Abstract
Keywords
Introduction
In an increasingly digitalized world structured by mobile communication, traditional qualitative research methods are often constraining. While researchers have long been able to observe or listen in on a good part of the personal communication of the people around them, this approach is now limiting because of extensive mobile digital communication practices (Jovicic, 2022; Palmberger & Budka, 2020). Leading researchers in the field of digital ethnography have therefore rightly stated that the examination of digitality and the qualitative analysis of digital media practices and new everyday realities requires innovative methodological approaches and methodological creativity (Hine, 2015; Pink et al., 2016). They have also shown that the digitalized lifeworlds pose new ethical challenges for research, not least because the boundaries between private and public spheres are becoming more blurred (Bolander & Locher, 2020). Field access and rapport building with research participants also needs to be reconsidered and often proceeds differently to what we may refer to as “traditional” fieldwork (Goebel, 2021). For example, mobile devices such as smartphones may initially be assumed to form an obstacle to building rapport, only to then perhaps in fact be a helpful “icebreaker” (Jovicic, 2022).
The smartphone can also be actively integrated into the research design as a mobile method. Mobile methods refer primarily to mobile communication technologies that can be used to research social relationships and worlds (Boase & Humphreys, 2018, p. 154). Mobile methods, which are heavily based on software-supported devices (especially smartphones), can be used in research to provide person-centered data, such as automatically recorded log data. Yet equally, and this is of particular interest here, mobile methods also offer a broad range of innovative research approaches that actively involve research participants and recognize and actively promote their role as coproducers in knowledge generation (Kaufmann, 2020, p. 168).
Even though the methodological potential of mobile communication technologies and of smartphones in particular have been increasingly recognized in recent years (Boase & Humphreys, 2018), the methodological examination of these technologies in qualitative research is still in its infancy (Garcia et al., 2016; Kaufmann, 2018; Kaufmann & Palmberger, 2022). When used in qualitative research, smartphones or other mobile media are generally not just a tool used independently of context but rather a digital space inherently connected to the research participants and their experiences; they thus represent a promising entry point for research (Kaufmann, 2020; Kaufmann & Palmberger, 2022, p. 221). This article, which also draws on this methodological understanding, shares and discusses experiences and findings related to the qualitative and mobile method of digital diaries, which I understand as part of digital ethnography. The digital diary method presented here I developed specifically for the research project REFUGEeICT – Multi-local Care and the Use of Information and Communication Technologies among Refugees (funded by the Austrian Science Fund), which I led between 2018 and 2022 at the University of Vienna. At the centre of this ethnographic project was the question: How do refugees maintain relationships across large geographical distances during and after their flight? This question cannot be adequately answered using conventional qualitative methods such as interviews and participant observation (Breidenstein et al., 2015; Hammersley & Atkinson, 2019). The mobile method of digital diaries as presented here, however, facilitates deeper insights into media and communication practices embedded in the wider sociocultural life context of the research partners, thus capturing the sense of digital ethnography. The digital diary method was employed in my project to explore and clarify the role of new media as “media of care.”
This article is structured as follows: The first part situates the digital diary method within the broader field of digital ethnography, positioning it as a mobile, multimodal, and participatory approach. The second part outlines the different steps involved in the digital diary method, from diary entries to the shared reflection process and subsequent analysis. These steps are then illustrated with concrete examples drawn from the specific research project for which this method was designed and adapted. The conclusion summarizes the key characteristics of the digital diary method and highlights its significance for studying the intersections of online and offline lived realities.
The Digital Diary Method Embedded in Digital Ethnography
In recent years, digital ethnography has become increasingly important as a research method not only in anthropology but also in the wider social sciences. Digital ethnography can be understood as “ethnographic research in, on and with the help of digital technologies” (König, 2020, p. 223) and this also applies to the digital diary method. This method’s main focus is on how the embedding of digital media technologies in various everyday contexts can be researched with help from such diaries. The digital diary, as presented here, is integrated into qualitative, mobile, and multimodal methodological approaches, and the method can be understood throughout as part of digital ethnography.
