Digital Ethnography

Pink and her co-authors make the case that ethnography focused on how people use digital tools deserves a central place in social and cultural research. They place digital ethnography alongside older, pre-digital approaches and show how its methods, practical concerns and theory have become tightly connected.

The book explains why digital ethnography matters for understanding society, and why it can reshape both the way researchers design studies and the techniques they use. It also supplies the technological means needed to study social life today. Readers are shown how to investigate places, objects and events, and how to capture people's lived experiences, everyday practices and relationships, whether the subject is an individual or a community.

Rather than only describing the field, the authors define the core concepts of this emerging area, question established conceptual and analytical categories, and present new and inventive research methods. They also offer fresh ways of thinking about the digital world and invite readers to look again at older practices, media and environments in light of it.

Written as an entry point for anyone planning ethnographic fieldwork in today's digitally mediated society, the book suits students, researchers and practitioners who want a clear grounding in the subject.