Here is a great collection of resources for doing online research and a thread with a few thoughts https://docs.google.com/document/d/1clGjGABB2h2qbduTgfqribHmog9B6P0NvMgVuiHZCl8/preview?fbclid=IwAR33NUEbgWya6fFJFAlDVFNfcjS2sthf62l0hqnFyeOoa8YDr6k8Ci2RsZs https://twitter.com/BuBaykurt/status/1278137480630411264

1) First I found the document a bit overwhelming. There is A LOT there! So take your time and see what works for you.

2) The document offers great advice on surveys and interviews but less info on how to gain the trust of people you interview given you may not be interacting with them for weeks or months as anthropologists normally do before they ask to interview someone f2f. This matters.

So if you are lucky enough to land an interview, you have to be beyond prepared and have done your homework or risk a lot. If you are not prepared, you might not be able to follow up or get referrals from this person.

4) This may seem obvious because as anthropologists, we tend only to interview people once we've established a relationship (& we've learned a lot). But if you don't have that opportunity to spend time with people the onus is on you to learn about topic/person in other ways.

5) Another amazing resource is the Internet archive. Many stories or web pages related to your research are no longer on the web and you have to hit the IA to look. It's a bit of an art and I don't have much advice except spend a lot of time searching. It will yield gold.

6) Data! So any project whether offline or say historical yields mountains of data. I do find that working online often produces even MORE data. So what do you do with it, how the heck do you manage it? Find stuff? Deal with it??

7) Along with field notes, a daily log of key finds and events (as a simple bullet point list) helped me a ton when doing my Aonymous research. The blur of activity became less blurry. I would even add nonresearch stuff (maybe key world events) to help time stamp things

8) Find and really learn a software tool that can help with data management. Become BFF with it. My current love is DevonThink. Excellent tool that has helped me so much with my last project.

9) If there is Digitial Humanities Lab at your uni, take a course if they have any and/or try to hire someone to do some data scraping/visualization if you need it.

10) My last piece of advice is if you feel like you cannot do research online and you are at a stage when you can do this, switch projects to one where you can. There are SO many amazing projects you can do primarily online and there is NOTHING wrong with pivoting. In fact...

11) When I was in grad school I was not studying hackers. But when I got sick and had to stay at home for a year, I made the switch. It's what I could do then.

12) My Anonymous project was a small tiny thing and I had a different much larger second project. But when Anonymous took off and I decided this is what I will do now as I can follow it now. Be comfortable switching projects is the main lesson here.

13) Anyway, just some thoughts about what to do if you can't travel. The document has tons of great advice so dive in and pick and choose what makes sense for your work.

14) A few more resources: Stanford Global Center for Ethnography has a collection of video interviews with anthropologists who have done online research: https://iriss.stanford.edu/doing-ethnography-remotely