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 …
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 …
Memes Brazilians are sharing about the Olympics
One of the stars of the Olympic games in Rio have been the crowd. It has attracted the attention of the foreign …
Apple and the Smartphone market in India
Photo Courtesy: CC: Wikimedia Commons: Kārlis Dambrāns from Latvia Less than a fifth of the Indian population might own a smart phone, …
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 …
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 …
“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 …
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 …
Why popular anthropology?
The core mission of anthropology is the understanding of human behaviour in a world full of cultural and historical diversity. The …
Fieldwork is haunting me, thanks to WhatsApp
When is the end of fieldwork? (Photo:Merlijn Hoek CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) When is it that fieldwork finishes? Thanks to social media, the …
Ropa americana online: the local market for used clothing
A Facebook announcement from an online shop in northern Chile announces “Jackets, Vests, and Sweatshirts” Ebay, Etsy, Alibaba, and Taobao have changed …
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 …
Personal and public aesthetics: What I learned from my own visceral reactions in the field
Photo by Nell Hayes At first, I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but over the first several months in …
Opening doors: Rural Chinese business promotion on social media
A typical shopfront in the North China fieldsite (Photo: Gillian Bolsover) One surprising feature of QQ – the most popular social media platform …
The immigrants ‘crisis’ and the limits of Facebook
Photomontage realised by Vento Ribelle and posted on their Facebook page on the 20 April 2015 and shared by left-wing individuals in …
Is Weibo on the way out? For some in China, it was never in.
Weibo: share your thoughts with the world (assuming, of course, you actually want to). Photo: bfishadow (CC BY 2.0) I read with …