Reframing Digital Ethnography as Research-Creation: A Review of Exploring Digital Ethnography

This review of Exploring Digital Ethnography: From Principles to Practice (Underberg-Goode & Otañez, 2025) argues that the book redefines digital ethnography as research-creation. This edited book not only explores social worlds through digital worlds, but it also shows how the design and production of multimodal creations establish how ethnographic knowledge is created and shared. Discoveries and guidelines are discussed, including examples of ethnographic comics, interactive autoethnographic narratives, participatory digital heritage designs, activist photography of bidi labor, organic theater, worldbuilding pedagogy, and collaborative smartphone storytelling with sexual minorities seeking asylum. This edited book shows how digital methods can allow deliberation (reflection, collaboration, co-analysis) and can materialize findings in public-facing forms. The edited book’s contributions include its revelation that form, and ethics are inseparable, especially in regard to anonymity, accessibility, authorship, and platform selection. It also highlights previously unresolved challenges, including the institutional evaluation of research-creation, the sustainability of digital projects, and the inequities in participation under conditions of unequal risk and access.