The mixed blessing of digital fieldwork: digital security and ethical dilemmas of remote research during and after the pandemic

COVID-19 has markedly impacted the ways we collect research data through field research. As previously discussed in QMMR (MacLean et al. 2021) and elsewhere (e.g., GPPi 2021; ARC Bibliography 2021; SSRC 2020), the pandemic interrupted data collection and knowledge production routines. By restricting travel and free movement, thus impeding face-to-face exchanges, the pandemic and subsequent containment measures affected social scientists and their workflows, in particular those who previously relied on field-based methods. After all, interviews, ethnographic fieldwork, focus groups, and participant observation usually imply the physical co-presence of researchers and their participants, and often build on relations of trust that are established through repeated interpersonal contact. But quarantines, travel restrictions, lockdowns, social distancing, and even masks have made organizing personal encounters and maintaining and preserving dependable relations of trust with research participants harder—let alone establishing contact with and meeting new interlocutors.