Visualising Facebook by Daniel Miller and Jolynna Sinanan
Today marks the publication of a new book called Visualising Facebook, which I have written with Dr Jolynna Sinanan. It is available as a free download from UCL Press…
Tag: Facebook
“The Value of Social Media” at the AAA conference
Daniel Miller talking at the AAA conference. Photo by Nell Haynes. From the Why We Post Team, Nell Haynes, Tom McDonald, and Daniel Miller attended the American Anthropological…
From Facebook to ‘fakebook’ – who controls the information on social media?
A young Chinese factory worker reading on his smartphone. Mark Zuckerberg finally said that Facebook plans to have a more effective control of misinformation, which is a sharp reversal…
Multimodality Through Twitter: Exploring the Alleyways of Seoul
Multimodality describes an anthropology across multiple media platforms–an anthropology that traverses film, photograph, theater, design, podcast, app and game (to name a few) as well as conventional…
Notes on the 14th digital ethnography reading (Haynes 2016)
See other posts under Digital ethnography reading group Haynes, N. (2016). Social Media in Northern Chile. London: UCL Press. Summary of Chapter 3, “Virtual posting: the aesthetics of…
Emergent Brazilians comment the impeachment of the president
This is one of the memes circulating among low income Brazilians in reference to the impeachment of President Dilma. The top comment says: “Gosh, is this true?” Below…
Why do brands lose their chill? How bots, algorithms, and humans can work together on social media
Editor’s Note: The fourth contributor to the Co-designing with machines edition is Molly Templeton (@mollymeme), digital and social media expert, Director of Social Media at Everybody …
Dark Value, a new book published today
I wrote this brief book in 2015 and promptly put it in a drawer and forgot about it. Then a couple of days ago (May 3, 2016), Virginia Postrel posted…
On the Brazilian crisis, Pentecostalism and thinking out of the bubble
Pentecostal service in the Brazilian field site. Photo by: Juliano Spyer Brazil is in the midst of a heated national debate between people in favour of, and those contrary…
Web Roundup: How Do You Feel Today? by Emily Goldsher-Diamond
New Facebook reactions, the expansion of “like” options to include “love,” “sad” and “angry” emoticons (among others), is just one way affect has collid…
Build Karma Points on Social Media
Everyday salutations such as ‘Good Morning’, ‘Good Afternoon’, ‘Good Evening’ etc. are common social media interactions of the people of Panchagrami, used to keep …
What does social media tell us about sociality in Grano?
‘Good morning’ message received on WhatsApp [double-click on the image to see the video]. So, what does the ethnography of social media use in southeast Italy tells us? In my…
They flirt, they share porn and they gossip
The last four months of 2015 were tough. I was locking myself in a claustrophobic student carrel every day, spending 9 hours staring at a computer screen but…
Friends on Facebook for 46 Years: Difference in Experiencing Technical Difficulty
Where did the 46 Years come from? You didn’t become Facebook friends 46 years ago. So, where does the number come from. It isn’t random. It is a…
“Free Basics” – does it really matter to the poor in Panchagrami?
Image Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons: Facebook The launch of Facebook’s ‘Free Basics’, a rebranding of internet.org, has been a hot topic in India for the past few months as Facebook tries to…
Nostalgia for a field Christmas
Image courtesy of shanzmataz. It’s the first time I’ve been away from Christmas in Trinidad since I started fieldwork there in 2011 (oh wait, I was home briefly…
WhatsApp ban in Brazil: the word on the ground
The text above the image reads: ‘me without WhatsApp’. In this post Juliano Spyer suggests that the vocal backlash against the recent blocking of WhatsApp in…
Why popular anthropology?
The core mission of anthropology is the understanding of human behaviour in a world full of cultural and historical diversity. The anthropological commitment to this immense plurality…
Why We Post: The Anthropology of Social Media
The Why We Post project is now moving into its final stages at full speed, gearing up for our public launch on February 29th 2016. On this…
Death on Social Media: A Virtual Living-Dead
When the creators of Facebook first produced a social networking website designed to connect people to people, they simultaneously produced an opportunity to connect people to the deceased.…
Normativity and social visibility
It has been exactly a year since finishing 15 months of fieldwork in Trinidad. Stories for this blog have moved further and further away from cool stuff that…
Aspiring Politician? Try Facebook to build your personal brand.
Image Courtesy: @mkstalin and image shared on Saravanan’s Facebook profile Personal brand building through social media requires a strategically planned presentation of oneself to a general audi…
Facebook as a window: managing online appearance
Shop window in Grano (Photograph by Razvan Nicolescu) A particularly common way that many people in the Italian field site thought about Facebook was by comparing it to a shop window (vetrina…
Why do Young Men from Lower Socio-Economic Classes prefer Shopping Online?
Photo by Shriram Venkatraman Most of us on social media have noticed the static advertisements that are displayed on the side panels or the advertisements that intrude upon…