Digital ethnography became established in anthropology in the early twenty-first century, at a time of rapid development of digital technologies and digital communication media and the growing spread of online communities. This approach has since been adopted not only by anthropologists but also by scholars across other social sciences and cultural humanities disciplines (Geismar & Knox, 2021). While traditional anthropology and ethnography focuses on fieldwork and participant observation in physical proximity, digital anthropology and ethnography extends this approach to digital spaces. A crucial development in the history of digital ethnography has therefore been the adaptation and extension of traditional ethnographic methods to and around the digital realm (Hine, 2015). Researchers began with participant observation in online communities, conducting online interviews and analyzing digital artifacts. These methodological adaptations led to a better understanding of how digital technologies and digital communication media shape and reshape social interactions and social relationships (Boellstorff, 2012; Palmberger, 2022; Udupa & Budka, 2021).
A digital ethnographic approach captures the “digital” as it appears in practice, always in a particular constellation that connects technical devices, people, and situations (Hine, 2015, p. 29). The ubiquitous proliferation of digital technologies—including artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, machine learning, and new communication media—has resulted in an increased focus on relational practices in virtual and physical proximity. In this sense, digital ethnography understands online and offline activities not as separate from each other, but as intertwined (Hine, 2015; Kaufmann & Palmberger, 2022; Pink et al., 2016; Pype, 2021). Within digital ethnography, researchers usually focus on everyday practices (Hjorth et al., 2017). In doing so, they help make everyday phenomena visible and explore their social and cultural significance (Miller et al., 2016). Digital ethnography mainly pursues a non-media-centric approach. Instead of focusing on specific media technologies, platforms, and devices, it examines the use of new technologies and media in everyday life as embedded in the wider sociocultural context of their users’ lives (Pink et al., 2016). To illustrate such an ethnographic approach—one that captures physical and digital environments as deeply embedded in and interlinked with everyday lifeworlds—I would like to present an example from my fieldwork with Syrian refugees in Vienna. During a visit to the family of a young Syrian woman, I was surprised to see her parents and two of their adult children sitting together in the living room, each on their mobile phones, communicating through their family WhatsApp group. The reason became clear when I learned that they were including other siblings, who were not in Vienna, in their conversation. This practice, observed in their living room, created overlapping copresences—both physical and virtual. It highlights how digital communication technologies enable geographically dispersed family members to maintain connections and participate in everyday routines, effectively allowing them to “join” the family living room.
The preoccupation with the digital and virtual in ethnographic work has reignited debate over what constitutes the ethnographic field and how it should be defined (Pink et al., 2016). Research interested in everyday realities across physical and virtual spaces is inevitably multi-sited research, and it is important to negotiate how this can be completed in these multiple fields (Fleischhack, 2019). Digital ethnography can therefore be understood as a mobile and multi-sited ethnography in which virtual and physical worlds are not considered and treated as separate environments (Ahlin & Fangfang, 2019; Horst & Miller, 2012). In addition, the increasing digitalization of everyday worlds is associated with a new form of multimodality. This new form of multimodality influences the way we communicate, interact, and process information, and it includes text, images, audio, video, and interactive elements.
In social media and messenger apps, texts, images, emojis, videos, and GIFs can be combined in a message. The media offered are selected in a context-dependent and culture-specific manner for multilayered communication (Madianou & Miller, 2012). If we consider the digital as another space for social and cultural expression (Fleischhack, 2019, p. 202), then we need to find suitable methods to capture these new realities. The use of digital diaries is to be understood as a digital ethnographic method in this sense (boyd, 2009; Pink et al., 2016). In the project REFUGEeICT – Multi-local Care and the Use of Information and Communication Technologies among Refugees, the focus was on the specific life contexts of refugees in Vienna. Here, digital ethnography and the digital diary method in particular was able to provide valuable sociocultural insights into the maintenance of personal relationships across great distances (Palmberger, 2022).
