Digital Fieldwork aims to provide an ever-growing corpus of content that can be helpful to scholars and others performing diverse types of digital fieldwork in a range of disciplines using many different methodologies. An ongoing core activity of the Digital Fieldwork team is continuing to build the site’s content, both through our own independent searches for relevant material, and by publishing content created and suggested by those who visit the site. We welcome your ideas and suggestions!
The three types of content included on the site – reflections, resources and references – are created and assembled through different processes. Our team makes its best effort to verify all content for accuracy, quality, and relevance before posting. In the case that a user finds something of concern, they should contact us.
Reflections – original contributions of various types on the mechanics or the experience of conducting digital fieldwork – are offered to us by individual scholars or teams of scholars. The Digital Fieldwork team also approaches scholars to encourage them to share their thoughts and ideas.
The Resources on conducting digital fieldwork included on the site were originally compiled through an extensive search of other on-line resources and websites carried out by the Digital Fieldwork team during the Summer and Fall of 2020. The team sought to compile digital resources in five categories – archives, webinars and workshops, news outlets, websites, and technology and tools – by conducting systematic google searches to find relevant content. To search for digitized archives and news outlets, we also consulted the Indiana University library catalog and online academic databases (e.g. JSTOR and EBSCO). The team conducts systematic online searches for additional resources on a regular basis.
The References we list were originally drawn from two sources. The first was a bibliography of relevant literature assembled by Deborah Groen (a PhD candidate at Georgetown University) at the request of our team. In brief, that bibliography was assembled by conducting a preliminary search using a range of relevant keywords (e.g., “digital fieldwork,” “online fieldwork + social science”) via Google Scholar and the Georgetown University library’s search engine (which spans many databases). The second was an extensive lists of references to research discussing how to conduct fieldwork during the pandemic created by Professor Deborah Lupton (SHARP Professor of Arts, Design, & Architecture in the Centre for Social Research in Health and the Social Policy Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, Sydney); we are grateful to Professor Lupton for granting us permission to draw from her references list. In addition, our team carries out systematic searches for additional relevant literature on a regular basis.
As we note above, we hope that the site’s content will continue to expand, and would be very grateful for any ideas and contributions you can offer. To suggest or contribute content for Digital Fieldwork, please complete this form.