Anthropology with algorithms?

Analyzing over twenty thousand drug experience reports from the online portal Erowid, the authors argue that combining ethnographic methods with computational analysis of digital data, including big data, is highly productive. This approach reveals social and political aspects of drug use, drug phenomenology, and harm reduction, while also introducing anthropologists to user-based language and new research questions. The authors emphasize that deep ethnographic knowledge, which they call 'field groundedness', is essential for properly interpreting the resulting visualizations, advocating for a symbiotic relationship between ethnography and digital data analysis.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Based on a study of more than twenty thousand reports on drug experiences from the online drug education portal Erowid, this article argues that the integration of ethnographic methods with computational methods and digital data analysis, including so-called big data, is not only possible but highly rewarding. The analysis of ‘natively’ digital data from sites like Facebook, message boards, and web archives can offer glimpses into worlds of practice and meaning, introduce anthropologists to user-based semantics, provide greater context, help to re-evaluate hypotheses, facilitate access to difficult fields, and point to new research questions. This case study generated important insights into the social and political entanglements of drug consumption, drug phenomenology, and harm reduction. We argue here that deep ethnographic knowledge, what we term ‘field groundedness’, is indispensable for thoroughly making sense of the resulting visualizations, and we advocate for seeing ethnography and digital data analysis in a symbiotic relationship.