The REFUGEeICT project focused on the diverse care relationships (caring and support relationships) that asylum seekers and recognized refugees mainly from Syria maintain in the host country and in their country of origin. The public discourse largely ignores the fact that refugees are often reduced to being care receivers only. But demographics indicate that many are, and need to be, care providers—indeed often transnational care providers. These transnational care relationships and support are mainly negotiated via digital communication media (Baldassar et al., 2016; Palmberger, 2022; Wilding, 2006). The research project therefore focused in particular on the significance and use of new information and communication technologies in the context of refugees’ multilocal care relationships.
Migrants, who are often more dependent than others on communication media because of their transnational lives, are very resourceful in their search for new ways of communicating. In a previous research project (Placing Memories: Ageing Labour Migrants in Vienna, funded by the Austrian Science Fund, 2015–2018) with labor migrants who came to Austria in the 1960s and 1970s, I learned that they had recorded messages on cassettes. These cassettes were then sent back and forth between Austria and Turkey or the former Yugoslavia to keep in touch with family at a time when international telephone calls were very expensive (Palmberger, 2019, 2023). In contrast to today’s digital communication, this form of transnational communication was manageable in quantity, limited to a few cassettes per person. Around 50 years after migrant workers used self-recorded cassettes to keep in touch with their families in their countries of origin, just after the year 2000, digital technologies made it possible to send voice messages to family members within seconds, regardless of their place of residence. Migrants thus became early adopters and intensive users of the new digital media (Andersson, 2019). The widespread use of mobile media, especially smartphones with their numerous apps and easy access to social media platforms, has opened up new opportunities for migrants to stay in touch with family members and other loved ones across distances and, to a certain extent, to share their everyday lives with them (Palmberger, 2022). Digital ethnographies show that these new technologies can open up social fields across geographical distances. This means that care and support relationships can be maintained even when a physical presence is not possible (Baldassar et al., 2016; Costa & Menin, 2016; Madianou, 2017; Nedelcu & Wyss, 2016). A transnational and multi-sited research approach has become increasingly established in qualitative migration research since the 1990s (Levitt & Schiller, 2004; Vertovec, 2009), as part of social scientists’ attempts to do justice to migrants’ transnational lives. This also involves engaging with new forms of communication in research, taking new materialities into account, and finding methods that can capture mobile communication.
The Digital Diary Method as a Mobile, Multimodal, and Participatory Method
The digital diary method adapted for my REFUGEeICT research project is based on already-existing diary methods (Alaszewski, 2006) used in qualitative research. The diary method contributes to understanding people’s social practices in a larger context (Bolger et al., 2003). Diaries are traditionally used in qualitative research—particularly in history and educational science— but they are also used in other disciplines and research fields such as sociology, media education, and health research (Bartlett & Milligan, 2015, Chapter 4; Berg & Düvel, 2012; Fuhs, 2014; Herron et al., 2018; Jahrrahi et al., 2021; Moretti, 2022). The diary method is usually combined with other methods. Diaries are important contemporary documents and can, for example, provide insights into the views and lifeworlds of a particular generation. Writing diaries is also practiced in market research to explore consumer practices and behavior. The diary method varies between structured (standardized) and open (ethnographic) formats and has been integrated into both quantitative and qualitative research designs. Since the first decade of the twenty-first century, the diary method has been increasingly—and is today almost exclusively—used in its digital form, albeit mostly for standardized entries (Berg & Düvel, 2012).
Digital methods can be roughly divided into two categories: those that are genuinely new and those that reinterpret or digitize old methods (Marres, 2017). The digital diary method belongs to the latter. The method of using digital or digitized diaries, primarily referred to in the literature as “e-diaries” or “digital diaries,” has become increasingly popular (Bartlett & Milligan, 2015). This method enables researchers to gain insights into the everyday lives, experiences, and emotions of research participants by guiding them to record their thoughts, feelings, and activities in digital form.
