Skip to content

CfP: Vienna Anthropology Days 2024

CfP: Vienna Anthropology Days 2024 published on No Comments on CfP: Vienna Anthropology Days 2024

The deadline for submitting proposals to the Vienna Anthropology Days (VANDA) 2024 is June 1. I am involved in two panels:

Emergency sign and hammer on the train to Churchill, MB, Canada. (Photo by Philipp Budka)

Together with my colleagues from the Digital Ethnography Initiative, Monika Palmberger and Suzana Jovicic, I am organizing a panel on digital ethnography in post-pandemic times.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic has revitalised and boosted interest in digital ethnography, the question arises as to what remains in its aftermath. Has digital ethnography entered the mainstream, and the digital merged with ethnographic research in an obviously profoundly digitised and digitalised world? Or has it disappeared back into the fringes, unphased by the short-lived interest? What do we actually mean when we talk about digital ethnography: online, remote, post-digital and should we discard these terms altogether? What methodological and ethical insights, movements, setbacks, reflections, innovations and (inter)disciplinary cross-references have emerged in the wake of global developments that have forced ethnographers to rethink their research in unprecedented ways? In this panel organised by the Digital Ethnography Initiative (DEI), we explore the state of digital ethnography (defined as ethnographic research with and through the “digital” and not limited to remote/online) as it emerges from turbulent but perhaps also fruitful times. We invite a wide range of contributions discussing methodological issues, conundrums, dilemmas, twists and turns of contemporary digital ethnography, based on original research. The contributors will be invited to subsequently write a short blog entry for the DEI blog, based on the papers presented at the panel.

With Giuseppe Amatulli and Ria Adams, I am organizing a workshop on the connection between infrastructures (and infrastructure projects) and futurities.

Infrastructures have become prominent research fields in anthropology and in the humanities and social sciences more generally (e.g., Buier, 2023; Harvey & Knox 2015; Star 1999). Questions that link infrastructures to development, sustainability, and transformation point to the importance of temporalities – not only the (ethnographic) present, but also the (historical) past and the (sociotechnical) future – as a key analytical lens. Infrastructures are planned, approved, built, operationalized, or renovated with the anticipation that they will, for example, create economic growth and improve the socioeconomic well-being of local populations. Consequently, one way to explore infrastructure development is to look at the broad range of desires, hopes, and fears toward the future of these “sociotechnical spaces” (Mason, 2004). Such sentiments or feelings are particularly strong towards infrastructural “mega-projects” which are very cost intensive, involve a variety of stakeholders, and affect millions of people (Flyvbjerg, 2017). Among such projects are motorways, airports, seaports, spaceports, rail lines, submarine cable systems, dams, wind farms, offshore oil and gas facilities. This workshop invites contributors to discuss the relationships between specifically large-scale infrastructures and futurities – affective and ideologically loaded desires or fears of being in the future – by reflecting on the following two questions: (1) What role do futurities play in the imagining, conceiving, and making of infrastructures and their futures? (2) How do infrastructural futurities shape the relationship between infrastructure development and sociocultural lifeworlds? The workshop will be structured by these two questions and participants will be asked to discuss them in at least two “tour the table” rounds, which are then followed by open discussions.

Seminar: Digital Visuality & Popular Culture

Seminar: Digital Visuality & Popular Culture published on No Comments on Seminar: Digital Visuality & Popular Culture
Photo by Gian Cescon on Unsplash

The seminar “Digital Visuality and Popular Culture” for the MA program CREOLE at the University of Vienna provides an overview about digital visuality as a key phenomenon of contemporary visual culture and its connection to popular culture. By working on ethnographic research projects, students explore the diversity of digital practices, their visual dimension and their meaning for popular cultural processes and phenomena.

With the advent of digital media and technologies, internet-based devices and services, mobile computing as well as software applications and social media platforms new opportunities and challenges have come to the forefront in the anthropological research of visual culture. Digital media technologies have become ubiquitous means of visual communication, interaction and representation. For anthropology it is of particular interest how people engage with digital media technologies and content, how “the digital” is embedded in everyday life and how it relates to different sociocultural phenomena.

One of these phenomena is popular culture: processes and practices related to the production, circulation and consumption of, for example, music, film, fashion and advertisements as well as the construction and mediation of celebrities. Moreover, popular culture is closely connected to other cultural phenomena such as fan culture, public culture and participatory culture. Fans, for instance, engage in various forms of visual productivity and play a crucial role in the creation and circulation of cultural artifacts related to their fandom such as memes.

