Methodological insights into digital vernacular (in)security: Developing from netnography to appnography on Snapchat in Marseille, France

Abstract While vernacular security studies pays scant attention to the digital field, there are significant untapped opportunities in the digital world. This article aims to contribute to these research opportunities by offering a method and methodological intervention to capture the multimodal, user-generated and self-destructing data on the mobile phone application Snapchat. It does this by adapting netnography into an ‘appnography’ to navigate the data access issues presented by the proliferation of smartphone applications. The article seeks to make two contributions. As method, it outlines how appnography can get around data access issues faced by researchers on many smartphone applications. As methodology, it seeks to push vernacular security studies and critical security studies to further consider the complex, sophisticated, multimodal outputs that articulate (in)security on smartphone applications which are often unmediated by media bureaucracies. The article finishes by offering some empirical and conceptual insights into constructions of (in)security from below in the context of Marseille, France. These empirics demonstrate significant opportunities for understanding how fictional and cultural symbols (such as Bart Simpson or Pablo Escobar’s character from the Narcos Netflix show) are adapted and co-opted by users to construct security from below. The appnography also uncovers the ways in which branding and commercial strategies are incorporated by individuals in navigating (in)security. Finally, the self-destructing data was also found to be an unmonitorable conduit for a range of conspiracy theories.