Digital ethnography : Understanding platform labour from within

The main aim of this chapter is to demonstrate the substantial potential of ethnography in the study of professional groups in the digital economy. Drawing on the case of a Norwegian software firm developing business intelligence software for oil and gas corporations, this chapter assesses how digital methods can strengthen ethnographic research into platform labour. The investigation into said firm illustrates how participant observation can be integrated with the digital methods walkthrough and computational network analysis. The proposed approach to workplace research is grounded in collecting ethnographic data within the physical settings of open-plan offices and retrieving natively digital data from platforms. Based on evidence from the case study of the Norwegian software firm, I suggest that combining ethnographic fieldwork with digital methods can bridge the hermeneutical gap between the subjective meanings employees attribute to their skilled practices and the meanings coded into platform affordances, allowing workplace researchers to design holistic projects for the study of Internet-saturated professions. The ethnographic research into software production implies that workplace researchers should establish, and adhere to, high ethical standards to protect the identities and interests of employee