By working on different case studies, students get a comparative overview about digital visuality and visual aspects of popular culture. Students conduct ethnographic projects and engage with key questions. What theoretical concepts and analytical categories of sociality can be used to study visual and popular culture? How does digital visuality constitute and mediate cultural performances and rituals? How do social media platforms enable and change visual culture and communication?

Article: Anthropological perspectives on digital-visual practices

Article: Anthropological perspectives on digital-visual practices published on No Comments on Article: Anthropological perspectives on digital-visual practices

Budka, P. (2021). Kultur- und sozialanthropologische Perspektiven auf digital-visuelle Praktiken. Das Fallbeispiel einer indigenen Online-Umgebung im nordwestlichen Ontario, Kanada (Anthropological perspectives on digital-visual practices). In R. Breckner, K. Liebhart & M. Pohn-Lauggas (Eds.), Sozialwissenschaftliche Analysen von Bild- und Medienwelten (pp. 109-132). Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110613681-005

Abstract

In times of increasing digitalization, it is of particular interest for anthropology to understand how people in different societies integrate digital media and technologies, internet-based devices and services or software, and digital platforms, into their lives. The digital practices observed here are closely related to emergent forms of visual communication and representation, which need to be described and interpreted through ethnographic analysis, careful contextualization, and systematic comparison.

This paper discusses aspects of digital-visual culture through a case study of the online environment MyKnet.org, operated exclusively for First Nations between 1998 and 2019 in the remote communities of Northwestern Ontario, Canada, by the Indigenous internet organization Keewaytinook Okimakanak Kuhkenah Network (KO-KNET).

The analytical framework is a practice theory approach linked to ethnographic fieldwork, historical contextualization, and cultural and diachronic comparison. The creation, distribution and sharing of digital images, collages and layouts for websites in MyKnet.org can thus be described, analyzed and interpreted in relation to the phenomenon of hip hop and the associated fan art, as well as the digital biographies of users.

These digital-visual practices are closely connected to individual and collective forms of representation, as well as the maintenance of social relationships across larger distances, and thus also to the construction, negotiation and change of digital identity. They point not only to the global significance of visual communication, representation and culture, but also to the locally specific relationships that people maintain with online environments and digital platforms.

Seminar: The Materiality and Visuality of Social Media

Seminar: The Materiality and Visuality of Social Media published on No Comments on Seminar: The Materiality and Visuality of Social Media

This online course for the summer semester 2021 at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of the University of Vienna gives a critical overview about the material and visual dimension of social media and their interconnection. Social media platforms and services, such as Facebook or Instagram, have become important (visual) communication and (re)presentation tools. For social and cultural anthropology it is of particular interest how these platforms are integrated and embedded into everyday life, by considering changing sociocultural, political and economic contexts. Students therefore explore and discuss the relevance of a material culture approach for (the understanding of) technology appropriation as well as (culturally) different digital-visual practices. By working on case studies in small empirical projects and by sharing and comparing their findings, students gain insights into material and visual culture in a digital context.

Selected Literature

  • Dourish, P. (2016). Rematerializing the platform: Emulation and the digital–material. In S. Pink, E. Ardevol, & D. Lanzeni (Eds.), Digital materialities: Design and anthropology (pp. 29–44). Oxford: Bloomsbury.
  • Favero, P. (2018). The present image: Visible stories in a digital habitat. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Góralska, M. (2020). Anthropology from home: Advice on digital ethnography for the pandemic times. Anthropology in Action, 27(1), 46–52. https://doi.org/10.3167/aia.2020.270105
  • Horst, H., & Miller, D. (2012). Normativity and materiality: A view from digital anthropology. Media International Australia, 145(1), 103–111. https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878X1214500112
  • Miller, D., & Sinanan, J. (2017). Visualising Facebook: A comparative perspective. London: UCL Press. https://www.uclpress.co.uk/collections/series-why-we-post/products/83994
  • Miller, D., et al. (2016). How the world changed social media. London: UCL Press. https://www.uclpress.co.uk/collections/series-why-we-post/products/83040
  • Pink, S. (2017). Technologies, possibilities, emergence and an ethics of responsibility: Refiguring techniques. In E. Gómez Cruz, S. Sumartojo & S. Pink (Eds.), Refiguring techniques in digital visual research (pp. 1–12). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Sumiala, J, et al. (2020). Just a ‘stupid reflex’? Digital witnessing of the Charlie Hebdo attacks and the mediation of conflict. In P. Budka & B. Bräuchler (Eds.), Theorising Media and Conflict. Anthropology of Media Vol. 10 (pp. 57–75). New York & Oxford: Berghahn Books.
  • Walton, S. (2018). Remote ethnography, virtual presence: Exploring digital-visual methods for anthropological research on the web. In. C. Costa & J. Condie (Eds.), Doing research in and on the digital: Research methods across fields of enquiry (pp. 116–33). New York: Routledge.

