Chapter 3: Unanticipated Excess: Inescapable Moments and Uneasy Feelings

In this chapter, we explore ‘unanticipated excess’ through the lens of our own doctoral research projects, which are presented as distinct vignettes: Reade’s digital ethnography of young women’s relations with ‘fitspo’ (fitness inspiration) content on Instagram, Moran’s social media ethnography of African young people in Australia and Lyall’s show-and-tell interviews with users of digital self-tracking devices. While our projects differ in many ways, we share research practices that did not fully anticipate the challenges of digitalised research fields. In coming to terms with our unanticipated excess, we reflect on inescapable moments and uneasy feelings from our fieldwork. In so doing, we argue that excess need not be considered a ‘failure’ – to establish boundaries, to filter data or to engage in objective analysis – but should rather be seen as an important part of reflexive research practice. Excess holds possibilities and potentials to foster care and camaraderie between digital scholars and can push us and our work – empirically, methodologically and ethically – in new directions. It also presents an opportunity to continue to champion integrity over production as we move forward in our personal and collective research journeys.