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arXiv · 2602.08349

To Tango or to Disentangle? Making Ethnography Public in the Digital Age

Daniel Mwesigwa·Cyan DeVeaux·Palashi Vaghela
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Abstract

Ethnography attends to relations among people, practices, and the technologies that mediate them. Central to this method is the duality of roles ethnographers navigate as researchers and participants and as outsiders and insiders. However, the rise of digital platforms has introduced new opportunities as well as practical and ethical challenges that reshape these dualities across hybrid media environments spanning both online and offline contexts. Drawing on two case studies of VRChat and WhatsApp, we examine how ethnographers employ diverse tactics to study both enduring and emerging socio-cultural issues of race and caste, particularly those that form what are often called publics. We propose emergent relationality as a key analytic for understanding the mutual shaping of ethnographers, platforms, and publics. In this work, emergent relationality offers registers for analyzing how positionality and hybrid media environments constitute and condition what can be accessed, articulated, and made public.

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Daniel Mwesigwa, Cyan DeVeaux, Palashi Vaghela. 2026-02-09. To Tango or to Disentangle? Making Ethnography Public in the Digital Age. https://doi.org/10.1145/3788076

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