Digital Ethnography
What is Digital Ethnography?
Digital ethnography, also known as netnography or virtual ethnography, is an emerging subfield of social sciences that examines how humans interact and communicate in digital environments. This method involves studying how people navigate various media such as social media platforms, online forums, and virtual events like webinars. By observing and analyzing internet culture, digital ethnography provides insights into online behaviors, community formations, and the impact of digital communication on social dynamics.
The Basic Idea
Digital ethnography coincides with the rise of the internet age and the increasing popularity of digital spaces for hosting human interactions. This became especially prevalent during the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced us to lead our social lives almost completely online.
How does digital ethnography work? A group of participants is carefully selected to join a virtual space where ethnographers assign specific online tasks for them to complete. This is a unique aspect of digital ethnography because instead of having participants explain what they think they do, they show the researchers themselves. While performing these tasks, participants record their thoughts in an online journal, have discussions on forums, take photos or videos, or make digital mood boards illustrating their experience. Participants are also interviewed and asked both closed- and open-ended questions to gauge their overall feelings about the tasks.
Digital ethnography employs a range of qualitative research methods adapted for digital contexts. These include participant observation, in-depth interviews, and the analysis of digital artifacts. Unlike traditional ethnography, digital ethnography requires researchers to be adept at navigating and interpreting online interactions, understanding digital literacy, and ensuring ethical standards are maintained in virtual environments.
In the book Digital Ethnography: Principles and Practice, Pink and colleagues lay out the following five principles for researchers within the field:1
1. Multiplicity: Investigate the diverse ways people interact with digital environments by tailoring approaches to each study's unique requirements.
2. Non-digital-centric-ness: Recognize that digital interactions are intertwined with offline behaviors by considering both contexts in the analysis.
3. Openness: Maintain an open mind towards unexpected findings and unconventional data sources.
4. Reflexivity: Remain aware of researchers’ influence on the digital environment and the data collected.
5. Unorthodox: Embrace innovative methods and perspectives that might not fit traditional research paradigms.
This research approach has enhanced the original foundations of ethnography. The digital world has provided us with access to large sets of archival data as well as new tools to process them. In this way, digital ethnography brings together big data analyses and discourse analyses to create a more comprehensive understanding of the subject being studied.
“Netnography is a specialized form of ethnography adapted to the unique computer-mediated contingencies of today’s social worlds”
– Robert Kozinets, economist and pioneer of digital ethnography
About the Author
Samantha Lau
Samantha graduated from the University of Toronto, majoring in psychology and criminology. During her undergraduate degree, she studied how mindfulness meditation impacted human memory which sparked her interest in cognition. Samantha is curious about the way behavioural science impacts design, particularly in the UX field. As she works to make behavioural science more accessible with The Decision Lab, she is preparing to start her Master of Behavioural and Decision Sciences degree at the University of Pennsylvania. In her free time, you can catch her at a concert or in a dance studio.
