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Technology…is not simply an adjunct to business-as-usual; it becomes a defining quality of our culture as researchers. As such, we might do well to devote more of our energies to studying ourselves as we study others (Tedlock 2005). In other words, we need to turn our observational skills on the encounters we ourselves create; we must observe not only what happens when "we" encounter "them," but also what happens to us when we mediate those encounters via a particular kind of technology that has the capacity to transform both our way of seeing and our way of understanding the world (Angrosino 2007:119).

New visual technologies are changing the ways that anthropologists do research and opening up new possibilities for participatory approaches appealing to diverse audiences. Participatory digital methodologies featured in this special issue include digital storytelling, Photovoice, interactive multimedia as new media ethnography, participatory digital archival research, and participatory geographic information systems (GIS). Other methodologies involving participatory digital methodologies that are gaining traction in anthropology include community-based filmmaking (Biella 2006) and collaborative blogging and website production (Hess 2001; Young 2007). Research participants are producing digital representations of their experiences, taking and sharing pictures, and mapping their own environments. These methodologies produce rich visual and narrative data guided by participant interests and priorities, putting the methods literally in the hands of the participants themselves. They appeal to wide audiences, allowing for access to and production of anthropological knowledge beyond the academy.