A clear advantage of integrating mobile devices such as smartphones into the diary method is ease of access to multimodal content and multimodal communication. Digitized diaries are not limited to text entries, but enable multimodality, which also includes, for example, photo and video diaries (Murthy, 2008). The digital diary method, however, is not only a multimodal method but also a mobile method. On the one hand, the end device—usually a smartphone or tablet—is mobile and accompanies the research participants in their everyday lives. This allows narratives, emotions, and reflections to be recorded on the spot and in real time. This means that their own experiences and observations can be documented realistically, flexibly and in multimedia format. Another advantage is that the researchers can communicate relatively easily with the participants and send instructions or prompts for entries. This communication can be used to remind participants of entries or to draw their attention to certain aspects and everyday experiences by asking specific questions (Kaufmann & Peil, 2019).
Despite its widespread use, the diary method is rarely dealt with in methods handbooks. However, it has a great advantage in that the diary format is familiar to many research partners. In the case of the REFUGEeICT project, a second familiar component was added—the smartphone—that the research partners almost always had at hand and that they used, for example, to share screenshots of their digital communication. The digital ethnographic diary method developed as part of this research and described in this article is a nonstandardized qualitative method (Averbeck-Lietz & Meyen, 2016; Berg & Düvel, 2012). This method combines elements of ethnography, an approach used in social and cultural anthropology for in-depth research into sociocultural practices and lifeworlds, with the flexibility and reach of digital media. It can be used in social anthropological and media studies research as well as in other social sciences and cultural humanities disciplines. The digital diary method is based on a participant-centered approach, which means that participants are asked to make regular entries in a digital diary. This offers a deeper understanding of the social and cultural realities of everyday life embedded in digital practices. Participants can document their personal experiences in their own time and in a protected setting, thus retaining control and autonomy over their contributions. For marginalized subjects such as refugees, opportunities for self-representation are rare. Risam, 2018 highlights this issue in her discussion of refugee selfies. While numerous images of refugees taking selfies have been featured and widely circulated in print media, online media, and on social media, particularly since 2015, these representations almost exclusively reflect an outsider’s perspective. The actual selfies taken by refugees—expressions of self-representation—are rarely seen or acknowledged. The digital diary method seeks to address this gap by focusing on the posts and communications that refugees themselves choose to share, allowing them to control how they are represented. In this way, the digital diary method serves as a form of alternative knowledge production (cf. Gubrium & Harper, 2013). It is alternative knowledge production in the sense that research partners are included in the reflection and interpretation process and ultimately also in the presentation (self-presentation) process since they are the ones who represent themselves and their lives (Dattatreyan & Marrero‐Guillamón, 2019; Lassiter, 2005; Leurs, 2017; Palmberger & Budka, 2020).
Although the diary phase —and in particular the shared reflection on the diary—can strengthen the rapport between researcher and research partner, this method requires a basis of trust to be established beforehand (Goebel, 2021). This means that the diary method is not suitable for gaining initial field access, but it is a unique method for online field access integrated into a wider digital ethnographic research design. In the REFUGEeICT project, the diary phase commenced only after several meetings and an in-depth narrative interview had established a solid basis of trust. The interviews, lasting between one and two hours, were conducted either in the interviewees’ homes or in a quiet meeting room at my department and took place in English, German, or Arabic. For the Arabic interviews, I received support from Syrian research assistants who also acted as interpreters and facilitated initial contact with participants. Although I was initially concerned that the presence of an additional person might be disruptive, the involvement of research assistants—who themselves have refugee experience—contributed to a trusting research environment and a pleasant interview setting. All interviews were fully transcribed, and those conducted in Arabic were entirely translated into English (Palmberger, 2022).
Diary Entries, Reflection, and Analysis of Smartphone Content
The idea behind the digital diary method is to involve the research partners in the research process. They take on some of the researchers’ traditional tasks by observing and documenting events, everyday practices, experiences, and emotions and then analyzing them in a joint reflection process. The diary focus is on the research partners’ self-observations, with the researcher playing a facilitating role, creating a flexible and participant-driven form of data collection, guided by the overall research interests and questions. Specifically, in my project the aim was to record their own media use and digital communication with family and friends in the form of digital diary entries over a fixed period of around one week, which could be done in a variety of ways. The research partners could choose written entries, voice recordings, or visual forms of presentation. Digital diaries can therefore be creatively designed and contain, for example, screenshots, text excerpts, photos, or even graphic sketches and images. It is up to the diarists to decide which observations and diary entries or screenshots they would like to record and later share. My research partners used screenshots of Facebook, WhatsApp, and other direct messenger app conversations for a large part of the digitalized care communication that was documented. The screenshots were saved on their devices. This means that they used their digital diaries to capture their multimodal digitized communication (Figure 1).
