DEI Network Meeting: Special Issue Launch

This year, DEI went into the holiday season by introducing the recently published Special Issue “Across Mobile Online and Offline Spaces: Reflections on Methods, Practices, and Ethics” (ed. by Katja Kaufmann & Monika Palmberger) and discussing some of participants’ projects over vegetarian snacks and local wine. Thank you to all the DEI friends and blog contributors […]

The Cancelation of Colin Kaepernick: Spatial Exclusion and Consequences of Cancel Culture on Social Media*

Taylor Dube** Taking a knee to take a stand Social media connects us virtually – we upload, like, comment and share pictures and thoughts. Social media platforms can be democratizing, making previously exclusive discussions accessible (Bouvier, 2020; Rosenbaum, 2019). Despite this, social media can also be a double-edged sword, creating an environment of exclusion, an […]

Back into the (Digital) Armchair? A Feminist Approach to Building Research Relations in a Postcolonial Setting

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 […]

Feeling Digital and Reimagining Fieldwork during COVID Times

Yichen Rao, Anna Castel & Lili Almási-Szabó* During the outbreak of COVID-19, everyday life has been modified in accordance with the protocols that every country has implemented. These modifications have posed ongoing challenges for fieldworkers, artists, and practice-based ethnographic researchers, while they have simultaneously produced opportunities for these researchers to reimagine fieldwork, ethnography, art, and […]

DEI Celebrates its First Birthday

Looking back at an extraordinary year – in every sense – the Digital Ethnography Initiative has celebrated its first birthday with colleagues from the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna. Thank you to everyone who has been part of it so far and we look forward to what lies ahead!

Aging in a Digitalized World: Beyond a User/Non-User Framework*

Sophie Colas** Engagement with digital technology takes numerous, often very abstract and tenuous forms that sometimes involve the intervention of other people. Such multiple engagement with digital technology appears to be particularly relevant in old age but would probably apply to other age groups likewise. While studying how elderly Parisians engage with ICT (Information and […]

How Can You Approach the Field Digitally? Reflections on Using Social Media Profiles in Ethnographic Research*

Simone Pfeifer** As contact restrictions tightened last year with the developing pandemic, ever more colleagues began asking me for advice on “how to do digital ethnography”, knowing that I had been doing it since long before the virus transformed life as we knew it. Their immediate concern was “how to enter their field digitally” to transform […]

Smartphones and Public Anthropology

Sanderien Verstappen* Report on the RAI conference panel “Critical play: Smartphones as a mode of creative engagement with crisis” during the RAI Film Festival 2021. Smartphones are increasingly used in anthropological research, teaching, and knowledge dissemination. While their usage is not limited to the pandemic, situations of social distancing and online teaching have increased the dependency […]