Year: 2025

This week’s seminar felt like an intellectual expedition—a journey not just through theory, but also through our collective questions about the limits of digital and physical systems that we engage both as researchers and users. As we gathered to explore digital ethnography, our discussions wove together multiple strands of thought, from the intricate workings of algorithms to the politics and even tabloid matters regarding digital platform owners such as E. Musk. Drawing on rich theoretical perspectives, we began to see these elements not as isolated technical phenomena but as vibrant parts of our shared daily practices and sociocultural landscape.

Our collective goal is to establish a reflecting archive of these discussions—a domain where theory and practice converge. As the discussion leader for this week, I am composing this blog post to summarize our previous talks and offer an overview of the ongoing discourse, demonstrating our commitment to collaborative intellectual engagement.

Overview of Discussions

Our previous discussions spanned several critical themes: questioning whether qualitative research can retain its value in a world increasingly dominated by data-centric, quantitative methods, and challenging the notion that scientific validity relies solely on objectivity. We examined how digital identities are shaped by power dynamics on social media, drawing on Goffman’s backstage theory to probe why individuals adopt multiple or anonymous personas, and considered how platforms such as dating apps further mediate our social connections.Our dialogues also ventured into the post-human era, debating whether emerging technologies like AI and VR diminish human agency, while invoking Foucault’s ideas about the fluidity of perception. Alongside these debates, we reflected on methodological challenges such as verifying authenticity online, coping with the ephemeral nature of digital movements, and the “tech-magic paradox” that likens advanced algorithms to mystical forces. Our discussions highlighted that digital ethnography is an embodied and transformative process, wherein the researcher’s active engagement in both digital and physical realms generates insights into power, identity, and technology, while simultaneously reshaping the researcher’s own identity.

Theoretical Tensions: Algorithms as Culture, Platforms as Politics, and Infrastructures as Social Systems

One of the core segments of this week’s seminar revolved around three interrelated themes:

• Algorithms as Culture:

We explored the notion that algorithms are not merely cold, mechanical formulas but active components of culture. By treating them as heterogeneous, culturally embedded practices, we learned to appreciate how algorithms, like water in a river, flow and change with the practices of those who interact with them. This perspective challenges the strict technical definition and instead invites us to see algorithms as part of a broader cultural narrative—a tapestry woven from collective human practices.

• Platforms as Discursive Constructs:

The discussion moved to the idea that platforms are far more than digital spaces. They are dynamic constructs that frame our digital interactions, obscuring power dynamics even as they facilitate creativity and connection. Drawing on Gillespie’s work, we considered how platforms like YouTube and Facebook position themselves as neutral intermediaries while subtly shaping public discourse through design and policy decisions.

• Infrastructures as Politically Charged Systems:

Finally, we examined infrastructures—those often invisible networks that support our connectivity. Unlike traditional infrastructures that are seen as stable and neutral, today’s digital infrastructures are increasingly “platformized.” They reveal the tension between universal access and the political economy of privatization, inviting us to question how historical ideals of public service intersect with contemporary market dynamics under neoliberal ideologies.

It is also highlighted some practical methods for digital ethnography, including “scavenging” for clues from diverse online spaces that reflect the fragmented nature of digital cultures. It stressed the importance of attending to the nuanced “texture of access” in digital interactions to reveal how knowledge circulates beyond obvious channels. Moreover, approaching interviews as immersive fieldwork has demonstrated its ability to connect academic research with the lived experiences of digital existence, highlighting the need to analyze “corporate heteroglossia” and remain aware of irony to perform ethnography effectively.

Looking Ahead

This week’s seminar has left us with both a richer theoretical framework and a set of practical methodological tips. As we move forward, our discussions will continue to unravel the complex interplay between technology and culture. Our collective archive—captured through these blog posts—will serve as a testament to our ongoing journey, a journey that challenges us to rethink the familiar and embrace the transformative potential of digital ethnography.

I am excited to see the progress of these discussions and suggest all participants to contemplate these ideas in anticipation of our forthcoming sessions. Let us continue in questioning, investigating, and interacting with the evolving realm of digital culture collaboratively.

This blog post reflects after the DTES554 – Digital Ethnography Class dated March 10, 2025—special thanks to my professor Suncem Koçer-Çamurdan, and all my colleagues.