While diary writing is often a very reflective process, in the case of the digital diary method presented here, this reflection takes place primarily in a second step, during a separate meeting where the captured entries are viewed and reflected upon together with the researcher. As mentioned above, research partners do not only observe and document their own media practices—they also decide what to share and from what perspective. They thus retain not only their interpretations of events but also their right to self-representation. This is particularly important for migrants and refugees, who are often subject to stereotypical representations, especially in the media and digital space (Risam, 2018). The digital diaries can also be expanded into digital storytelling projects (Baldini, 2019), developed in workshop-style settings where participants create short films about their lives. These films, which are more accessible and shareable than traditional academic writings, have the potential to reach a broader audience. They provide participants with an opportunity for self-representation through multimodal means, integrating visual, auditory, and narrative elements to share their stories. Digital storytelling is one example of “ethnography as a tool for self-empowerment, public advocacy, and personal transformation,” and it reflects the principles of decolonizing ethnography (Alonso Bejarano et al., 2019). Example of a Digital Diary Entry; A Mapping of Care Relationships. Photo Taken as Part of the Research Project REFUGEeICT - Multilocal Care and the Use of Information and Communication Technologies Among Refugees.
The diary entries are either transmitted electronically or handed over on a data carrier at the agreed meeting for joint review and reflection on the diary. If secure data transfer cannot be guaranteed, for example, through encryption or a secure data transfer service or a virtual private network (VPN), then the physical handover of a data carrier is a good alternative. After jointly reflecting on the diaries, the collected material is organized and managed; the researchers index and code it in a second step. For larger amounts of data, the use of suitable software such as NVivo, ATLAS.ti, or MAXQDA should be considered. These and similar programs are suitable for managing, indexing, and coding the qualitative data: texts, audio recordings, images, and videos. First, key terms are developed to capture the central themes and concepts of the research. These key terms are then assigned to specific text passages or other data in order to ensure standardized keywording (cf. Mayring, 2022). In a further step, the coding scheme is developed—again in relation to the research question and the research objectives. Codes can be created either inductively (derived from the empirical data) or deductively (derived from theory). In this way, the diary contents can be systematically analyzed and coded. The coding scheme can be adapted during the analysis. The digital diaries thus form an important part of the ethnographic analysis (Breidenstein et al., 2015), which also considers the field notes linked to the participant observation, as well as the transcribed narrative interviews and other collected material. This creates a reciprocal relationship where each element informs and deepens the understanding of the others.
In the above-mentioned research project, the digital diaries were viewed and reflected on together in a meeting organized specifically for this purpose—a process that contributed significantly to the knowledge gained. The review of and reflections on the diaries was organized very openly and left plenty of room for spontaneous associations and narratives. If topics were raised that were particularly relevant to the research, I asked specific questions. Otherwise, I gave the diarists as much freedom as possible to determine and reflect on the topics that were important to them in relation to the care activities and care relationships they observed. Digital diaries thus offer a methodological tool that invites reflection. It is recommended to make an audio recording of the joint observation and reflection, which can then be transcribed and form an integral part of the overall analysis.
