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Paper short abstract:

Drawing on two ethnographic fieldworks on uses and consequences of social media in a medium-sized town in southeast Turkey and among the Kurdish population in Milan, the paper reflects on the methodological issues at stake in the study of digital media and people's private and intimate life.

Paper long abstract:

In the last two decades, ethnography has acquired a central role in media studies, design research, and visual and digital studies. Ethnographic methods are particularly well-suited to study the significant role that digital media and technologies play in people's everyday life. However, the diffusion of ethnography in an interdisciplinary context is often informed by positivistic agenda and results in short-term ethnography and mixed-methods analysis. Also, digital methods have mostly developed visions and strategies to study public or semi-public digital data produced on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, as well as blogs and forums. Yet, private conversations constitute a relevant component of digital communication and cultures, and are intertwined with crucial aspects of people's life in the digital age. How can we study the large amount of conversations taking place in the private spaces of social media, and their impact on people's life? The paper discusses the importance of fully immersive long-term ethnographic fieldwork to gain access to people's private worlds and their digital practices. It draws on two ethnographic fieldworks on uses and consequences of social media on people's everyday life, respectively in a medium-sized town in southeast Turkey (Costa 2016), and among the Kurdish population in Milan (Costa & Alinejad 2020), to reflect on the methodological issues at stake in the study of digital media and people's private and intimate life.