Radhika Gajjala: "Digital Ethnography is not just reading texts online!"

Departmental Seminar: 10/3/21

Radhika Gajjala, Professor of American Culture Studies and Media and Communication, Bowling Green State University, USA

In a "Covid" world more and more humanities researchers are reaching for remote research techniques. An alarming trend seems to be to name all these techniques in and of themselves as “digital ethnography.” This presentation will discuss the issues and problems associated with remote research and what it means to do remote interviews vs actual ethnographic work of digital contexts. I will draw on my experience doing ethnography immersed online and offline since the 1990s to help us collectively think about the nuances, opportunities and limitations of adopting various remote research techniques.

Bio
Radhika Gajjala is Professor at Bowling Green State University. She researches gender in online contexts. Her latest book is titled "Digital diasporas: Labor and Affect in Gendered Indian Digital Publics (2019)." She is currently working on a co-edited book on Gender and Digital Labor.