Articles | Volume 80, issue 4
https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-80-387-2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-80-387-2025
Forum contribution
 | 
04 Nov 2025
Forum contribution |  | 04 Nov 2025

On “being present in the field” in studying protest online

Elisabeth Militz

Cited articles

Akbari, A.: Iran: Digital spaces of protest and control, European Center for Not-for-Profit Law, The Hague, https://ecnl.org/sites/default/files/2023-02/ECNL_Iran report_Digital Spaces of Protest and Control.pdf (last accessed: 27 October 2025), 2022. 
Atuk, S. and Cole, A.: Bodies on the Line vs. Bodies Online: A Feminist Phenomenology of Digitally Mediated Political Action, Women's Stud. Commun., 47, 63–86, https://doi.org/10.1080/07491409.2023.2297288, 2024. 
Bauder, M.: Raum, in: Handbuch Digitale Geographien: Welt, Wissen, Werkzeuge, edited by: Bork-Hüffer, T., Füller, H., and Straube, T., Brill Schöningh, Paderborn, 77–91, ISBN: 978-3-8252-5567-1, 2021. 
Bork-Hüffer, T. and Yeoh, B. S. A.: The geographies of difference in conflating digital and offline spaces of encounter: Migrant professionals' throwntogetherness in Singapore, Geoforum, 86, 93–102, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.09.002, 2017. 
Bork-Hüffer, T., Mahlknecht, B., and Markl, A.: Kollektivität in und durch cON/FFlating spaces, Z. Kultur-Kollektivwissen., 6, 131–170, https://doi.org/10.14361/zkkw-2020-060208, 2020. 
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Short summary
This is a commentary on Chowra Makaremi’s (2025) "Insurrections in Iran: an off-site ethnography", which examines the Woman, Life, Freedom uprisings in Iran using social media methods. I discuss Makaremi‘s methodology of off-site ethnography and emphasize the inseparability of online and offline spaces. I show how Makaremi’s work underscores the role of social media in resistance movements, and I call for reflexive, contextualized social media research that accounts for power structures.
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