Limits of control: Balancing convenience and security in digital field research

Critical junctures such as the Covid-19 pandemic can disrupt hitherto unquestioned modes of research and thereby offer researchers a chance to break new ground. In fact, driven by the need to adapt, within a span of two years, some social scientists have gotten accustomed to an entirely new (and largely digital) research ecology full of software applications to host interviews and focus group discussions, browser-based presentation and brainstorming tools, and online platforms that facilitate collaborative writing and the sharing data sets. But entering uncharted territory also entails giving up some control: While the pandemic has certainly enabled a rejuvenation of the social sciences and their methods, it also made popular a range of new research tools whose implications for research ethics and safety are still largely neglected and sometimes little understood.