Collecting Rich Data from Afar

As ethnographers, we plan our fieldwork thoroughly in advance, but circumstances on the ground sometimes force us to abandon our plans. Especially in conflict(-affected) settings, access to the field is not always guaranteed and circumstances can rapidly change. In this paper, we discuss how digital ethnography can be integrated into ethnographic projects, when researchers find themselves unable to travel or return to the field. We argue that embracing the digital, both as a tool and as a space, is a viable avenue to continue ethnographic fieldwork under such circumstances. We discuss the opportunities and challenges that such an approach offers, by discussing existing research and by drawing from our own experiences in Lebanon, Kosovo and Medellín (Colombia). The discussion encompasses the two focal components of ethnography: participant observation and interviews. In the part on participant observation, we make a distinction between two different approaches of using the digital for ethnography. The first is approach is grounded in digital ethnographic work, where the digital spaces are considered as field sites. The second approach uses digital tools for collecting data from physical spaces. The objective of the paper is to provide methodological tools to ethnographers who are not trained in digital methods, and to offer practical yet sound and rigorous tools. Our focus is on ethnography in conflict(-affected) settings, which presents rather specific challenges.