The self-observation and conversation about it also turned out to be very revealing for my research partners, as they had never considered their transnational communication in this way before. For example, they had never thought in details about the type and frequency of their communication with individual family members or within family groups. The role of pictures and photos in the digital diary was also reflected on in this context and it emerged that these represent a very important part of communication and are particularly important for the emotional component of communication. However, diarists reflected not only on the positive sides but also on the downsides of a dependence on digital media. For example, the digital diaries provided insights into certain strategies for keeping communication partners at a distance when constant accessibility is perceived as stressful. Furthermore, the digital diaries brought up new topics that had not been addressed before and provided additional insights into the living conditions in the country of origin. These were often topics that only became visible through insights into personal communication and that had not previously come up in the interviews and informal conversations. The digital diaries thereby provided insights into very personal communication spaces upheld in these digital environments between family members and friends. The diary entries made concrete and vivid what has been perhaps beforehand explained in more abstract terms during interviews or informal conversations. Finally, the significance of images in the long-distance care relationships that took place in digital spaces could only be understood through the diary entries and their reflections.
Thus, the methodological diversity inherent in the ethnographic approach, including participant observation, narrative interviews and digital diaries, provided added value. The extended time spent together facilitated numerous informal conversations and observations. When invited into the homes of research participants, I had the opportunity to meet and interact with their family members. Likewise, I welcomed several participants and their families into my home, introducing them to my own family. My fieldwork, which I started in 2019, was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. While a physical presence was not possible for many months, I kept in contact virtually with several research participants with whom I had established a trustful and friendly relationship. During this period, we primarily communicated via WhatsApp messages, exchanging information and photos, much like my research participants did with their distant family members, albeit less frequently. Many refugees with whom I was in contact had limited information about the health situation and the related new government regulations, especially at the beginning of the pandemic. I sensed that being in contact with a “local,”—a person from Vienna such as myself—had a reassuring effect. Moreover, the pandemic, particularly the lockdowns and the accompanying lack of information, evoked, for some interlocutors, memories of war experiences or of situations encountered during their flight. I continued the fieldwork until the end of 2021, taking advantage of the easing of pandemic restrictions on contact with others, to meet with research participants.
All digital diaries, as stated above, were preceded by narrative interviews that provided insights into the individual life stories and the respective life situations shaped by their fleeing to Europe. This helped me to better understand the digital diary entries and the diary authors were able to build on my existing knowledge about topics such as family and friends and about their hometowns and their move to Europe when going through the diary entries together. While the diaries (including the shared reflection on them) provided (visually) rich details of everyday care communication, they were only one part of the whole, together with the narrative interviews and participant observation. Through this multi-sited (online and offline) ethnographic approach, the research illuminated transnational care and placemaking practices deeply intertwined with new information and communication technologies. It showed how refugees engage with these technologies to navigate care and border regimes, asserting agency in their efforts to build belonging and reimagine citizenship. The research underscores how digital infrastructure plays a pivotal role in refugees’ care and placemaking practices, which not only shape their political subjectivities but also hold the creative potential to enact citizenship from below (Palmberger, 2022).
“I Would be Nothing Without My Smartphone”: Selected Insights Into Digital Diaries
The digital diary method presented in this article is not a standardized method, but can and must be adapted individually depending on the ethnographic context. Like any ethnographic method, it is deeply intertwined with the relationship between the researcher and research partners, along with their respective positionalities and power relations. In the following sections, selected screenshots illustrate how this method was applied in practice, and I refer to the insights it offered into the lived experiences of refugees and their practices as “media of care.” This research project focused on the use of digital media and in particular on the question of how care relationships, that is, caring and support relationships, are maintained across geographical distances with their help. In order to make these transnational care relationships possible, certain basic requirements must be met and a certain infrastructure must be in place. Without electricity or internet access, communication would be interrupted after a short time. This means that the question of and information about electricity and internet access are already part of the care relationships, as the screenshot below shows (Figure 2). Example of Facebook Communication About Electricity and Internet Access. Screenshot Created as Part of the Research Project REFUGEeICT - Multilocal Care and the Use of Information and Communication Technologies Among Refugees.
