Attempts to understand contemporary religious practice, and its associated communities and identities, must take into consideration the way that these phenomena exist in both virtual and physical spaces, as well as the way that, in some instances, religion bridges or erases this dichotomy. The approach here focuses on those forms of religious practice that do not fit easily into one or the other type of space. Starting with existing discussions of ethnographic methodologies for studying religious practice and the growing literature on how to study "digital religion", we examine the methodological needs for studying "third spaces", the hybrid, in-between spaces of religious practice. The model presented here is one of simultaneous and collaborative ethnography that extends shared methods across the virtual and the actual dimensions as the most productive approach to this type of research. Using tailored research methods and techniques within this approach offers the opportunity to consider ways in which behaviors, interactions, and speech acts that happen within this event are continuous or discontinuous with each other. It also offers insight into the dynamics of "shared experience" and how perspectives are or are not shared within these multiple dimensions. OPEN ACCESSReligions 2015, 6 989

This article analyzes the Synthesis 2012 festival, which coincided with the end of the Mayan calendar in December 2012. The festival was held in and around the village of Pisté in Yucatán, Mexico, and broadcast live via a web-based video stream. We gathered ethnographic data about the event both onsite and via the Internet. Presenting and analyzing that data here, we consider the way that these two different modes of access to the ethnographic event(s) reveal and obscure different dimensions of participants’ presence at the festival.

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