Digital ethnography in a perpetually online world

In this new series, scholars respond to SAW editors’ call to reflect on innovative methods that are being devised by anthropologists of work to navigate the changing nature of work itself. With the rise of gig economies, precarious work, and jobs that are continually under threat, how do we study work itself?  

Geriatric middle-class millennials (those born in the early 1980s), if they dig back in their memories, are probably the last generation to remember living in an offline world. In the mid-90s, the ability to connect to the internet via landline marked a significant shift. Arturo Escobar, in his 1994 essay, ‘Welcome to Cyberia,’ examined the implications of digital technology for anthropological research and its effects on human experience and social life. In the Global South contexts from which I write, Theophilos Rifiotis was one of the forerunners of this field of study in Brazil. Already in 1996, he advocated for attention to virtual environments in ethnographic research and became one of the founding members of the Cyberanthropology Research Group within the Graduate Program in Social Anthropology at the Federal University of Santa Catarina. Since then, digital technologies have evolved rapidly. The current integration of online and offline life requires that social media be examined within this hybrid context (Hine, 2017). At the same time, this integration can also perpetuate the marginalization of certain identities and reinforce offline inequalities, as demonstrated by intersectional critical technology studies (Noble & Tynes, 2016). The COVID-19 pandemic further accelerated changes in digital ethnographic methods and renewed debates about the boundaries of fieldwork.

Cherchez la femme: combining methods in a feminist digital ethnographic approach

The COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally transformed the service economy worldwide, making work-from-home arrangements ubiquitous. Although there has been a push for workers to return to the office, remote work has gained a permanent foothold in the economy. This transition also exposed the double burden of paid employment and unpaid domestic and care responsibilities, which disproportionately affect women. These layered challenges became visible through the testimonies women shared on social media, persisting even after the pandemic subsided. However, these accounts offer only a partial view of a private and transient reality. Without someone to document or share these experiences, they often remain unrecognized.

This context informed my PhD research, which focused on a feminist capacity-building NGO addressing disparities in Brazil’s tech sector by providing free online coding bootcamps for vulnerabilized women, particularly Black, trans, and travestis facing unemployment. Access to this closed-off digital field was enabled by the strong relationships I had developed with founders and staff over four years of collaboration with the organization. My fieldwork was conducted in two phases over eight months, from May to December 2024. The initial month involved conducting preliminary interviews with management and collaboratively planning how to present the research to students. The second phase centered on the bootcamp itself, an 18-week introductory Python for data analysis course for 40 students. I limited the digital ethnography to one cohort but extended interviews to staff and students from two additional cohorts running simultaneously.

The fully online format of the bootcamp posed data collection challenges, requiring me to navigate multiple platforms.  Classes were conducted via Zoom or Google Meet; course materials were distributed via Google Classroom; assignments were managed on GitHub; staff communicated on Slack; and students interacted with peers on WhatsApp. LinkedIn became increasingly relevant as students shifted their focus toward job searching near the program’s end. I also utilized teaching and management materials provided by the organization.

Throughout my research, I was guided by digital and feminist ethnographic approaches. While each perspective was essential, none fully addressed the specificities of my fieldwork. Consequently, I developed a new framework, the ‘assemblage of coded pedagogy,’ which integrates  TL Taylor’s (2009) ‘assemblage of play’ framework with Héctor Beltrán’s (2023) ‘ethno-stack’ concept.

Within this framework, Taylor integrates assemblage thinking with ethnographic methods to examine how technological artifacts, gameplay, and social dynamics intersect within situated relationships. The framework’s primary strength lies in its ability to accommodate the complex interactions among diverse agents: human, nonhuman, social, and institutional elements. In adapting Taylor’s triadic analytical model, I shifted the focus from game experience and sociality to learning and teaching experiences and community building, while maintaining attention to technological artifacts and their interconnections. To further strengthen this approach, I incorporated Beltrán’s ethno-stack concept, which interprets ‘ethno’ in two ways: as a focus on specific cultures or groups to develop culturally grounded theories of technology, and as the use of ethnographic observation and reflexivity to analyze systems in depth. In my research, rather than analyzing computer systems, I investigated the internal dynamics of an online coding bootcamp.

Implications of an assemblage of coded pedagogy for the anthropology of work 

As work becomes increasingly digital, this framework enables researchers to account for the diverse aspects of digital interactions occurring in private settings. For example, observing and participating in meetings and chats (both in group and privately) via platforms, such as Zoom and Slack. Participants valued the online bootcamp’s accessibility and its adaptation to their needs comparted to in-person alternatives. Similarly, digital ethnography provided comparable advantages, making fieldwork more flexible and accessible.

This flexibility can also address practical constraints faced by researchers. In my case, balancing work and family responsibilities required me to relocate four times across three countries during my PhD. Conducting research in a fully digital field was the only viable way to sustain my project through these transitions. More than once, as I commuted from work to home (the only train ride available coincided with a Tuesday night class), I would log on from my phone on the train. Observing the open cameras of various students, I saw I was far from being the only one.

References

Beltrán, H. (2023). Code Work: Hacking across the US/México Techno-Borderlands. Princeton University Press.

Escobar, A. (1994). Welcome to Cyberia: Notes on the Anthropology of Cyberculture. Current Anthropology, 35(3), 211-231. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2744194

Follador, Silvia (2026). Debugging the Brazilian Tech Market: A Digital Ethnography on Coding and Intersectionality. In Talia Esnard (ed.), Gender, Economies, and Work, in Madelyn Detloff (ed.), Oxford Intersections: Gender Justice, https://doi.org/10.1093/9780198960256.003.0098, accessed 6 July 2026.

Hine, C. (2017). Ethnography and the Internet: Taking Account of Emerging Technological Landscapes. Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences, 10(3), 315-329. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40647-017-0178-7

Noble, S.U. and Tynes, B.M. (2016). The Intersectional Internet: race, sex, class and culture online. Peter Lang Publishing

Taylor, T. L. (2009). The assemblage of play. 4(4), 331–339. Games and Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media, https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412009343576

Author Bio

Silvia Rodrigues Follador holds a PhD in Public Administration and Government from FGV EAESP, Brazil, and a Master’s in International Affairs from Sciences-Po Paris. Her research centers on the critical study of digital skills programs and intersectionality, with a focus on Brazil and its Global South ties. Currently, she is an Academic Visitor at the School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh.