Tales from the Field: Giving voice to my digital self

Joshua Bluteau

doi:10.1177/14661381251391946

Tales from the Field: Giving voice to my digital self

Joshua Bluteau

School of Nursing, Midwifery and Health

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

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Abstract

This tale from the field began as a commission for a menswear magazine. Unpublished due to complications that arose during Covid, this account of getting dressed and walking to work sat untouched on a shelf for a number of years until it was disturbed once again by its author. Re-reading the work they were shocked to find that it was not in their ‘voice’. Reproduced here in full, the original article was instead written in the voice of their online self, a digital character that had been created as part of a piece of digital ethnographic fieldwork spanning two years. By returning to this creative piece of ethnography the author reexamines the purpose of creative praxis and the insight that can be gained from giving voice to one’s digital self.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	(In-Press)
Number of pages	11
Journal	Ethnography
Volume	(In-Press)
Early online date	22 Oct 2025
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/14661381251391946
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 22 Oct 2025

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2025. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

Keywords

Anthropology
social media
digital self
auto anthropology

Access to Document

10.1177/14661381251391946Licence: CC BY

accepted author manuscript Accepted author manuscript, 42.3 KBLicence: CC BY
bluteau-2025-tales-from-the-field-giving-voice-to-my-digital-selfFinal published version, 534 KBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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title = "Tales from the Field: Giving voice to my digital self",

abstract = "This tale from the field began as a commission for a menswear magazine. Unpublished due to complications that arose during Covid, this account of getting dressed and walking to work sat untouched on a shelf for a number of years until it was disturbed once again by its author. Re-reading the work they were shocked to find that it was not in their {\textquoteleft}voice{\textquoteright}. Reproduced here in full, the original article was instead written in the voice of their online self, a digital character that had been created as part of a piece of digital ethnographic fieldwork spanning two years. By returning to this creative piece of ethnography the author reexamines the purpose of creative praxis and the insight that can be gained from giving voice to one{\textquoteright}s digital self.",

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AB - This tale from the field began as a commission for a menswear magazine. Unpublished due to complications that arose during Covid, this account of getting dressed and walking to work sat untouched on a shelf for a number of years until it was disturbed once again by its author. Re-reading the work they were shocked to find that it was not in their ‘voice’. Reproduced here in full, the original article was instead written in the voice of their online self, a digital character that had been created as part of a piece of digital ethnographic fieldwork spanning two years. By returning to this creative piece of ethnography the author reexamines the purpose of creative praxis and the insight that can be gained from giving voice to one’s digital self.

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KW - social media

KW - digital self

KW - auto anthropology

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JF - Ethnography

ER -

Tales from the Field: Giving voice to my digital self

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

Access to Document

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