diaspora in Spain. Specifically, it investigates relationships between mothers and daughters and their impact on the social media practices of the latter. Through a social media ethnography that was developed between 2016 and 2018 together with Sahrawi refugees in Spain, this research examines how aspects such as the maintenance of family honor and the need to build one’s own life plan constantly clash in relationships between mothers and daughters with respect to cultural preservation, the emergence of new forms of belonging, emotional relations, and community expectations.

‘African kids can’: challenging the African gangs narrative on social media

In 2016, following the ‘Moomba riots’ in Melbourne, the powerful and damaging narrative of ‘African gangs’ reemerged in Australian media and political discourse. The hyper-criminalisation and problematisation of Black African young people as violent and engaging in gang activity, created moral panics that exacerbated already existing anti-Black African sentiment in Australia. This racist ‘majoritarian narrative’ of Black Africans resulted in far-reaching consequences for the African community in Australia, particularly for African young people. Significantly, it has been noted that in the face of these overwhelmingly negative portrayals, African young people felt invisible, disempowered and psychologically defeated by the media. This paper employs the use of the critical race methodology ‘counternarratives’ to explore the use of social media by African young people in Australia to challenge the ‘majoritarian narrative’ of African gangs. Drawing on six months of social media ethnography and multiple participant interviews with African youth participants ( n = 15), this paper argues that social media is a significant site where African young people (re)claim their narratives as African kids who ‘can’.

Black bodies, Black queens, and the Black sisterhood on social media: perspectives from young African women in Australia

ABSTRACT African Australian diasporic literature has drawn attention to the highly racialised experiences that Black African women encounter living in bodies that are raced as Black in Australia. Within their (in)visibility and ‘otherness’ – they are looked upon in suspicion and yet also ignored, silenced and excluded. Their bodies are involuntarily marked as ‘deficit’ and ‘deviant’, resulting in disadvantage, alienation, and non-belonging. Through the theoretical lens of (in)visibility, we centre the racialisation of the Black African body as crucial to the digital practices that young Black African women in Australia engage in on social media. In drawing on a multi-method approach involving social media ethnography, the ‘scroll-back’ interview method, and sustained, ongoing dialogues on social media, this article explores the everyday social media practices of nine young Black African women in Australia. The findings indicate that social media is used to visibilise and (re)claim contemporary Black African womanhood, amongst a global digitally mediated community of Black African women. These, Black female-centred empowerment digital communities are important spaces in which young Black African women in Australia can unlearn, resist, and reject the harmful racialised ideologies that they have endured (and continue to endure) in white Australia.

#BlackLivesMatter: Exploring the digital practises of African Australian youth on social media

African Australian diasporic literature has drawn attention to the anti-Black racism Black African young people endure in everyday Australia. By drawing on a multi-method approach consisting of social media ethnography and multiple participant interviews, this paper explores the use of social media by Black African young people (n=15) to visibilise their experiences of racism. We situate the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, as a significant ‘turning point’ when the social media practises of our participants radically transformed. Our findings indicate that prior to the murder of George Floyd, participants evoked careful boundaries around the type of racial content they posted for fear of the punishments or backlash that could occur if they disrupted the white racial comfort of their friends and followers. After the murder of Floyd, participants used the resurgence of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement to visibilise their own experiences of anti-Black racism and racial violence in Australia, sharing content on social media that marked whiteness, demanded safety and challenged white silence and performative allyship.

Repairing online spaces for “safe” outreach with older adults

ABSTRACT Despite the widely recognized importance in the museum sector of cultivating safe, welcoming spaces for projects that work towards social change, few studies consider how feelings of safety can be cultivated online. To provide insight for future museum practices, this study focuses on a series of collaborative sessions facilitated by a museum outreach institution and a social enterprise to provide online engagement activities for older adults during COVID-19. Employing a social media ethnography, this study reveals how staff can create feelings of safety online through repair processes that work around, with, and against the unethical and contradictory bounds of online infrastructures.

