It's “really companiony”: An ethnography of making and learning to work with digital collaborators

This paper critically reflects on the process and possibilities of a specially developed digital qualitative research tool – the “Ethnography Journal” app. Although a variety of digital research tools are readily available, this research was specifically interested in understanding the process of app development, the way that technological constraints influenced the design and the data collected, and the opportunities for thinking beyond the app as merely a tool. The implications of this process extend beyond the specific app but are relevant to broader epistemological and methodological discussions. As such, in this paper we are interested in how the digitisation of methods reconfigures data collection and knowledge production. This is particularly salient for geographers as both our research practices and “the field” become increasingly digitally and AI mediated.