Vectors for fieldwork: Computational thinking and new modes of ethnography

Ethnographic methods in the context of digital tools and networked relations have been adapted in fascinating ways. In this contribution, I will analyse how computationalisation as a framework (Hayles, 2012) shapes some of the adaptations of ethnographic methods. Using ‘tropes’ as a way of analysing ethnographic accounts, the relation to the ethnographic object, to other ethnographers and to the readers of ethnographic inquiry will be analysed. Computational ethnography is contrasted to other ethnographic approaches that have been crafted in the past decades, such as virtual ethnography and mediated ethnography. Issues around common computational ethnography practices, such as capture, automation, sensing and scraping are analysed.