Identities and Moralities in Social Networks: A Digital Ethnography of Running in Contemporary Society

Abstract

In addition to its increasing visibility and massiveness in urban spaces, running is structured in our contemporary worlds (and on a global scale) around a set of practices and representations that far exceeds a timely choice of ´running´. As a lifestyle, running is crossed by important identity and moral dimensions that reach a privileged expression in social media. In the context of the dizzying diffusion of these digital social networks, the runners not only display a marked stylization of life but also find a channel of privileged expression of self-referential discourses that incorporate strong moral and aesthetic options. In addition, the way in which the runners use of new technologies not only makes possible the construction of dense digital networks, and eventually ´real´ ones, of communication and encounter, but also of key spaces of subjectivity formation. This article also includes a set of theoretical reflections on digital ethnography which, in the case of running, is a fundamental resource that enables us to describe and to understand the complexity of the construction of the collective of runners. Along the same lines, the methodological approach adopted here also allows us to overcome dichotomies such as real/virtual, off-line/online, authentic/inauthentic, which tend to obstruct ethnographic research.