Practicing Digital Ethnography

Practicing Digital Ethnography offers a comprehensive introduction to the essential methods, concepts, and practices of conducting ethnographic research in digital environments.

Written by 60 global contributors across 12 chapters with accompanying case studies and concept explorations, this book provides both theoretical foundations and practical guidance for digital ethnographic work. It covers research approaches for diverse digital contexts, including social media, virtual spaces, video games, and hybrid physical-technological settings, while addressing the deployment of tools like artificial intelligence, big data, mapping technologies, and multimodal methodologies. This book examines ethical challenges specific to digital research environments while maintaining a commitment to reflexive, co-present research that acknowledges how our interactions with digital technologies transcend boundaries of citizenship, race, gender identity, age and ability.

Practicing Digital Ethnography is ideal for students and researchers in anthropology, media studies, science and technology studies, and communications who seek to understand contemporary hyper-mediated environments, as well as professionals outside academia who need practical, accessible guidance for conducting rigorous digital research.

Devin Proctor is a cultural anthropologist and Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Elon University, USA.