Confronta i metodi

	Etnografia Digitale Critica	Ricerca-Azione Partecipata (PAR)
Campo	Qualitativo	Qualitativo
Famiglia	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Anno di origine	2000s–2010s	1940s (Lewin); PAR as distinct tradition formalised ~1970s–1980s
Ideatore	Synthesised from critical ethnography (Thomas, 1993) and digital/virtual ethnography (Hine, 2000); scholars including Bhatt, de Roock, and Saldanha developed explicit critical-digital frameworks from the 2010s onward	Kurt Lewin (action research foundations, 1940s); systematised for participatory contexts by Orlando Fals Borda, Paulo Freire, and William Foote Whyte
Tipo	Qualitative research design	Qualitative research method
Fonte seminale	Bhatt, I., & de Roock, R. (2013). Capturing the sociomateriality of digital literacy events. Research in Learning Technology, 21. https://doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v21.21624	Kemmis, S., McTaggart, R., & Nixon, R. (2014). The Action Research Planner: Doing Critical Participatory Action Research. Springer.
Alias	CDE, critical online ethnography, critical virtual ethnography, digital critical ethnography	PAR, community-based participatory research, collaborative action research, participatory inquiry
Correlati	5	6
Sintesi	Critical digital ethnography is a qualitative research design that combines the immersive, participatory observation of digital ethnography with the power-conscious, emancipatory orientation of critical theory. Researchers embed themselves in online communities, platforms, or digital practices and examine not only what people do online but also how digital spaces reproduce, challenge, or transform structures of power, inequality, and identity. It is widely used in education, communication studies, and social science.	Participatory Action Research (PAR) is a qualitative, community-centred methodology in which researchers and community members collaborate as co-investigators to identify a shared problem, take deliberate action, observe outcomes, and reflect critically on results — cycling iteratively until meaningful change is achieved. Unlike conventional research that studies people from the outside, PAR treats participants as active agents who co-own the research process, the knowledge produced, and the practical interventions that follow.