Mediated subjects and interconnected days. Facebook as fieldwork

Abstract

I investigate digital information and the everyday by primarily concentrating on Facebook and on the connections taking place between myself – a user who is also an anthropologist – and some other individuals on the net. I draw on my activities and I take into account the ethnographic aspects involved in these activities associating daily life and social media. I show how the digital world questions the traditional conception of place-based ethnography and tends to turn field research into a more reflexive phenomenon. In this perspective, I focus on Facebook considering it a field site resulting from the intersection of the human and the digital. Ultimately, I try to show how the digital world has impacted ethnographic methods of research and, at the same time, some essential concepts such as simulation, technology, interaction, identity, authorship and the everyday itself.