Paper short abstract:

Drawing from a digital ethnography of performative masculinities on TikTok, this paper examines the methodological and ethical implications of doing digital ethnography during COVID-19 as a TikTok video creator who has various positionalities and identities.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I examine methodological innovations in social science research by focusing on the opportunities and challenges in doing digital ethnography as a TikTok video creator. The increased reliance on the digitalization of daily life makes the boundary between our real life and digital spaces increasingly blurred. Ethnography, as a set of participatory and observational methods studying everyday life, is experiencing significant epistemological and methodological restructuring in light of the digital age. Drawing from digital ethnographic fieldwork on TikTok as part of a doctoral ethnography of performative masculinities in Uzbekistan during COVID-19, this paper examines the methodological and ethical implications of doing digital ethnography as a video creator. TikTok videos created by the researcher and online interactions were thematically analyzed and reflected to revisit the methodological and ethical implications to ethnographic and qualitative studies. The analysis draws out my positionalities and identities (e.g., Chinese, Muslim, international student in Australia, middle-class, unmarried, millennial, cis-male) which contrasted the population. Different positionalities and identities of the researcher as a TikTok blogger expanded research opportunities and helped reach out to a more geographically, economically, and culturally diverse group of interlocutors. Furthermore, reflecting on myself, as the researcher who was also an object in the field, also worked to reshape the traditional top-down research relationship. The paper concludes by considering how doing digital ethnography on TikTok could be greatly subject to the local political, cultural, and social contexts and cause potential physical and emotional sufferings to the researcher that need our further attention.