Paper short abstract:

This contribution examines the accumulative logics that social media platforms foster in user practices and the resulting considerations for mediated ethnography. Three factors are discussed: interlocutors’ access, hegemonic stylization, and the researcher’s visibility as a participant observer.

Paper long abstract:

Social media data is a valuable resource for accumulation by platforms, private interests, and governments, and can be utilized to shape users’ practices. Less discussed but arguably no less important is how individual users likewise approach social media as a field for accumulation, as ‘likes’ and followers act as currency both in economies of symbolic exchange and in mediated markets. If social media platforms inculcate users to sociocultural practices organized around the bid to accumulate (social and/or financial) capital, these structures are likely to become embedded in the ethnographic research process, too. While field researchers are perhaps already susceptible to accumulative logics, as citations rather than ‘likes’ can motivate practice, mediated ethnography introduces a series of factors that may significantly impact the content of the research produced. This contribution draws upon ongoing research located in Oman and the broader Arabian Gulf region, in which the social media platform Instagram significantly mediates both remote and in-person fieldwork. Attending to the platform-specific infrastructure of Instagram, three factors emerge as demanding attention in the research process: interlocutors’ access, which is unevenly dependent upon far more factors than mere connectivity; hegemonic stylization, in which users who successfully embrace and reproduce dominant aesthetic regimes gain visibility; and the problematics of the researcher’s own visibility as a participant observer. Yet rather than merely critiquing the deleterious potentialities of mediated ethnography, this contribution acknowledges the necessity of engaging social media with the aim of working towards a constructive practicum for current and future research.