From Panic to Confusion to Negotiation: Reflection from Early Response to Covid-19 in Indonesia

This research reflected on the response to the pandemic that emerged as it happened. It drew attention to the viral aspect of a pandemic, namely how people understood and responded to pandemics using various digital platforms. It questioned the context and reasons for what it called an immeasurable but organized community response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Digital-based research was applied through observing three mainstream digital media (Kompas TV, The Jakarta Post, and Detik.com) and social media (i.e., WhatsApp Messenger and Twitter). Data were analyzed thematically by categorizing the ways people responded to COVID-19 via social media into three thematic phases. In the first phase, digital media was used to voice frustration and disappointment with the government’s response. This had sparked public distrust of the government’s ability to deal with the pandemic at the national level. The second phase was the confusion phase. The rise of public discussion about the pandemic showed that the public was concerned about the development of the COVID-19 news in the country. The last phase was the negotiation phase. While COVID-19 was rapidly becoming a source of panic and confusion, grassroots initiatives emerged using social media. These initiatives aimed to help reduce panic and reduce socio-economic impacts. This research shows how anthropologists can still pay attention to social relations forged through social media in times of crisis where traditional anthropological fieldwork is nearly impossible. Methodologically, digital anthropology or social media ethnography is gaining momentum to be developed, considering that fieldwork cannot be done in the pandemic era.

Digital Ethnography: A Systematic Literature Review

Digital ethnography can be defined as a contemporary form of ethnography which considers online social spaces of discussion following the advances in data transmission technology. In the last few years, various attempts of considering online spaces in ethnographic research have been made producing different styles of online ethnography, each identified by a different label. This paper aims to provide a systematic review of the topic to map the practice of digital ethnography. The research process followed four key steps: search, selection, analysis and synthesis. In the search phase, we searched contributions iteratively in Web of Science and Scopus by using a variety of keywords corresponding to the different labels used to refer to digital ethnography. In the selection phase, we adopted a selective stance that aims to provide a critical review of the existing research and practices in the context of digital ethnography. In the analysis phase, we carried out a content analysis of the papers combining deductive and inductive coding. The synthesis phase involves a process of typology development to pragmatically reduce and systematize an extensive set of features and digital ethnography practices. Basing on the type of data collected (Small vs Big Data) and the type of fieldwork (meta or contextual field), we detected four types of ethnographic research: social media ethnography , contextual digital ethnography , meta digital ethnography , cross-media ethnography .

Spectactorial Sisterhood: Relasi Sosial Pengguna Second Account di Instagram

Instagram is a popular image based social media platform. Usually, users have their own accounts for their personal profile to be viewed publicly. As Instagram features develop, users may have more than one account. Accounts that are specific to certain circle of friends are called “second accounts” and treated as private accounts used to express and relate through images. In this social media ethnography, seven subjects shared their experiences through uploaded images, videos and texts. They have the awareness to avoid relationships and gazes in their main account by building a different subjectivity in their second account. Contents on their second account are stories shared with their most trusted people. The dynamics of second account show different relations expressed through visual cues in Instagram, which I will call “spectatorial sisterhood” here.

Researching Connected African Youth in Australia through Social Media Ethnography and Scroll-Back Interviews

ABSTRACT This article is a reflexive analysis of two overlapping research methods, social media ethnography and “scroll-back interviews”, that were employed to study how young first- and second-generation African migrants in Australia use social media. This article seeks to contribute to the expanding body of research on digital methods by highlighting the rich data that these methods produced, as well as discussing the limitations and ethical challenges that arose. In particular, we consider participant and researcher privacy online, the opportunities and consequences of digital traces and the unanticipated impacts to the digital researcher who is perpetually immersed “in the field”. These methods revealed a complex, contested and highly mediated set of experiences, and we conclude this paper by suggesting that this type of research requires ongoing ethical reflection due to the ambiguous and often “messy” situations that may arise when undertaking digital ethnographic work. We anticipate that this paper may assist other researchers to test and adapt our approach across a diverse range of topics.