When you withdraw to a topic, the first question you must ask is why. Why do I want to dedicate months, years, or even decades to this? What is appealing to me? Ethnography is not just about studying others, it’s about aligning yourself with your subject. Hey, who said ethnographers are not shamans, right?

In the evolving landscape of digital ethnography, researchers are not just observers we are participants,

presences,

and evolving selves. Our relationship with ourselves directly touches on our topic, and like a shaman, you need to know your elements. Many ethnographers intuitively discovered that during their research, Take Abidin (2020), for example, her concept of spectrums of conspicuousness highlights how researchers must navigate their visibility in the digital space. But today, I want to touch on something from Writing Culture: the idea of the ethnographer’s mystified self-portrait. I loved it as soon as I read those words. It explains how ethnographers embed ambiguity (poetic, right) and complexity into their self-portraits, intentionally obscuring aspects of their role and perspective. This isn’t deception, people, it’s an acknowledgment of the messiness of representation. It may be confusing, sometimes you may even explain why you are doing it. Ethnographic work is full of tensions, requiring flexibility and a good understanding of ‘inner spectrums’. The term mystified reminds us that our accounts are never pure reflections but are shaped by our limitations, biases, and evolving identities.

So, we adapt. We shape-shift as our informants do within their own digital and social spectrums. We adjust our visibility, methods, and sense of self to align with our study communities. This may sound too ambitious, but in digital ethnography, things are multi-layered and require constant switches between the duality (of digital vs real).

Embodiment: The Researcher in a Digital-Physical Hybrid Space

Unlike traditional fieldwork, digital ethnography blurs the distinction between researcher and subject. The act of participating online—liking, commenting, sharing—is not passive; it is embodied labor. Abidin (2020) highlights how researchers must consider their visibility labor, actively engaging with influencers while being shaped by the experience. Mayne (2017) sees this embodiment in how crafters use Facebook to share deeply personal stories, tying digital interactions to emotional and physical realities. Postill & Pink (2012) discuss how the researcher’s bodily engagement with technology—the act of scrolling, clicking, and tagging—becomes an extension of fieldwork, shaping the knowledge being produced.

Yet, as researchers, we do not just relate to our subjects—we change because of them. The digital space is not static; neither is the researcher. One enters with assumptions, but one emerges transformed through participation, emotional labor, and deep immersion. What we study shapes how we see ourselves.

The Researcher in Motion: How Ethnography Changes Us

Digital ethnography forces a constant negotiation of identity. Abidin (2020) notes that the researcher’s digital persona evolves as they interact with influencers. Mayne (2017) also reflects on how engaging in profoundly personal crafting communities requires vulnerability from the researcher. Postill & Pink (2012) describe how the researcher’s movements between online and offline worlds mirror the shifting nature of activism, where platforms, people, and power dynamics are constantly in flux.

This is the most profound shift: the researcher is not just documenting change; they are undergoing it. As we scroll, post, engage, and reflect, we are shaped by the digital spaces we study. Digital ethnography is not just about presence in the field but about how that presence reshapes the fieldworker.

Final words…

Digital ethnography has moved beyond simply observing online interactions—it now requires active engagement, ethical reflexivity, and self-awareness of one’s transformation. While Abidin’s detailed ethnography of influencers reflects feminist ethnographers’ emphasis on relationships and labor, Mayne’s work on digital crafting communities and Postill & Pink’s study of activism show that online research is not just about technology—it’s about people, power, and the researcher’s evolving self.

Studying digital spaces means becoming part of them. To become part of them is to change. The question is no longer just how we study digital spaces—but how digital spaces, in turn, study us.

Digital ethnography allows us to explore different ways of being in the field of the social sciences. But how is digital ethnography received among those practicing traditional ethnographic methods, and to what extent is it accepted in the scientific community? Moreover, do all these questions matter for ethnography, or do we need to have a broader perspective on the reliability and validity of new field methods? This week’s class discussion about objectivity and subjectivity in the sciences, particularly the rise of quantitative research and the so-called decline of qualitative research, made us revisit these questions.

