With the advent of COVID-19, adaptation became a norm. Research data-collection methods similarly required adaptation, birthing the use of virtual platforms as first-line data collection tools to adhere to COVID-19 restrictions. This chapter presents an autoethnographic account of virtual qualitative data collection. A PhD candidate shares her experience of conducting individual and focus group interviews virtually in a developing nation. A discussion of the narrative and recommendations for virtual qualitative data collection are provided.

This chapter discusses the Kazakh Spring's context of digital revolution. In the absence of viable, independent media, the protestors had to move their communication, outreach, and engagement online. Kazakhstan is one of the most digitalized post-Soviet nations, and the Kazakh Spring managed to politicize this and help the emergent protests even on less politicized platforms like Instagram. This was exacerbated by the public health crisis and growing corruption of the first pandemic year. Political protestors were involved in creating databases of Covid deaths that the state tried to hide and created a space not only for digital national mourning but also for investigation of the corruption associated with the Covid crisis. Through these processes, Kazakh Spring activists were able to unite many citizens whom this crisis left angry and disoriented in the conditions. This chapter also focuses on the online trial of activist Asya Tulesova in August 2020, which had to be held on Zoom due to the lockdowns.

Agreement-making has always been, and continues to be, shaped by gradual change and unforeseen situations on site, to which both participants and researchers must adapt. This chapter provides guidance on how to cope with the unexpected, discusses specific situations that may occur on site, and shows how to make use of digital and hybrid sites in methodological and conceptual terms. First, it presents a set of typical unforeseen situations that may arise at any point during the research process, especially during fieldwork, and identifies strategies for adapting to these kinds of unanticipated events. Second, it illustrates how the methodology of an entire research project can be modified by using the example of how the ERC research project MARIPOLDATA responded to the indefinite postponement of BBNJ IGCs in 2020. Third, it points to the advantages and disadvantages of digital ethnography, and, fourth, discusses the future role of digital and hybrid meetings for the study of global environmental agreement-making.

An increasingly pervasive digital environment, where technologies mediate social interaction within and outside organizations, creates new rich data sources for IS research. Of primacy to IS scholars, who study phenomena at the intersection of technology, people and organization, is how future research designs can capture such ongoing sociotechnical entanglements occurring in hybrid online and offline spaces. Building on lessons learned from a study of platform workers, this chapter explores three key challenges of a hybrid ethnographic approach to IS research: (1) navigating unbounded fieldsites; (2) managing technological opacity; (3) working with diverse data. The chapter guides researchers by demonstrating how hybrid methods can be used in different configurations across diverse settings. Simultaneously, in the age of web crawlers, data scraping and machine learning, processes that are invaluable in their own rights, this chapter resituates a qualitative ethnographic approach to digital data, introducing participatory digital observation to the rich empirics gathered in face-to-face environments. Rather than reproducing the valuable work done by scholars in digital sociology and ethnography, this chapter brings strands of the conversation together, highlighting the benefits of studying IS phenomena as a hybrid that exists both in physical and virtual spaces.

When doing classical fieldwork, ethnographers spend time in a foreign culture and try to describe this culture in a way that makes strange or unusual features understandable for their readers. It is a way to help addressees to see their own culture from a new perspective. The purpose of this chapter is to show how applied research can help to identify problems in society and professions and how it contributes to providing solutions by using the media linguistics toolbox. The chapter introduces some research frameworks, structures of various methods, and theoretical concepts. Furthermore, it aims to explain why the combination of linguistic and ethnographic frameworks is especially useful for finding out what people actually do when interacting in the context of digital media. The section on digital ethnography shows how doing research across offline and online spaces can broaden the understanding of the complexities of our contemporary world. Finally, the chapter introduces methods to generalize findings from ethnographic case studies systematically.