Start Date
11-12-2016 12:00 AM
Description
Digital technologies are ubiquitous and innovation lies in recombination of modules and different architectural layers: content, service, network and device. Consequently, we witness the upsurge of digitalization in our everyday lives. From a researcher’s perspective, this alters both the research site and the research process. Even though digital ethnography is an accepted method, we can still take a step back and ask what it indeed means to add “digital” to ethnography. Besides the challenge to demarcate the phenomenon and uncover its parts, the boundary between the observer and the observed are becoming hazy. In this paper we rethink the notion and practice of digital ethnography by (1) analytically separating digital technologies into their architectural layers and (2) combining the critical and reversing approach in ethnographic practice. The emerging topics induce us to consider digital ethnography as a research practice that stands at the crossroads of mirage, mosaic, and mirror.
Recommended Citation
Chandra Kruse, Leona and Tumbas, Sanja, "Digital Ethnography: At the Crossroads of Mirage, Mosaic, and Mirror" (2016). ICIS 2016 Proceedings. 4.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2016/DigitalInnovation/Presentations/4
Digital Ethnography: At the Crossroads of Mirage, Mosaic, and Mirror
Digital technologies are ubiquitous and innovation lies in recombination of modules and different architectural layers: content, service, network and device. Consequently, we witness the upsurge of digitalization in our everyday lives. From a researcher’s perspective, this alters both the research site and the research process. Even though digital ethnography is an accepted method, we can still take a step back and ask what it indeed means to add “digital” to ethnography. Besides the challenge to demarcate the phenomenon and uncover its parts, the boundary between the observer and the observed are becoming hazy. In this paper we rethink the notion and practice of digital ethnography by (1) analytically separating digital technologies into their architectural layers and (2) combining the critical and reversing approach in ethnographic practice. The emerging topics induce us to consider digital ethnography as a research practice that stands at the crossroads of mirage, mosaic, and mirror.