Participant observation in the 21st century: How the digital dimension matters for all ethnographers

Abstract

Scholarship on participant observation in the digital era has produced a proliferation of labels—virtual ethnography, digital ethnography, and netnography, among others—that often position digitally attuned methods as specialized departures from ethnography's core. This framing risks obscuring the relevance of digital practices for ethnographers whose research questions do not centrally concern technology. The present article proposes that attention to the multifaceted digital dimensions of social life enhances participant observation even for those who study social processes whose center of gravity is offline. Drawing on a multiyear ethnographic study initiated shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic, I emphasize that much ostensibly ‘in-person’ work unfolds through screens and digital infrastructures. Consciously engaging these environments expands ethnographic insight in three key ways: increasing the surface area of observable interaction, foregrounding participants’ extended social networks, and illuminating collaborative interpretive work among research participants.