Paper short abstract:

We describe a novel ethnographic method, Mobile Instant Messaging Ethnography (MIME), developed when COVID-19 prevented traditional ethnography on the work of hospital doctors in Ireland. We reflect on using this evolved ethnographic method to explore lived experiences collaboratively in new ways.

Paper long abstract:

Hospital-based ethnography is a well-established method for medical anthropology. However, the effects of COVID-19 – restrictions on hospital access, heightened workloads for doctors, and a highly transmissible virus – have made hospital-based ethnography practically and ethically unfeasible during the pandemic. Faced with a lack of traditional access, we were forced into a decision about our research – stop the project? Drop the ethnographic component? Or evolve ethnography to a new form, drawing on technology already pervasive in medicine itself?

In response, we designed a Mobile Instant Messaging Ethnography (MIME) method to gather observations and reflections from doctors practicing in Irish hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants describe and reflect on their experiences of day-to-day work in WhatsApp conversations with researchers every few days across 12 weeks. The resulting data, while following an ethnographic lived-experience approach, may invite criticism – is it ethnography, in the sense that we as a discipline traditionally understand, evaluate and value it? On one hand, it is missing the traditional observational “thick description” of ethnographic data. On the other, it still follows core principles of “learning ethnographically” (Varis, 2015) about hospital doctors' work, and incorporates a “distributed reflexivity” (Bieler et al, 2020) unpacking the challenges of work in the Irish health system collaboratively with interlocutors.

In this paper, we outline our novel MIME method and reflect on developing and undertaking the method, addressing questions of its legitimacy as a “real” ethnographic method and the insight it brings into professional experiences and cultures of healthcare work.