Emotional practices of unaccompanied refugee youth on social media

Migration for unaccompanied refugee youth is an emotionally complex process involving mediated experiences and expressions of emotions and affect. This article draws upon social media ethnography conducted with young refugees from African and Middle Eastern countries living in Europe. The participants’ emotional practices were explored through the multimodal analysis of content they shared on Facebook. The findings highlight how the young refugees performed multifaceted yet interconnected emotional practices. These emotional practices potentially assisted their negotiation of emotional losses and gains resulting from migration. The online mediated emotionality, however, cannot be fully comprehended through the reductionist lenses of binary oppositions such as losses and gains, presence and absence, or positive and negative emotions. This article shows that unaccompanied refugee youth’s experience and expression of emotions online are influenced by more than their migration experience, and that their interconnected nature and complexity need to be considered.

‘In times of crisis, followers of one true god unite’

This paper is based on a research study designed to explore how adolescents, in situations of political polarization, deploy online networks to articulate, negotiate, and enact their political and religious identities. Based on social media ethnography tracing the online engagements of 44 high school students over a period of eighteen months, and supplemented with in-depth interviews conducted in their village communities, this study explores why social media networks emerge as ideological niches frequented by students to enact their participation as members of their respective religious communities. It suggests that in situation of experienced political polarization and discrimination, students use social media affordances to replicate their offline socio-political and religious engagements onto their virtual spaces and in the process reinforce their radical religious identities.

Tracing and archiving ‘constructed’ data on Facebook pages and groups: reflections on fieldwork among young activists in Zimbabwe and South Africa

This study triangulates offline and online research methods to examine how and why young activists in Zimbabwe and South Africa use Facebook for political purposes. It demonstrates that like traditional participant observation, which was popularized by classical anthropologists, algorithmically ‘occurring’ data gathered through social media ethnography provides some of the richest information to burrow into the everyday political lives of young activists (who are generally presented in mainstream literature as having disengaged from traditional forms of political participation). Building on Postill and Pink’s (2012) typology of social media ethnography, this study proposes a seven stage criteria for conducting online participant observation on Facebook in the era of data ‘deluge’. These stages include: background listening, friending/liking, interacting, observing, catching up, exploring, and archiving. Based on the author’s multi-sited fieldwork experiences in Zimbabwe and South Africa, this study argues...

When the child is born into the internet: sharenting as a growing trend among parents on facebook

Parents actively share information about their children on Facebook, but little research has explored the extent of this issue. The goal of this paper is to theorize a new type of parents’ online activities concerning their children, especially the problem of sharenting, which is increasingly common in contexts where social media such as Facebook play a significant role in relationships and interactions. This paper explores what kind of baby pictures parents share on Facebook and what are the likely causes of doing it. The presented research was conducted with the use of social media ethnography among 168 Polish parents using Facebook. The findings have shown that the phenomenon of sharenting is common practice among parents.

Mo1089 Social Media Ethnography of GERD Patients Yields Similar Results to Traditional Focus Groups in Developing a Patient Reported Outcome

Mo1089 Social Media Ethnography of GERD Patients Yields Similar Results to Traditional Focus Groups in Developing a Patient Reported Outcome

Social Media Ethnography: The Digital Researcher in a Messy Web

Social media practices and technologies are often part of how ethnographic research participants navigate their wider social, material and technological worlds, and are equally part of ethnographic practice. This creates the need to consider how emergent forms of social media-driven ethnographic practice might be understood theoretically and methodologically. In this article, we respond critically to existing literatures concerning the nature of the internet as an ethnographic site by suggesting how concepts of routine, movement and sociality enable us to understand the making of social media ethnography knowledge and places.