2016/01/02 by Steffen Dalsgaard · 1 citation
Computer Science · Social Sciences · #Digital Communication and Language #Focus Groups and Qualitative Methods #Social Media and Politics
paper · doi:10.1080/00664677.2016.1148011
crossref issued 2016/01/02 · crossref published 2016/01/02 · crossref published-print 2016/01/02 · openalex publication_date 2016/01/02 · crossref published-online 2016/03/17 · crossref created 2016/03/18 · crossref deposited 2023/08/17 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref indexed 2026/08/01 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
New social media have become indispensable to people all over the world as platforms for communication, with Facebook being the most popular. Hence, platforms such as Facebook are also becoming crucial tools for ethnographers because much social life now exists ‘online’. What types of field relations stem from such social media-driven ethnography? And what kinds of data do these relations present to the ethnographer? These questions must be considered in order to understand the challenges Facebook and other social media pose to ethnographic methodology. This article focuses on how Facebook may play an important role even in ethnographic work concerned with questions other than how Facebook works as a social medium. Most importantly it allows the ethnographer to keep up-to-date with the field. I argue that ethnography is already in possession of the methodological tools critically to assess the validity and value of data gathered or produced via Facebook including issues such as authenticity which are also pertinent to digital ethnography.