ABSTRACT
In the light of Internet-based forms of communication and the rise of social media, the screens of our computers, mobile phones, and tablets, have become primary sites for worldly interaction. This chapter proposes that the desktop screen is not only an important site for ethnographic research, but also a possible filming location for an emerging mode of documentary filmmaking that fully embraces the poetics of digital culture. It discusses the exciting opportunities that each of the desktop documentary approaches offers for practicing visual anthropology in the digital age. The chapter argues that it is about time to merge the practices of digital anthropology and ethnographic filmmaking. It identifies three distinct modes of the desktop documentary: films that take place on researchers’ desktop screens and chronicle their online research “ethnographic machinimas” that examine virtual worlds as sites of social immersion, and works that evoke research participants’ actual digital media practices and user experiences.
