Avishek Ray* In our everyday scrolling—through Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat, or Facebook—the selfie often appears as something both mundane and omnipresent. Whether taken against a scenic backdrop, filtered for aesthetic effect, snapped for bureaucratic ID verification, or shared in moments of vulnerability or joy, the selfie has moved far beyond the status of a casual photograph. […]
Luise Erbentraut* With smartphones becoming an integral part of how people navigate and experience their interpersonal relationships, visuality has assumed a central role. The fusion of camera and communication technology embeds images and photography as practices within personal and intimate relationships. This also includes the consensual sharing of “nudes”, which are commonly known as photographic […]
Alice Roberte de Oliveira* Introduction Ethnography is crafted from field experiences, and each one is unique. Sharing particularities might help other colleagues diversify their data gathering. In my ongoing PhD in Communication Studies, gathering Google Reviews was a new way of engaging with the field and bringing texture to my research. By revealing personal experiences, […]
Marije Miedema* This blog post is based on the master’s thesis completed at the Research Master Arts, Media and Literary Studies, at the University of Groningen. It highlights one specific part of the methodology (reflective video diaries). To read the full thesis, click here, or reach out by e-mail. Toothbrushing is embedded in our daily routines, […]
Svenja Kunze** and Leslie Gauditz*** Good research data management is an essential to digital ethnography but also a challenging process. A wealth of information must be filtered along the lines of the research interests, but also collected, sorted, and stored in a technically and ethically appropriate way. Thereby, this process has many similarities with the […]
Suzana Jovicic and Simone Pfeifer** In 2014, US-based associate anthropology professor Matthew Durington held a class on game design. One of the anthropology games developed by his students was the card game “Cards Against Anthropology“, based on the classic party game “Cards Against Humanity”. The aim is for players to playfully engage with ethically ambiguous […]
Lea Georgia Locker, Freyja Coreth and Marie Vodicka* This blog post was created for the seminar “The Materiality and Visuality of Social Media” by Philipp Budka for the MA program “CREOLE – Cultural Differences and Transnational Processes” at the University of Vienna. We can observe that gender-based violence against women is still present in many […]
Taylor Dube* This blog post is a revision of a text written in collaboration with Melanie Strobl for the seminar “The Materiality and Visuality of Social Media” by Philipp Budka for the MA program “CREOLE – Cultural Differences and Transnational Processes” at the University of Vienna. Taking a knee to take a stand Social media […]
Syntia Hasenöhrl* Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many scholars had to transfer their research into the digital. At first sight, this seems to tie in with a trend in social sciences that moves towards objectivist big data approaches and neglects personal interactions (Leurs, 2017, p.131ff). Against this trend, digital ethnographers have been practicing […]
Martin Slama* The realm of the digital is a quintessentially modern one in the sense that it is geared towards constantly producing new things, be that apps, platforms, devices etc. For the inhabitants of this realm – producers or consumers of the digital or both at once – novelty and being up-to-date is often a […]
