When Anonymity is no longer Enough: “Fictionalization” as a new way of writing Ethnography in the Age of Digital Surveillance
2025 - 2028
OPEN UP - New Research Spaces for the Humanities and Cultural Studies
funded by Volkswagen Foundation
How can anthropologists working with persecuted communities and at-risk activists present in-depth ethnographic accounts of precarious lifeworlds while guaranteeing the safety of their interlocutors in authoritarian and digital media-saturated environments? This project initiates discussions and provides solutions for writing ethnographic prose depicting precarious individuals in an era of digital surveillance, all while ensuring the safety of our participants through the use of fictionalization techniques
How do we guarantee in-depth ethnographic knowledge when common strategies of anonymization are no longer sufficient to ensure the safety of our interlocutors? How do we address the predicament that many precarious actors desire online visibility to make their grievances heard but at the same time need to guard themselves against state and societal surveillance? To address such and similar questions, this project is situated at the intersection of anthropology, literary studies, and digital research ethics. It seeks to explore the potentialities and limitations of a method of “fictionalization” as a theoretical framework for ethical writing in anthropology under the conditions of increased surveillance and big data.
Over a decade ago, German anthropologist Richard Rottenburg already noticed the tensions between thick ethnographic description and “decency” in his work on humanitarian organizations (Rottenburg 2009). To steer clear of a scenario where the reader fixates on questions of individual responsibility, Rottenburg fictionalized his ethnographic accounts. In 2024, we argue, it is not only “decency” that demands rethinking the uses of fictionalization. Especially when working with activists and other precarious interlocutors, the interplay of visibility and tracking makes it imperative to develop the question, “What to fictionalize?”
Visibility
Visibility is central when marginalized and persecuted individuals or communities seek to make their struggles known to a broader public. Whereas in the past, the framing of persecuted actors was typically undertaken by journalists, NGOs, social activists, or anthropologists (Bob 2005), the deep mediatization of societies (Couldry and Hepp, 2016) has prompted individuals to engage in the “self-mediation” (Castells, 2016; Cammeaerts, 2015) of their grievances to a global audience. In an era where attention or the lack thereof not only distributes vulnerability but has become a primary commodity (Citton 2017), actors employ various tactics to ensure their voices gain visibility amidst an overwhelming onslaught of online content.
Tracking
“Self-mediation” practices on social networking sites expose the self to various forms of surveillance. An omnipresent tracking of user data marks informational capitalism (Urry 2017; Hepp and Couldry 2016), in which corporations produce targeted advertisements to predict people’s behavior (Zuboff 2019). Although this may sound harmless, the same data can have dire consequences for activists in authoritarian settings. In combination with data from our in-depth ethnographies (interested in, for example, day-to-day practices, social environments, and family relations), tracking can identify precariously situated interlocutors—even if they are anonymized—potentially causing serious repercussions.
Therefore, our initial answer to the question “What to fictionalize?” must be everything that can be easily tracked. What we tentatively term “contextual dispersal” is a crucial fictionalization technique that we will develop during this project in collaboration with other anthropologists, data experts, and at-risk activists. It disperses personas, texts, time, and space by balancing contextual integrity with the safety of our interlocutors. The degree of dispersal depends on the level of risk that our actors encounter and the nature of the subject, which will be elucidated through ethnography. In other words, fictionalization techniques depend on the forms of tracking involved.