Methodology in Motion: Reflections on Using Appnography for the Study of Dating Apps

This article reflects upon and provides updates to appnography as a methodology for the study of dating digital app culture. Based on empirical fieldwork and in-depth nterviews with members of the research team, we re-assess and re-map appnography’s original five methodological considerations—digital versus “real,” profiles, space, place, and community, contextualization, and temporality—along two axes: design considerations and user considerations. We also add a third methodological axis, researcher considerations, to the methodological features of appnography and expound on its related concerns of participant recruitment and technological familiarity. With this reformulation, we believe appnography offers an even more robust means of bridging the ethnographic and the technological in qualitative research on apps and their use.