I encountered the field of ethnography for the first time in my educational life, and for the first time in a long time, I stepped into a field like digital ethnography, which I had no prior knowledge. From the first week, I hesitated to dive into a field that was completely empty in my mind and to take the responsibility of leading this course. I had to lead the whole discussion while I was trying to learn everything from scratch and trying to figure it out. To overcome this, I tried to focus on the points in the texts I read that I could relate to my own knowledge set. Accordingly, the discussion would focus more on knowledge production, the social sciences debate, and objectivity.

This week’s session was the first discussion led by someone from the class. So, hopefully, for the others, it was an example of leading, or they saw what they focused on from my shortcomings and mistakes. I always find it more tiring and challenging to be the first to try something, so I prefer to run away, but this time I took the responsibility. In fact, during the process, I realized that I didn’t need to feel burdened at all; this was a discussion that was undertaken together with the class. Thanks to my friends’ contributions, the responsibility I felt was replaced by a nurturing conversation.

Before I started the discussion, I was a bit worried that someone was working on quantitative research among us, that what I was saying would make someone uncomfortable, or that it would not attract anyone’s attention. However, when I started discussing the topic, I was relieved that almost everyone in the class had something to say about the topic and that everyone was engaged, which helped me to manage the rest of the session more comfortably. The fact that everyone came from different backgrounds contributed a lot to the discussion.

The interdisciplinary nature of the social sciences became more apparent to me thanks to this course. As someone who has focused her readings on political and sociological theories until today, I thought I would learn a lot of new and completely different information when I switched my master’s degree to history but seeing that the social sciences are intertwined. Ethnography intersects with many fields, reminding me of the importance of interdisciplinary work. I realized I could combine many theories I have learned with digital ethnography to formulate more substantial questions.

I realized that the “habitus” theory of Pierre Bourdieu, a famous French sociologist, is an essential theory we can apply to ethnographers and participants in the field. Another critical sociologist and theorist, Michel Foucault’s ideas on power and knowledge production, especially his theories that everything in society is socially constructed, were discussed in the context of digital ethnography and post-humanism. Another point of intersection was the determinism of the relations between states and political power in digital fieldwork and all other scientific production processes. This allowed us to consider the digital field not only as a field but also as a political space that determines the participants’ behavior. The intersection of ethnography and politics was touched upon by discussing political power’s impact on digital identities. In this way, we observed that ethnography can touch many fields simultaneously. This reminded us again that we cannot think of digital ethnography and the digital field as separate from the social, political, and cultural spheres, and the interaction in this field has social, political, and cultural meanings.

Discussions took place in this seminar, which focused on digital field study and ethnography methods, and different clashing points emerged. Some of the key discussion points that took place during the seminar were:

1. Qualitative research in this quantitative world

• Will the qualitative method survive and retain its value in the face of the increasing importance of quantitative research?
• Are the methodologies used sufficient to prove that a study is scientific? Is validity and reliability and a data-centric approach the only way to make a study scientific? Is the quantitative research method alone sufficient to prove the objectivity of a study?
• Is it a necessity to be objective? How can we eliminate dichotomies such as subjective vs. objective, scientific vs. non-scientific?

2. Identity in the digital field

• How are digital identities shaped within the framework of power and control mechanisms in social media, and how do these mechanisms affect identity construction? What do we learn about digital identities from Erving Goffman’s backstage theory?
• Are identities becoming increasingly differentiated and one person is divided into multiple identities or is everyone becoming more and more alike?
• Why do people create fake accounts, or why do they want to be anonymous? What are the social, cultural, and political reasons behind this?
• How do dating apps like Tinder shape the relationships we build with people?

3. Human no more

• Are we in a post-human era with AI and VR technologies that continue to evolve, or is it still human that is important for digital ethnography?
• As Foucault says, is human perception a fluid concept that transforms over time? How should Foucault’s idea be reconsidered in the digital age?

This discussion taught me how challenging it is to steer the course and the discussions during a seminar. Apart from that, the collective intellectual engagement made me realize how much dichotomies shape my own world of ideas. At the same time, thanks to the experiences of my colleagues who have worked on ethnography before, I learned essential points about how to conduct a digital ethnography study, what to pay attention to, and what not to do. As someone who believes in the power of peer learning, I look forward to what I will learn about digital ethnography fieldwork in the coming days.

