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The digital turn in anthropology and ethnography is not a sudden rupture to the field’s epistemological quest. In recent years, after the digital turn and the evolution of Digital Humanities, there have been notable efforts to address the digital aspect of social reality by anthropologists. However, the focus has been predominantly on the observation of internet cultures and communities, mainly tackling phenomena that ‘take place’ in the digital realm, and on the techniques and issues that arise from conducting online research with limited theoretical ramifications of recent advancements on the technological field. We argue that the practical repercussions of the discussion around ethnographic writing modalitites has not yet been adequately addressed in Greece,which reflects a wider tendency for the anthropological lens to remain on the “observant” side and not partake in the active discussion of the knowledge production and representation. The research project “Ethnography and/as hypertext fiction: representing surrogate motherhood” (HYFRESMO), currently implemented at the Anthropology Department of Panteion University and funded by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation & the General Secretariat for Research and Technology, seeks to enable the creative accommodation of digital media in the field of anthropology. In conducting a ‘traditional’ fieldwork on new reproductive technologies (surrogate motherhood), which heavily rests on immediate contact and ‘physical’, ‘real-life’ communication with research interlocutors, and combining offline and online observation and communication with them, our methodological proposition does not radicalize the work already implemented by fellow anthropologists in the sense of data gathering or performing participant observation in the digital/cyber-sphere. On the contrary, in our endeavor to create a transmedia, non-text-oriented, fictional ethnographic account (during but mainly after) the fieldwork experience, we propose that digital ethnographic representation becomes a very privileged under-researched terrain upon which to experiment on the transformative potential of the digital turn inthe humanities.

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Maria Niari 3064
Scientific production

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Anna Apostolidou (Greece) 10083
Scientific production
Ivi Daskalaki (Greece) 10084
Scientific production

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Approved