Ethnographic Fieldnoting in Digital Fields

Perspectives of a Knowledge and Work Practice

Abstract

This article deals with the question to what extent digital fields can be investigated with field notes. First, I introduce what field notes are and what ethnographers do with them. Digital fields, which are differentiated as digital, digitized, and digitizing, have their own requirements for ethnographic working practices. I show how field notes are conceived in ethnological subjects and how digital techniques were creatively used from very early on. In linking the approaches I show how stylistics is important to be understood as memory work and strategies have to be found and defined which fieldnote practices fit which fields and own skills. I therefore define fieldnoting as an interdisciplinary knowledge and work practice on which the different concepts and discussions can be bundled. To show the minutiae scale of this practice, I connect the concepts as fieldnoting work and fieldnoted knowledge with data and practices from my own research on platform, e-commerce, and cybersecurity.