Going Digital in Ethnography: Navigating the Ethical Tensions and Productive Possibilities

Over the last few decades, ethnographers have begun to orient to the digital world as both a site of new data and a domain of study itself. Alongside new technologies has come a host of emergent ethical dilemmas. In this methodological paper, I describe some of the ethical challenges and productive possibilities of going digital when engaged in ethnographic research. Drawing upon the theory of affordances, I discuss the ongoing ethical debate around what counts as public versus private, as well as the closely related concerns regarding treating online data as texts versus that which is generated by human subjects. I also examine some of the potential affordances of going digital, including the possibility of leveraging digital spaces to expand representation and engage citizen researchers. Throughout, I draw upon empirical examples from a virtual ethnography focused on the everyday life of a woman who identifies as autistic.