Júlia Fernandez: Outside of Humanity: Palestinian Children and the Value of Life
The algorithm swiftly gets it –yes, I am sucked in by news about Gaza- and collapses my social media platforms’ feeds into a monothematic thread that mirrors my…
Tag: social media
Sahana Udupa and Ethiraj Gabriel Dattatreyan on their book, Digital Unsettling
Interview by James Slotta https://nyupress.org/9781479819157/digital-unsettling/ James Slotta: A couple of decades ago, paeans to the liberatory potential of the internet were common. Since then, t…
April Reber take the page 99 test
Page 99 falls in chapter two of my dissertation. This chapter, “Moments of Disruption,” describes how members of the radical right group, Alternative for Germany (AfD), message a…
Female Truck Drivers in China Navigate Gender Norms on Douyin
It’s dark outside: 4:34 AM. I am peering through a truck’s windshield, gazing at a seemingly endless stretch of highway. “Female truck driver Li Ping is live streaming,”…
Seriensommer, Folge 4: Paranoia, Killer-Apps und der Sadismus der Erwachsenen
Das Coming-of-Age und die Mischung von Realität und Fiktion sind an sich klassische Stoffe des literarischen und filmischen Erzählens. Die aktuellen TV-Serien über das Erwachsenwerden fügen diesen Sto…
Salvaging what is good
Photomicrograph of various seeds. By Alexander Klepnev: Own work, CC BY 4.0.* This post is more practical than nostalgic. Yes, sometimes I like to look back and think…
Becoming a Socialite: How Virtual “Fakeness” Produces Material Realities among Urban Chinese Gay Men
Real, Unreal, and Whatever Else In-between On Chinese gay dating apps, “fake profiles” are a constant concern: photos might have been altered or biometrics might have been fabricated.…
Digital Multiples and Social Media
In this post, we unpack the meaning and many works of creating and maintaining digital multiples, a term we coined in our recent ethnography, A Filtered Life, to…
Beauty Filters: New Tech, Old Problems
Retaining a youthful appearance is a laborious and painful exercise, often rife with invisible labor. Digital beauty tech has made it much easier. Rather than altering our own…
Follow us on Mastodon
Since Elon Musk bought Twitter, there has been an exodus of “Twitter executives on the front lines of protecting safety, security, speech, and accessibility. Some were fired, others…
Platypod, Episode Four: Connections and Disconnections on Social Media
Platypod In this episode, Platypod presents a conversation between Baird Campbell (Rice University) and Ilana Gershon (Indiana University Bloomington). They discuss the politics of connection and disc…
Photoshopping Desire: Gender, Caste, and the “Authentic” Self
Screenshot of the comments for the post by @photo_paparazzo, being discussed in the blogpost In an Instagram post by a photographer @photo_paparazzo, we see what the labor of…
Workshop: Social Media für Autor*innen
Workshop: Social Media für Autor*innen Wann? Dienstag, 27.9.2022, 16:30-18 Uhr Format? Online per zoom, Begleitmaterial nachträglich per E-Mail Wer? Vanessa Schmidt, Element Studios | Med…
Robert W. Gehl and Sean T. Lawson on Social Engineering
Interview by Emma Briant https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/social-engineering Emma Briant: Cambridge Analytica often pitched their methods as a contemporary digital marketing firm –…
Reducing Hypertension in Trinidad and Tobago
Author: Daniel Miller The research project Anthropology of Smartphones and Smart Ageing which is now close to completion was always intended to also develop some practical projects to…
Revisiting Human-Machine Relationships and Efforts of Feminist STS
This browser does not support HTML5 audio Alexa, Bixby, the GPS voice, Siri.… AI (Artificial Intelligence) assistants, which operate through algorithms …
The TikTok of Anthropology
Author: Daniel Miller I want to make a slightly surprising suggestion. That my current ambition in anthropology is to become more like TikTok (or its original Chinese form…
Infrastructures of inequality: Caring tweets, public health, and COVID-19 in Delhi by Emilija Zabiliūte
One tweet asks for help finding a hospital bed in Delhi, India’s capital. Another asks where to find oxygen. These tweets joined a sea of similar pleas for…
Trinidad – The Potential of ‘Online Only’ Ethnography
By Daniel Miller and Sheba Mohammid The ASSA project runs until October 2022. Mostly the last year of the project is dedicated to publishing our results, for example…
#Proudtobeprotected: Selfie booths and framing the self for visibility
RAHUL ADVANI In April and May 2021, the deadly second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in India, driven largely by the delta variant, saw the country’s collapsing healthcare…
Article: Social media – power & politics
Udupa, S., & Budka, P. (2021). Social media: Power and politics. In H. Callan & S. Coleman (Eds.), The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Hoboken: Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781…
If You’re Seeing This, You Are on Ex-Mormon TikTok
You might not realise it, but you probably follow a Mormon lifestyle blogger on social media. It’s an aesthetic: the specific way knee-length dress is paired with an…
#PoliticalEngagements: Digital Engagements
For many social anthropologists working on different forms of political expression, online settings have become an inextricable part of their research sites, a trend further entrenched by the…