Photo of Bronisław Malinowski, feeling frustrated that the batteries on his smartphone died three months ago.
Bronisław Malinowski feeling frustrated the batteries on his smartphone died three months ago.

Over the past three years, I’ve been moonlighting as a social scientist doing ethnographic fieldwork in communities across Scotland from Callander to Orkney. Before heading out for the first time, I spent a few weeks assembling a toolkit for digital ethnography which I’ve been revising along the way. I thought I’d share a bit about what I’ve settled on using in case others are looking to upgrade their fieldwork toolkit. First, some caveats – I run Apple hardware but am passionate about Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) particularly because it is often cross-platform, so when I switch to linux for my work PC in a couple years, I’ll be able to run most of those tools without much trouble. So my goal was to avoid being proprietary and only go with what was strictly necessary. Here’s what I found: Continue reading