MyKnet.org: Traces of digital decoloniality in an indigenous web-based environment

MyKnet.org: Traces of digital decoloniality in an indigenous web-based environment published on No Comments on MyKnet.org: Traces of digital decoloniality in an indigenous web-based environment

This blog post is a shorter version of a paper presented at the Engaging with Web Archives (EWA20) conference in September 2020 (Book of Abstracts).
Budka, P. (2020). MyKnet.org: Traces of digital decoloniality in an indigenous web-based environment. Paper at Engaging with Web Archives (EWA20): “Opportunities, Challenges and Potentialities”, Online (hosted by Maynooth University), 21-22 September.

This blog post builds on selected results of an anthropological project that explored various indigenous engagements with digital media, technologies and infrastructures in Northwestern Ontario, Canada (e.g., Budka, 2015, 2019; Budka et al. 2009). The project was conducted in cooperation with the First Nations internet organization Keewaytinook Okimakanak Kuh-ke-nah Network (KO-KNET).

In this post I briefly reflect upon traces of “digital decoloniality”, a concept borrowed from Alexandra Deem (2019), by exploring selected aspects of the sociotechnical history of KO-KNET’s web-based environment MyKnet.org and by discussing facets of a MyKnet.org user’s digital biography.

KO-KNET & MyKnet.org

KO-KNET Network, 2010, courtesy of KO-KNET

In 1994, the tribal council Keewaytinook Okimakanak (KO) established the Kuh-ke-nah Network (KO-KNET) to connect Canada’s indigenous people in Northwestern Ontario’s remote communities through and to the internet. At that time, a local telecommunication infrastructure was almost non-existent. KO-KNET started with a simple bulletin board system that developed into a community-controlled ICT infrastructure, which today includes landline and satellite broadband internet as well as internet-based mobile phone communication (e.g. Fiser & Clement, 2012).

Together with local, regional and national partners, KO-KNET developed different services: from e-health and an internet high school to different remote training programs. The most mundane of those services was the digital environment MyKnet.org, which enabled First Nations people to create personal homepages within a cost- and commercial-free space on the web.

MyKnet.org was set up in 1998 exclusively for the First Nations people of Northwestern Ontario. By the early 2000s, a wide set of actors across Northwestern Ontario, a region with an overall indigenous population of about 45,000, had found a new home on this web-based platform. During its heyday, MyKnet.org had more than 30,000 registered user accounts and about 25,000 active homepages.

With the advent and rise of commercial social media platforms, such as Facebook, user numbers began to drop. To reduce administrative and technical costs, KO-KNET decided to switch to WordPress as hosting platform in 2014. Since this required users to set up new websites, numbers continued to fall. In early 2019, there were only 2,900 homepages left and MyKnet.org was shut down a couple of months later.

Continue reading MyKnet.org: Traces of digital decoloniality in an indigenous web-based environment

Blog Post: Collaborative ethnography in the digital age: Towards a new methodological framework

Blog Post: Collaborative ethnography in the digital age: Towards a new methodological framework published on No Comments on Blog Post: Collaborative ethnography in the digital age: Towards a new methodological framework

Palmberger, M., & Budka, P. (2020). Collaborative ethnography in the digital age: Towards a new methodological framework. Digital Ethnography Initiative (DEI) Blog, 13 Nov.

Digital ethnography has become a very vibrant research field, as the growing body of literature indicates (e.g. Hjorth et al., 2017; Pink et al., 2016). Nevertheless, we sense that methodological debates often fall short. With this contribution to the Digital Ethnography Initiative (DEI) blog, we would like to open up a discussion on key methodological and ethical issues.

More precisely, we would like to start sharing a reflection process on theoretical and methodological debates in the field of digital ethnography that we have been engaging in over the last year. This resulted in (1) a project proposal to an Austrian funding body as well as (2) in the Digital Ethnography Initiative at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of the University of Vienna that we launched together with our colleague Suzana Jovicic.