Author: Ayşenur Özel

A graduate seminar is a unique, collective journey. It is more than just reading books, critiquing perspectives, analyzing articles, or writing research papers. In a graduate seminar, the class culture becomes greater than the sum of its parts. We learn from one another, creating an intellectual discourse that is irreplicable. The experience feels almost magical. I was especially excited to hold a graduate seminar in one of my favorite areas, Digital Ethnography. At the same time, I was anxious. What if the seminar didn’t get enough enrollment? What if I couldn’t meet the expectations? After all, this was going to be my first graduate seminar at KU. 

Fortunately, the seminar had enough students enrolled. As for my concern about meeting expectations, I realized a better approach was to set those expectations together and work collectively to meet them. With this mindset, I set out to create a semester-long journey that would be both productive and enjoyable for everyone, honoring the inherent power of collective intellectual engagement. 

To document and reflect on our discussions, we will post weekly entries on this blog. The goal is to create a collective archive, to engage in writing without being overly verbose, and above all, to make our intellectual efforts tangible—periodically and collectively. Each week, seminar participants will post discussion questions and comments on Learn. The discussion leader(s) will then craft the blog post after the seminar. Sounds simple enough—or maybe not. Time will tell. 

This is our first post. Ironically, it is based on a discussion held online due to a snowstorm that canceled our in-person class. As I write these words, I aim to set a model for future seminar bloggers. I want to capture the collective nature of our discussion while also sharing my own thoughts and the roadmap I envisioned for this class. I take this responsibility seriously and approach it with sincerity. 😊 

Let me begin with a few reflections on the mixed feelings I experienced before our first meeting on Zoom. First, the seminar participants come from diverse disciplines—design, sociology, political science—and this interdisciplinarity is undoubtedly an asset for our journey. However, it also made me anxious. As an anthropologist, I worried about boring this diverse group with heavy anthropological theory and history. 

I have always been passionate about reading classical anthropology—from Malinowski and Evans-Pritchard to Mead, Bateson, Turner, and Geertz. I often revisit their writings, especially as I grapple with the challenges of digital ethnography: deep immersion in a culture that is ephemeral, emergent, and frustratingly fast-paced. At times, I feel behind on the latest literature in the field. Nevertheless, I felt it was necessary to introduce some historical anthropological paradigms to provide context for our first meeting. For example, I highlighted core anthropological principles like *holism* and *historical particularism* as essential to conducting meaningful digital ethnographies. These principles remind us to avoid viewing technology as isolated from the rest of social life and structures. Instead, we must see technological practices as sociocultural and historically situated. 

Bringing “traditional” ethnography (whatever that means) into the first seminar discussion opened the door to several tensions that we wrestled with collectively. Below, I’ve listed some of the key points that stayed with me after Monday’s discussion and my subsequent review of the discussion board on Learn. 

1. Authenticity in the Age of Digital Personas 

– How do we verify identities when studying people online? 

– What can we learn from Hasçelikler and the City—arguably Turkish Gen-Z’s answer to blurred reality TV—in reframing our need for authenticity as “scientists” against a backdrop of mediated life? After all, mediated life has rendered every border fluid since the beginning of humanity. 

– A participant observation tip from a YouTube video of the Digital Ethnography Roundtable (from three years ago): “Be present enough to catch platform-specific inside jokes, but skeptical enough to spot performative curation.” 

2. Ethnographic Fragility in the Face of Ephemerality

One participant raised an important question: How do we study movements like Iran’s #WomanLifeFreedom, a globalized movement born on Twitter? Such movements are not only surveilled and attacked by authoritarian governments but also fragmented by platform politics. 

3. The Tech-Magic Paradox 

A participant referenced Arthur C. Clarke’s famous idea: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” This resonated with me, as it justified bringing Malinowski into the discussion. His analysis of spells mirrors how users might perceive TikTok’s opaque algorithms as mystical forces. 

This initial discussion, despite being held online, set a promising tone for the semester. It reminded me why I love this field and why I believe in the power of collective intellectual engagement. I’m excited to see how our discussions evolve and what new insights emerge as we navigate the terrain of Digital Ethnography together. Let’s see where this journey takes us.