Paper short abstract:

In doing digital ethnography with a Hindu-inspired community, I experienced the complexity of having to deal with a great amount of information converging into one space. My field was a multi-scalar collage of the online events of this community seen from the small room where I happen to also live

Paper long abstract:

Due to the COVID-19 crisis, I was impelled - like nearly everyone - to conquer the digital sphere. Consequently, what was intended to be a participant observation among a Hindu-inspired community in the city of Madrid became a mix of online interviews with the city's devotees; online activities hosted from different places: a theatre colloquium in Madrid, a World Convocation on Los Angeles and several online meditations in India; together with numerous posts on different webpages and social-media platforms. Observing all these events from my room, it felt like my digital fieldwork gave rise to a confusing global-local articulation that was taking place in the small space of my desk.

This change in my research design unchained an entire set of consequences with the corresponding reflections. For instance, it struck me that my fieldwork was full of (meaningful) silences, of intermittency and daily-life interruptions. I found myself scheduling my moments of 'observation', tinkering with the asynchronicity allowed by some digital platforms. I experienced the relativity of movement, visiting different places through my laptop's screen while sitting statically on my chair. In this particular arena I found that, together with my position, questions of bonding and field boundaries were compromised. My room became a vessel were my research left its mark.