In this blog post, we propose and briefly discuss three key issues and questions that are related to the challenges of ethnographic research in times of increasing digitalization. They address

(1) the individualization of interaction via smartphones and other mobile devices, which is connected to

(2) new issues of confidentiality and intimacy that call for the development of

(3) explicit collaborative research methods involving research partners in the process of collecting, interpreting and representing data.

Continue reading

Panel: Digital Ethnography: Revisiting Theoretical Concepts & Methodological Approaches

Panel: Digital Ethnography: Revisiting Theoretical Concepts & Methodological Approaches published on No Comments on Panel: Digital Ethnography: Revisiting Theoretical Concepts & Methodological Approaches

Panel “Digital Ethnography: Revisiting Theoretical Concepts & Methodological Approaches” @ Vienna Anthropology Days 2020 (VANDA2020, Sept. 28 – Oct. 1), convened by Philipp Budka & Monika Palmberger.
More details, including the paper abstracts, to be found at https://vanda.univie.ac.at/scientific-program/.

Session 1

Rebecca Carlson (Temple University / TMDU): Online with bioinformatic scientists in Tokyo: Doing digital ethnography in a pandemic

Simone Pfeifer (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz): Digital ethnography on, with, and through social media and messenger services: Ethical and methodological reflections from two different research projects

Monika Palmberger (University of Vienna): “New media of care”: Methodological reflections on digital diaries

Annika Richterich (University of Sussex): Critical making and digital ethnography

Franziska Weidle (Brandenburg University of Technology): Co-creating with software: Towards a computational correspondence in digital ethnography

Session 2

Cristiane Damasceno (UNC Greensboro): Innovative research methods for the disinformation age

Marie Hermanová (Czech Academy of Sciences): Too real is fake: Authenticity and digital intimacy between influencers and researchers

Christian Ritter (Tallinn University): Mediated relationships and remote ethnography: Following the rise and fall of travel influencers

Suzana Jovicic (University of Vienna): Neither here nor there: Smartphone in the ethnographic encounter

Libuše Veprek (LMU Munich): Bringing the subject into focus in large scale textual data analysis

Session 3

Maria Schreiber (University of Salzburg): #strokesurvivor: Studying a “hashtag public” on Instagram

Zoë Glatt (LSE): Becoming a YouTuber: (Auto)ethnographic explorations of the online video industry

Xiaowei Huang (Guangzhou College of Commerce): Second Life, ethnography and virtual culture

Philipp Budka (University of Vienna): Digital ethnography and web archives: The case of an indigenous web-based environment

CfP: Digital Ethnography: Revisiting Theoretical Concepts and Methodological Approaches

CfP: Digital Ethnography: Revisiting Theoretical Concepts and Methodological Approaches published on No Comments on CfP: Digital Ethnography: Revisiting Theoretical Concepts and Methodological Approaches

Call for Papers for Panel “Digital Ethnography: Revisiting Theoretical Concepts and Methodological Approaches” at Vienna Anthropology Days (VANDA), 28 Sept. – 1 Oct. 2020, University of Vienna, Austria.

Organizers

Philipp Budka (University of Vienna)
Monika Palmberger (University of Vienna)

Abstract

Ethnographic research has the potential to dig deep into mediated personal relationships as well as into socio-technical relations in an increasingly digitized and digitalized world (e.g., Hjorth et al. 2017; Horst & Miller, 2012; Pink et al., 2016). In order to do so, ethnographers and anthropologists have engaged with a variety of digital and multimodal methods such as online ethnographic fieldwork and participant observation, digital storytelling, mobile and visual media elicitation, digital media biographies, and digital video re-enactments (e.g., Pink et al., 2016). Their research has opened up new knowledge horizons such as the changing emotional, normative or symbolic dimensions of complex social relations and cultural practices entangled with new digital media technologies.

This session provides room for critical and ethical reflections on theory and methodology in the field of digital anthropology/ethnography, including, but not limited to, the following questions:

  • Which theoretical concepts are particularly fruitful in the ethnographic and anthropological exploration of digital phenomena?  
  • How are such concepts entangled with methodological approaches and challenges, for example by reconsidering issues of collaboration, decolonization, confidentiality or intimacy?  
  • How can we do participant observation when communication and interaction are increasingly ‘individualized’ and veiled due to digital technologies, particularly the smartphone?  
  • Which forms of collecting, interpreting and representing empirical data do we aspire for?

This session invites presenters to revisit previous discussions and critically reflect upon current relevant debates in anthropology and beyond. Papers may be empirically, methodologically or theoretically driven.

