Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses new tools and methods to do digital ethnography and to conduct research in virtual fields. With the rise of online platforms and their characteristics, new challenges appear and require the adaptation of ethnographic methods to interact with digital worlds and their communities.

Paper long abstract:

Ethnographic research in virtual worlds poses new challenges for ethnographers and anthropologists. It calls into question the usual practice of ethnography and requires the implementation of new methods to conduct research on online communities. These adjustments are especially important to deal with situations like the Covid19 pandemic and to push for innovations by researchers in accessing and studying new digital fields.

As I explored various virtual fields, such as social media, video games and the metaverse, the unpredictability of online worlds appeared. With a different temporality, different concepts of identity, and no geographic boundaries as we usually perceive them, it is necessary to analyze virtual worlds within their own framework. The question of ethics and confidentiality is also an important point to (re)discover in online places, where individuals come and go as they please, in a simulation of equality and privacy, and where general consent is difficult to get. While people constantly connect and disconnect in these virtual persistent worlds, the mass of data to be processed is a major issue too. Indeed, digital fields offer a wide amount of easily accessible data while, paradoxically, flooding the researchers at the same time.

Lastly raises the question of accessing the field, with the creation of a virtual identity or an avatar to carry out observations online, to interact with users from all over the world, and to take part in the different group's activities.

Within this analysis, I intend to present different tools and methods available to conduct virtual ethnographic research.