The ethnography of new media worlds? Following the case of global poker

Abstract

This article relates the current transformation of ethnographic practice to the emergence of new media technologies. It contrasts multi-sited ethnography with actor network theory’s method of following the construction of new media worlds through chains of mediators. The authors exemplify this through the extraordinary emergence of global poker and its shifting constitution across the entire spectrum of traditional and new media technologies. They argue that poker vividly illustrates how following makes sense of these emergent new worlds while at the same time it is an excellent vehicle for problematizing key issues of ethnographic practice.