Deadline & Submission

Please submit your paper abstracts (max. 350 words) online via the conference system latest by 1 July 2020.

Blog Post Series: Von der Cyberanthropologie zur Digitalen Anthropologie – Teil 3

Blog Post Series: Von der Cyberanthropologie zur Digitalen Anthropologie – Teil 3 published on No Comments on Blog Post Series: Von der Cyberanthropologie zur Digitalen Anthropologie – Teil 3

Diese Serie von Blogeinträgen beschreibt die Relevanz kultur- und sozialanthropologischer Zugänge in der Untersuchung digitaler Technik und Technologien, dargestellt anhand wissenschaftstheoretischer Aspekte in der Entwicklung der Forschungsfelder der “Cyberanthropologie” und der “Digitalen Anthropologie”. Kommentare und/oder Anmerkungen sind dezidiert erwünscht.
Die einzelnen Blogeinträge bauen, leicht verändert, auf einen Text, der 2019 im Sammelband Ritualisierung – Meditatisierung – Performance publiziert wurde:
Budka, P. (2019). Von der Cyber Anthropologie zur Digitalen Anthropologie. Über die Rolle der Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie im Verstehen soziotechnischer Lebenswelten. In M. Luger, F. Graf & P. Budka (Eds.), Ritualisierung – Mediatisierung – Performance (pp. 163-188). Göttingen: V&R Unipress/Vienna University Press. https://doi.org/10.14220/9783737005142.163

Von der Cyberanthropologie zur Digitalen Anthropologie – Eine Einleitung

Während in den Anfängen der anthropologischen Analyse von neuen digitalen Informations-, Kommunikations- und Medientechnologien noch von “Cyberanthropologie” bzw. “Cyberanthropology” (z.B. Budka/Kremser 2004; Knorr 2011) gesprochen wurde, werden diese Begriffe zunehmend von der Bezeichnung “Digitale Anthropologie” (z. B. Horst/Miller 2012) abgelöst.1 Obwohl sich die Bezeichnungen dieses Forschungsfeldes im Laufe der Jahre und unter Einfluss unterschiedlicher wissenschaftlicher Disziplinen sowie gesellschaftlicher und (populär)kultureller Trends änderten, blieben die Forschungsthemen und -schwerpunkte ähnlich: die soziokulturellen Implikationen und Bedeutungen neuer, digitaler Technologien. Dabei befassen sich AnthropologInnen oftmals mit den Verbindungen zwischen digitalen Technologien, Medien oder Kommunikationsformen einerseits und soziokulturellen Phänomenbereichen andererseits, die traditionell intensiv in der Disziplin bearbeitet werden, wie gesellschaftliche Beziehungen und Organisationsformen, kulturell unterschiedliche Formen der Kommunikation und Identitätskonstruktion, Ritualdynamiken und religiöse Prozesse oder ökonomische Praktiken (z. B. Budka/Kremser 2004; Horst/Miller 2012; Schröder/Voell 2002; Whitehead/Wesch 2012b).

Internet Café, Toronto, Canada. Photo by Philipp Budka

Das soziotechnische Phänomen, das die anthropologische Forschung zu digitalen Medientechnologien entscheidend vorantrieb, ist das Internet.2 Daniel Miller und Don Slater (2000: 14), die eine der ersten ethnographischen Studien über das Internet durchführten, betonen bereits hier, dass das Internet kein ausschließlich technisches, technologisches oder infrastrukturelles Phänomen sei, sondern auch ein soziokulturelles: Es ermöglicht Kommunikation, soziale Interaktion und kulturelle Repräsentation und ist nicht zuletzt deshalb Gegenstand anthropologischer Forschung (siehe auch Hart 2004). Das Internet und das World Wide Web (WWW)3 versprachen eine ganze Reihe von Dingen: unmittelbare globale Kommunikation, vernetztes Organisieren von Information und neue Formen von Politik, Ökonomie und Sozialität.

Howard Rheingold (2000: xviii), beispielsweise, betonte die Tragweite des “Cyberspace” für politische Freiheit und die Veränderung des “realen Lebens” durch die Etablierung “virtueller Gemeinschaften”. In der Untersuchung dieser neuen Vergemeinschaftungsformen befassten sich die ersten sozialwissenschaftlichen InternetforscherInnen zunächst mit deren (kommunikativen) Strukturen und ihrer (soziologischen) Entwicklung (z. B. Jones 1995; Smith/Kollock 1999). In der Folge verschob sich der Forschungsfokus auf den (sozialen) Netzwerkcharakter von Gesellschaften und Gemeinschaften, der sich, zumindest nach Meinung einiger SoziologInnen, im Internetzeitalter verstärkt und sogar konstituierend für das digital vernetzte Individuum ist (z. B. Castells 2000; Rainie/Wellman 2012).

