The Overview of Online Ethnographic Research on Communities of People with Disabilities

Abstract

The article provides a review of research on communities of people with disabilities in the context of online ethnography as a methodological strategy. Ethnography is significantly modified in digital contexts. Virtual communication, which is especially important for people with physical or mental disabilities, cannot be studied using toolkit typical for ethnographic research. Participant observation is transformed into online observation, which does not have strictly defined standards. In the context of vague ideas about the principles, procedures and results of studying online communities, different styles of online ethnographic research have emerged. Based on a degree of relationship with offline context, the article identifies two formats of online ethnographic research – ​multimodal and digital ethnography. On this basis, a review of online ethnographies, devoted to various cases of communities of people with disabilities, is constructed. The analysis shows that multimodal ethnography contributes to a deeper immersion of researchers in the field, and, as a consequence, gives a better understanding of the difficulties that people with disabilities face in their everyday lives. Digital ethnographies can be useful if the aim is to study interactions within the online platform, assess the inclusiveness of the environment or highlight the functions that the platform performs for different categories of participants: people with disabilities, their relatives, activists and social workers. In addition to the methodological features, the article also discusses the ethical issues related to ethnographic research in the online environment. In the context of the studies of socially vulnerable groups, the risks of possible consequences of the research for informants significantly increase. As a solution, it is proposed to anonymize the field data and not use direct quotes, if they touch upon sensitive topics or contain confidential information.