CFP: Call for short case studies and field reflections: edited book, Practicing Digital Ethnography

Routledge invites submissions of short chapters for an edited volume, Practicing Digital Ethnography.

Are you engaged in—or have you recently undertaken—ethnographic fieldwork that intersects with digital technologies? Are you using digital technologies to present your work in a novel way? If so, please consider submitting a fieldwork reflection to the upcoming edited volume, Practicing Digital Ethnography, under contract with Routledge. We are looking for interdisciplinary case studies, anecdotes, and methodological interventions drawn from current research in the realm of digital ethnography.

About the Book

Practicing Digital Ethnography seeks to introduce undergraduate students (and the general public) to the practices, theories, and complications of ethnographic fieldwork in the contemporary digital landscape. The book will be based in rigorous theory and method but written in approachable language. In addition to its main chapters—authored by a mixture of established and junior scholars—this volume will include short, 2,000 word “Case Studies” to provide examples in a real-world fieldwork setting. Because the volume should reflect digital research in a global sense, scholars and work representing marginalized cultural or geographic groups are especially encouraged to contribute. And because these case studies should reflect contemporary innovative research, we also particularly invite graduate students engaged in research and early career academics, as well as digital practitioners from outside the academy, to submit abstracts.

These can include ethnographic fieldwork of many types:
• “offline” cultural use of Internet technologies;
• “online” meaning-making in digital spaces;
• ethnography within virtual worlds;
• the effects of wearable digital technologies;
• ethical conundrums faced researching the digital;
• studies using big data to analyze cultural practices;
• studies analyzing linguistic and semiotic patterns of Internet use;
• research engaging with multiple intersecting digital platforms;
• research with/about AI and/or algorithmic logics;
• work using GIS technologies to track social practices;
• ethnographic video games and/or interactive narratives;
• ethnographic work as/on digital art or installations;
• any of the multitude of other ways the ethnographic and digital can inform each other.

Submission Procedures:

1. From now until November 1, 2023—Please send a short abstract (100-200 words) describing the fieldwork, along with a few sentences of author(s) bio information with the subject line “Case Study Submission” to dproctor2@elon.edu.
2. November 15, 2023—Authors will be notified about the status of their proposals.
3. April 1, 2024—Full case-studies (2,000 words) are expected to be submitted.

Please direct submissions, and any questions, to the volume’s editor, Devin Proctor, Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Elon University, at dproctor2@elon.edu