Continue reading Blog Post Series: Von der Cyberanthropologie zur Digitalen Anthropologie – Teil 3

Digital and Online Ethnography – A Selection of Resources

Digital and Online Ethnography – A Selection of Resources published on 3 Comments on Digital and Online Ethnography – A Selection of Resources

Below you find a selection of resources on digital and online ethnography – with a slight focus on anthropological research – compiled by Philipp Budka.
To add and share your resources and/or references, please use this collaborative document.

Literature:

Baym, N. (2010). Personal connections in the digital age. Cambridge: Polity.

Bell, D., & Kennedy, B. M. (Eds.). (2000) The Cybercultures Reader. London: Routledge.

Boellstorff, T. (2016). For whom the ontology turns: Theorizing the digital real. Current Anthropology, 57(4), 387–407. https://doi.org/10.1086/687362

Boellstorff, T. (2013). Digital anthropology. In Oxford Bibliographies. https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199766567/obo-9780199766567-0087.xml

Boellstorff, T. (2008). Coming of age in Second Life: An anthropologist explores the virtually human. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Boellstorff, et al. (2012). Ethnography and virtual worlds: A handbook of method. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Bräuchler, B. (2013). Cyberidentities at war: The Moluccan conflict on the Internet. New York: Berghahn Books.

Buchanan, E. A. (2004). Readings in virtual research ethics: Issues and controversies. Hershey, PA: Information Science Pub.

Budka, P. (2018). [Review of the book Digital environments: Ethnographic perspectives across global online and offline spaces, by U. U. Frömming, S. Köhn, S. Fox & M. Terry]. Anthropos, 113(1), 303-304. http://www.philbu.net/blog/review-digital-environments-ethnographic-perspectives-across-global-online-and-offline-spaces/

Budka, P. (2015). [Review of the book Cyberidentities at war: The Moluccan conflict on the Internet, by B. Bräuchler]. American Anthropologist, 117(1), 179-180. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.12197 http://www.philbu.net/blog/review-cyberidentities-at-war-the-moluccan-conflict-on-the-internet/

Budka, P., & Kremser, M. (2004). CyberAnthropology – anthropology of cyberculture. In S. Khittel, B. Plankensteiner & M. Six-Hohenbalken (Eds.), Contemporary issues in socio-cultural anthropology: Perspectives and research activities from Austria (pp. 213-226). Vienna: Loecker Verlag.
http://www.philbu.net/budka_kremser_cyberanthro.pdf

Coleman, G. E. (2010). Ethnographic approaches to digital media. Annual Review of Anthropology 39(1), 487-505. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.012809.104945

Continue reading Digital and Online Ethnography – A Selection of Resources

Seminar: Digital Technologies as Material Culture 2020

Seminar: Digital Technologies as Material Culture 2020 published on No Comments on Seminar: Digital Technologies as Material Culture 2020

In this MA seminar at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna, we explore digital media technologies from an anthropological/ethnographic perspective in the context of material culture.
More info

This course gives an overview about material culture as a conceptual and practical approach to understand digital technologies. In doing so, it focuses on the everyday incorporation and utilization of digital technologies.

Mobile networked digital media technologies, such as smart phones, as well as social media platforms and services, such as Facebook or Instagram, have become important (visual) communication and (re)presentation tools. For social and cultural anthropology it is of particular interest how these digital devices and technologies are integrated and embedded into everyday life, by considering changing sociocultural, political and economic contexts. This course focuses in particular on the material aspects of digital technologies and how they are utilized on a day-to-day basis. Questions about the relevance of a material culture approach for (the understanding of) technology appropriation – on a theoretical and practical level – as well as questions about (culturally) different usage practices are discussed. How does the understanding and conceptualization of digital technology as material culture contribute to the exploration and analyses of contemporary and emerging sociocultural practices and processes in increasingly digital societies?

By working on different online case studies, students get a comparative overview about material culture in a digital context.

