Becoming augmented: The latent possibilities of ethnography in a pandemic

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Main author: Ryder, Craig
Format: Journal Article           
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id eprints-42365
recordtype eprints
institution SOAS, University of London
collection SOAS Research Online
language English
language_search English
description For all its wretched ways, COVID:19 has installed new possibilities to the way we do ethnographic research. Due to pandemic restrictions, my research on how digital activists in Sri Lanka acquire influence on social media fell into three distinct phases: (i) digital ethnography from London, (ii) datafied approaches in Helsinki and (iii) traditional fieldwork in Colombo. The article’s objective is not to provincialise the three cases, but to demonstrate how each phase is tightly bound together and serve to imagine new possibilities in research design. Vlad Glăveanu contents that ‘human beings live “amphibious” lives – at once in the realm of the actual and the possible’ to emphasis the misty line between what is real and what can be manifested by innovation and action. Not dissimilar to this amphibiousness, I argue that human beings also live ‘augmented’ lives, at once in the realm of in real life (IRL) and online spaces and experiences mediated by digital technologies. My fingers, ears and eyes, while in London, Helsinki or Colombo, were always partly submerged in digital worlds, and it was this augmentation that enabled the long-term engagement that good ethnography demands.
format Journal Article
author Ryder, Craig
author_facet Ryder, Craig
authorStr Ryder, Craig
author_letter Ryder, Craig
title Becoming augmented: The latent possibilities of ethnography in a pandemic
publisher Sage
publishDate 2024
url https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/42365/

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