‘I’m Not an Alien. I’m a Digital Ethnographer’: Doing Online Research with China’s Social Media

Abstract

After the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, digital ethnography became an important methodological tool for researchers. In my case, I shifted my research from China to digital China, and I engaged with China’s social media as my research field. But what are the challenges for an ethnographer in conducting research into China’s digital space and networks from afar? And how do China’s social media platforms mediate the formation of relationships with potential participants? Based on two years of online research, integrated with literature on autoethnography, China’s social media platforms, and performativity, this article describes China’s digital domain and explains how social media platforms mediate ethnographic research. Autoethnography facilitated this research on a critical notion of digital China in which institutional regulation contributes to the transformation and production of digital ethnography.