The Caucasus Through Time Network hosted its second workshop in the series of workshops entitled, 'Delineating the Digital'. This series of workshops is envisaged to highlight the validity, significance and challenges of employing digital methodologies and understand how distinctive they are from traditional methods and techniques. Furthermore, this series would help identify the methodological gaps in the scholarship on Caucasus Archaeology and Heritage Studies to propose a way forward. Thus, the purpose of 'Delineating the Digital' workshop series is
threefold:
a) to advance an understanding of digital methods,
b)to also learn about the paradigm shift the emerging
methodologies have brought in the scholarship and
c) bridge the methodological gaps in the Caucasian
Scholarship

Workshop II: Digital Ethnographies

Digital ethnography is another emerging field, asking questions in virtual spaces where communities without physical border and cultural barriers exist. Having its origin in traditional ethnography, it emphasises the experiences of day-to-day realities taking place in digitally connected spaces and the significance and challenges of narrating human stories through the online sphere. Thus, digital ethnography is a digital transformation of in-person ethnography, materialising the power of computational methods to help researchers generate contextual insights into human needs, journeys and experiences remotely. With the advent of Internet, it is now possible to connect with communities that were difficult to engage with before (Dicks, 2005); providing a viable platform and having their voices heard globally. However, the recent debates around cyber security and ethics of using online platforms for research has raised questions over efficacy of digital research methods including digital ethnographies. This workshop would therefore discuss the process of conducting digital ethnography while simultaneously debunking debates around the risk and ethical consideration of conducting ethnography online.
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