Continue reading Seminar: Digital Technologies as Material Culture 2020

CfP: Engaged media anthropology in the digital age

CfP: Engaged media anthropology in the digital age published on No Comments on CfP: Engaged media anthropology in the digital age

The EASA Media Anthropology Network is organizing an official network panel at the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) 2020 conference in Lisbon (21-24 July). Find the call for papers below and online:
https://nomadit.co.uk/conference/easa2020/p/8591

For more general information about the call and the conference, navigate to:
https://easaonline.org/conferences/easa2020/cfp
https://easaonline.org/conferences/easa2020/

The call closes on 20 January 2020.

Engaged media anthropology in the digital age

Organizers
Philipp Budka (University of Vienna) and Sahana Udupa (LMU Munich)

Abstract
The relative ease of access and potential disruptive features of digital media have opened up new opportunities for media anthropologists to extend their field relations into durable public engagement. These possibilities have encouraged anthropologists to collaboratively design various public engagement initiatives to harness digital media technologies and infrastructures for social justice goals including health, education, environmental protection, gender parity and political inclusion. Such direct interventions have gone hand in hand with critical perspectives on how “the digital” has played a key role in enabling political cultures of indignity and injustice – from online extreme speech to digitally enabled surveillance and algorithmic bias. This panel will foreground these two distinct, yet interrelated, aspects of engaged media anthropology: community projects that involve direct participation of anthropologists in designing digital platforms and applications, and in supporting local forms of media/digital activism; and studies that envision an inclusive future through public intervention strategies of critique and discursive resistance. A key question that drives this panel is whether the latest examples of engaged media anthropology that are enabled by digital technologies and infrastructures have signaled a break from the imperial logic of upliftment and betterment as a means to consolidate colonial power or whether enduring injustices are questioned through new means of collaboration and dialogue. What are the promises and limitations of engaged media anthropology in the digital age?

Lecture/Seminar: Ethnography and Digital Media 2019

Lecture/Seminar: Ethnography and Digital Media 2019 published on No Comments on Lecture/Seminar: Ethnography and Digital Media 2019

In this lecture/seminar at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, we discuss how ethnography contributes to the exploration, description and understanding of digitally mediated processes and practices (in German).

In dieser Lehrveranstaltung erhalten Studierende einen Einblick in die Ethnographie digitaler Medien. Dabei werden sowohl theoretische Zugänge und Konzepte als auch praxisnahen Anwendungs- und Erfahrungswerte vermittelt.

Digitale Medien – wie Internet, Social Media und Smartphones – ermöglichen neue Formen medialer Kommunikation und Repräsentation, die in Zusammenhang mit unterschiedlichen soziokulturellen, politischen und ökonomischen Faktoren und Dimensionen stehen. Diese Medientechnologien überbrücken nicht nur Zeit und Raum, sie gestalten diese neu. Sie ermöglichen die Vernetzung und Mobilisierung von Menschen und die Konstruktion vielfältiger Formen von individueller und kollektiver Identität. Welche theoretischen und methodologischen Zugänge sind hilfreich, um neue digitale Medientechnologien und damit zusammenhängende Praktiken und Sozialitäten zu beschreiben und zu analysieren? Können wir auf das “klassische” methodische Repertoire der Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie zurückgreifen oder benötigt es neue digitale Methoden und Techniken? Welche Bedeutung haben etwa Datensicherung und die Archivierung von digitalen Artefakten? Und welche ethischen Aspekte in der Digitalen Ethnographie gilt es zu beachten?
Studierende lernen anhand von konkreten Fallbeispielen, ausgewählte theoretische und methodologische Zugänge kennen. Sie gewinnen so einen Überblick über die Diversität digitaler Phänomene, Prozesse und Praktiken sowie deren ethnographische Beschreibung und Untersuchung.

Literatur (Auswahl)

Boellstorff, T., Nardi, B., Pearce, C., & Taylor, T. L. (2012). Ethnography and virtual worlds: A handbook of method. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Budka, P. (2019). Von der Cyber Anthropologie zur Digitalen Anthropologie. Über die Rolle der Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie im Verstehen soziotechnischer Lebenswelten. In M. Luger, F. Graf & P. Budka (Eds.), Ritualisierung – Mediatisierung – Performance (pp. 163-188). Göttingen: V&R Unipress/Vienna University Press.

Hakken, D. (1999). Cyborgs@Cyberspace: An ethnographer looks to the future. London: Routledge.

Hjorth, L, Horst, H., Galloway, A., & Bell, G. (2016). The Routledge Companion to digital ethnography. New York: Routledge.

Miller, D., & Slater, D. (2002). Ethnography and the extreme Internet. In T. H. Eriksen (Ed.), Globalisation: Studies in anthropology (pp. 39-57). London: Pluto Press.

