Between delivery platforms and riders’ networks: reflections from an Ethnography for the Internet during COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

In 2020, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we began a research into working on digital delivery platforms. The disease containment policies confined us to our homes, as we watched from the windows as delivery men and women spread out into the desolate streets, so we decided to turn to an ethnography for the internet. We surfed WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, following the traces of digital delivery work and its expression in the lives of delivery men and women in Bogotá, Colombia. The aim of the paper, then, is to methodologically and ethically address the ethnography conducted for the Internet through the case study. In particular, we present what we understood and how we did an Internet ethnography, how we fabricated the field, what type of observation we deployed and how we faced the ethical considerations of this approach.