The digital diaries show that selected (small) family and friend groups—especially WhatsApp groups—play a particularly important role in transnational care relationships for refugees. WhatsApp is a widely used instant messaging platform that allows users to send text messages, voice messages, pictures, videos, and documents, and to make voice and video calls. It uses end-to-end encryption, making it the preferred communication medium across different regions. While several countries have banned WhatsApp, such as Iran and Syria at the time of my research, people find ways around this (such as VPN connections) to still use it. Among the refugees I worked with, WhatsApp—and WhatsApp groups in particular—were the most widely used means of communicating with distant family and friends. WhatsApp groups allow multiple users to participate in shared conversations. In the context of digital diaries, WhatsApp communication is a rich source of data, as the conversations captured in screenshots or by other means can provide important insights into interpersonal relationships, communication patterns and cultural practices, and thus into digital sociality.
WhatsApp groups are typically used on a daily basis, my research partners assured me. “I would be nothing without my smartphone,” summed up a Syrian woman who had fled to Austria alone with her three children while her husband stayed behind in Dubai. Families living in different countries and continents due to war and fleeing often try to maintain or rebuild a family routine. In an interview where Yezan,
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a young man from Syria, reflected on his digital diary, it emerged that his mother sent a good morning greeting with a picture of flowers every day via the WhatsApp family group. As we went through his digital diary, Yezan showed me several screenshots from his very active family WhatsApp group. Here, not only texts but also emojis, photos and other images were important means of communication. The screenshots included the aforementioned good morning greeting from his mother (Figure 3). Example of a Good Morning Greeting in the Family WhatsApp Group. Screenshot Created as Part of the Research Project REFUGEeICT - Multilocal Care and the Use of Information and Communication Technologies Among Refugees.
Above the WhatsApp communication is a picture of a large bouquet of red roses and the hand of a woman picking one of the roses as if she were about to give it to someone. Below the picture, you can read and see good morning greetings from the mother and children alongside emojis with red hearts and flowers. Since 2015, Yezan’s mother has been sending such a greeting with a selected flower picture to her four children, who live in different countries, every morning, and all the children reply. In this way, those involved know that everyone is doing well. But this daily practice means more than just making sure the family members are doing well. It is also a form of shared presence across geographical distances to maintain the basis for informal care relationships. It is not just a simple “good morning” but also the careful selection of a flower picture—a new one every day—that expresses emotional connection and care. The digital diaries show many such attempts to stay connected over long distances and to be there for each other without knowing if and when a shared physical presence will be possible again. These practices create emotional bonds and social spaces that transcend national borders (Palmberger, 2022).
Another example from the same family shows that this WhatsApp group also provides support in everyday life. Even if the distance does not allow them to share meals together, at least they can share recipes in the family WhatsApp group (Figure 4). Both everyday life and special celebrations are shared in the WhatsApp groups. This became clear when reviewing the diary with my research partner Haya. One of her best friends was celebrating a wedding in Syria. Two other friends kept Haya up to date on the events and the atmosphere at the wedding with live updates, text and voice messages, photos, and emojis (cf. Pfeifer, 2023). The three friends have been in almost daily contact via WhatsApp since Haya fled Syria in 2015 (Figure 5). Example WhatsApp Family Group and Conversation About Recipe. Screenshot Created as Part of the Research Project REFUGEeICT - Multilocal Care and the Use of Information and Communication Technologies Among Refugees. Example WhatsApp Friend Group and Live Updates From the Wedding. Screenshot Created as Part of the Research Project REFUGEeICT - Multilocal Care and the Use of Information and Communication Technologies Among Refugees.
The establishment of copresence formed the foundation for transnational informal care relations within families, often achieved through near-constant accessibility. The choice of communication media was carefully tailored to the specific relationship in question, aligning with the concept of polymedia as introduced by Madianou and Miller (2012). These deliberate choices allowed individuals to modulate proximity and distance to a certain extent, reflecting the notion of scalable sociality (Miller et al., 2016). Text messages, voice messages, and video calls proved to be suitable means of communication for certain topics and situations, while they did not appear suitable for others and alternative means were sought. The preferences of the addressee, including their level of literacy, played a significant role in these decisions. For instance, in cases of limited literacy, audio messages were preferred over text. This was notably the case in the communication between Yezan and his grandmother, whose literacy skills were minimal, making audio messaging their favored method of interaction.
