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Short abstract:

This paper explores the changes in traditional ethnographic work due to COVID-19 while studying the embodiment of public values in Germany's Public Service Media Online Media Libraries. The paper follows the researcher's journey in reconfiguring her relationship with digital fieldwork.

Long abstract:

This paper is not about COVID-19. However, its reflexive exploration evolved around how traditional ethnographical work to study public values' embodiment in Germany's Public Service Media Online Media Libraries - the so-called ARD Audiothek and Mediathek - had to transform because of it. As the continuing COVID-19 lock-down policies in Germany from 2020 to 2022 normalized "working from home," access to the spaces of ethnography and observation for some researchers became limited. However, those spaces transferred to a few new digital spaces - zoom calls, chats, and other means of digitally crafted data - and focused more on text-based data and discourse analysis. Furthermore, friction and tensions continuously take place from the first moments of contacting a possible expert interview partner or collecting a document to moments of tweaking and tailoring the data. Relationships were shaped and shaken because of the new familiarities and unfamiliarities with the digital and physical fields.

This paper follows the researcher in shaping and (re)configuring her relationship with the digital fieldwork and tries to shed light on some data and practice methodological tensions. It mainly focuses on the digital fieldwork configured around planning and conducting interviews, early tensions between the researcher, the field, and the subject, selectivity issues, and deciding on a more heuristically exploratory "pseudo-computational" approach to trace tensions and narratives.