Pink, S., Horst, H., Postill, J., Hjorth, L., Lewis, T., & Tacchi, J. (2016). Digital ethnography: Principles and practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Postill, J., & Pink, S. (2012). Social media ethnography: The digital researcher in a messy web. Media International Australia, 145(1), 123-134.

More info: https://ufind.univie.ac.at/en/course.html?lv=240033&semester=2019W

Presentation: MyKnet.org: The cultural history & social life of an indigenous web-based environment

Presentation: MyKnet.org: The cultural history & social life of an indigenous web-based environment published on No Comments on Presentation: MyKnet.org: The cultural history & social life of an indigenous web-based environment

Budka, P. (2019). MyKnet.org: The cultural history and social life of an indigenous web-based environment. Paper at “The Web That Was: Archives, Traces, Reflections” Conference (RESAW19), Amsterdam, Netherlands: University of Amsterdam, 21 June. Presentation (PDF)

Ethnographic Vignette

In the summer of 2006, during my first field trip to Northwestern Ontario, I visited the Frenchman’s Head community of Lac Seul First Nation which is one of the region’s few non-remote indigenous communities that can be reached by car and by boat. In the Band Office, the community’s largest administrative building, I was introduced to 16 year old Candice, a well known MyKnet.org user. She told me that she did set up her first MyKnet.org page a couple of years ago to stay in touch with friends and family and to let people know about her life. To communicate with friends and family members, she added a c-box to her homepage where people could leave messages.

As I found out later, almost everyone in the Band Office had a MyKnet.org homepage. Even though some didn’t know how to work with their websites. They needed the help of young, web-savvy colleagues, friends and family members. Candice introduced me to an older lady who told me that she had to register for a new MyKnet.org page only two weeks ago because her original page was registered under her now divorced husband’s name. And since she didn’t want to be constantly reminded of this, she needed a new homepage. KO-KNET, the First Nations internet organization that has been managing the MyKnet.org homepage service, only approves registrations with real, locally known, First Nation names that are then displayed in the URL of the page.

Candice helped her setting up the page, finding and applying the right layout and updating the content. As she told me later, she was regularly reminding other employees at the office to keep their respective homepages up to date. She also told me that she has started to use other, commercial website providers, such as Piczo (2002-2012). They were easier to use than MyKnet.org and provided more web space and technical features and possibilities.

Digitale Anthropologie

Digitale Anthropologie published on No Comments on Digitale Anthropologie

Dieser Text wurde 2017 für den Blog der Universität Wien geschrieben; für eine überarbeitete und erweiterte Version des Textes siehe
Budka, P. 2019. Von der Cyber Anthropologie zur Digitalen Anthropologie. Über die Rolle der Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie im Verstehen soziotechnischer Lebenswelten. In: Luger, M., Graf, F. & Budka, P. (Hg.), Ritualisierung – Mediatisierung – Performance. Göttingen: V&R Unipress/Vienna University Press, 163-188.

Die Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie ist längst nicht mehr nur die Wissenschaft von „einfachen“, außereuropäischen Gesellschaften und Kulturen. Seit Jahrzehnten forscht die Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie kulturvergleichend zu komplexen Prozessen, Entwicklungen und Veränderungen in allen menschlichen Gesellschaften und Kulturen. Da war es nur eine Frage der Zeit bis die ersten Kultur- und SozialanthropologInnen begannen sich auch mit digitalen Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien (IKT), wie dem Internet, Smartphones oder Sozialen Medien, auseinander zu setzen. Die Wiener Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie war dabei – zumindest im deutschen Sprachraum – unter den ersten, die sich mit den Verbindungen und Zusammenhängen zwischen digitalen Medientechnologien und soziokulturellen Phänomenbereichen aus spezifisch anthropologischer/ethnologischer Perspektive befassten.

In diesem Blogbeitrag gehe ich der Frage nach, welche Rolle die Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie in der Untersuchung und in weiterer Folge im Verstehen digitaler Medientechnologien spielt. Andere Aspekte der Digitalisierung dieser Disziplin – wie z.B. computerunterstützte Forschungsprojekte und -methoden, neue Publikationsmöglichkeiten durch Open Access, neue Wege der Präsentation und Kommunikation von Forschung mittels Blogs oder Sozialer Medien sowie neue Methoden und Strategien für Lernen und Lehre – kann ich hier nicht näher diskutieren.

Continue reading Digitale Anthropologie

Primary Sidebar