Within his rethinking around understandings of digital anthropology, Tom Boellstoff (2012) presumes knowledge of ethnography on behalf of the reader. Therefore, to offer a definition:
‘ethnography is not a single method but an approach that draws on numerous sources – observation, interviews, documents, artefacts – while maintaining a focus on how people experience their daily lives’
(Walsh and Seale, 2018, p.258)
From this, digital anthropology – or digital ethnography – is understood as an approach for ‘researching the virtual’ (Boellstoff, 2012, p.40). Yet, this is not completely detached from the physical world – rather, digital ethnographers must consider how both domains can directly and indirectly influence one another.
Nevertheless, comparatively, there are some advantages and disadvantages to this method in contrast to understandings of visual analysis offered by Roland Barthes (1981). These advantages and disadvantages involve concerns around subjectivity and personal interpretation, and time constraints.
An of digital ethnography is that – due to its observational method – it offers more conclusive and supported research than visual analysis. Whilst clearly demonstrated through his first-person writing, Barthes further highlights issues of subjectivity through speaking of the punctum. For Barthes, the punctum disturbs the studium – the photograph’s conventional cultural meaning; it is ‘the element which rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow, and pierces me’ (p.26). Yet, not every photograph has a punctum and not everyone experiences it. Rather, the punctum is highly subjective and unintentional on part of the Spectator. As such, due to potential differing interpretations, there becomes a lacking level of validity within each reading. Contrastingly, digital ethnography allows ‘insight into practices and meanings as they unfold’ (Boellstoff, 2012, p.55). As such, ethnographic research is detached from the researcher. As Boellstoff notes, oftentimes the researcher is unaware of what cultural practices or beliefs they will observe; therefore, its ‘analytical protocols are often devised after the fact’ (p.50).
Yet, in complicating this, digital ethnography can be subjective when you consider how the researcher is known to that community. If they themselves are part of the community they are studying, then their research automatically becomes personal. As such, Boellstoff’s understanding of this research method is short-sighted in assuming that these communities are simply “found” over previously “known”.
Another disadvantage concerns how digital ethnography takes an excessive amount of time to conduct. Boellstoff identifies how ‘participant observation is never rapid’ (p.55) and that researchers claiming to have conducted ethnographic research over a weekend or month have mischaracterised their study. Oftentimes, these researchers have simply conducted one-to-one interviews and therefore are not ‘known to a community’ (p.55). As such, to do digital ethnography, one must dedicate a large amount of time observing and being part of a community. Yet, again, issues around subjectivity emerge as the researcher seemingly must be part of their studied community. Contrastingly, visual analysis can be conducted in a shorter timeframe – notwithstanding researching thousands of images from a magazine, for example. However, conducting a large-scale visual analysis is already faster than doing digital ethnography as the researcher does not need to become part of an established community. Rather, they act from the outside.
In conclusion, digital ethnography is a valuable research method for thoroughly understanding the everyday experiences of a cultural group, yet the researcher needs to firstly be aware of the scale of his type of research and their own positioning.
References:
Barthes, R. (1981). Camera Lucida. New York: Hill and Wang.
Boellstoff, T. (2012). Rethinking Digital Anthropology (pp.39-60). In H.A. Horst and D. Miller (eds.) Digital Anthropology. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Walsh, D. and Seale, C. (2018). Doing ethnography (p.257-274). In C. Seale (ed.) Researching Society and Culture. London: Sage.
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