These examples show that digital diaries can provide comprehensive insight into the use of new media, such as in the context of migration and refugee experiences, in a way that is not possible with other qualitative methods. Like other diaries, they offer the opportunity to gain insights into very personal spheres of life. Unlike the traditional diary, the digital diary not only allows for the written recording of information and experiences, but also the inclusion of voice recordings, videos, photos and other visual forms of communication such as images, emojis and GIFs. In addition, digital diaries not only offer insights into the diverse issues associated with transnational care relationships, but also provide information about the regularity of contact and the chosen form of communication in today’s multimodal communication environment.
In my specific research project, I analyzed the digital diaries using an ethnographic and phenomenological approach. The focus was on the desire to gain a deeper understanding of the everyday realities and especially the care relationships of my research partners. This was only possible in close cooperation with the diary authors. However, depending on the interest in the findings, a visual content analysis or image analysis may also be suitable (Breckner & Mayer, 2023; Schlechter & Pfadenhauer, 2020).
As described above, reviewing the diaries together then invites reflection. This means that many connections only became clear to me in this second step. Here, for example, I learned about the difficulties of having to rely exclusively on digital communication for several years. I focused largely on the viewers’ subjective experiences and also included the emotions triggered by looking at the diary content, including the pictures and the associated explanations. In this context, the importance of visual communication, including emojis, in conveying emotions and striking the right tone was repeatedly emphasized. As described, the digital diaries provide insights into this visual component of communication and invite image analyses.
Conclusion
As a qualitative, mobile, and multimodal method, the digital diary method presented here offers the opportunity to apply a digital ethnographic approach to new everyday communication media, and to other aspects of everyday life, too. The diary method enhances field access to digital communication, offering insights that may be missed when using traditional face-to-face methods. Moreover, when embedded in a wider ethnographic design—combining both online and offline methods—it can offer fresh insights into how online and offline spheres are only becoming further intertwined and in multilayered ways. While the interplay between the online and offline realms has been explored both conceptually and empirically, the corresponding methodological discussions have been comparatively limited, and this article can be seen as a contribution to filling this gap.
The diary method is a participatory method based on cooperation between the researcher and research partners, and it largely involves the latter in the research. The power to decide which insights are granted remains with them, as does the sovereignty of interpretation. The digital diary method enables insights into personal spheres of life and into social and cultural practices and processes that are not possible with traditional ethnographic methods such as participant observation or interviews. However, the diary method requires an increased level of trust and sense of collaboration between researchers and research partners as well as a relatively large time commitment by the latter. As with any ethnographic research, the specific ethnographic setting and the relationship between researchers and research partners is unique, and so is the application of the digital diary method.
In contrast to conventional diaries, the digital diary enables not only the exploration of digital communication media, but generally the multimodal recording of events, everyday practices, experiences and emotions, aided by photos, texts, images, voice recordings, and videos. The research material collected is usually very extensive and requires careful organization, indexing, and coding. Various qualitative analysis programs are available for this purpose. The type of analysis chosen depends on the research question and the research objectives and ranges from ethnographic content analysis to visual analysis or image analysis. However, it is advisable to combine the analysis of the individual diary entries in text, sound, image, etc., incorporating them into an overall analysis alongside other collected empirical materials such as field notes and interview transcripts.
The digital diary method is a highly participatory method based on the involvement of research partners (Aden et al., 2019). As the method is relatively time consuming, only selected key research partners in the REFUGEeICT project were involved in this part of the research. I found that the digital diaries offered tangible added value for the research partners. Through self-observation, they were able to gain new insights into their care relationships and related media practices. Writing the diary and reflecting on the entries was described by several participants as an interesting and insightful process. Even though the digital diary method played a central role in my research project, it was always integrated into broader ethnographic field research. In such ethnographic research, digital media practices are understood as embedded in wider life contexts, whereby the distinction between online and offline is no longer appropriate. The digital diary method, as I conceived it for my research, reflects this blending and blurring of online and offline. Although the focus is on online practices, these are not researched online, but in conversation with research partners and in a shared reflection process in an offline meeting.
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