3/24 Notes

General notes re. class assigments/timeline:

·      Participant observation ethnography of online virtual community due in stages in April

·      Short proposal (roughly two pages) due April 7 describing community you want to study; loose requirements, just, outline issues interesting to you. Proposal can talk about just one community or multiple communities. Diversity of methods could be put in proposal—how are we going to approach this, angles we look at, issues/concepts we might want to apply

·      Abstract revision workshop second to last class session

·      Multimedia presentation last class

·      May 5: final project due

·      We might use computer lab over the next few weeks

·      Garfinkle: studies in 60s, figure out unspoken norms that operate in daily life; developed technique called ethnomethodology; Professor Song passed out list of social media transgressions and wants us to try at least two out.

Key Themes from Ultrasound Session from last week:

·      Technology travels and is repurposed in different place and different ways

·      Kusiak article discusses knowledge production, epistemological relativism, colonialism, post colonialism, neocolonisalism, brain drain, professionalization of medical classes

o   Kusiak now works for the state dept/military

·      Fetal Views: Germany and habits of looking

o   An epistemic shift to looking laid foundation for ultrasound technology today

§  renegotiated relationship/power structure between midwife’s knowledge and obgyn’s knowledge

o   We can read the article as hopeful

§  Some people think its cynical but it departs from historical trend of an overly Marxist critique about the medicalization of pregnancy which treated women’s bodies as factories/machines. Taylor is saying we can still give this a Marxist read w/o removing the agency from women, asks: why don’t we think about them as consumers instead?  Ultrasound gives women the ability to gender their children not conceptually but through the consumption of thigs

§  Part of a broader shift in Anthro from focusing on production to focusing on consumption

§  Miller from UCL article is big proponent for consumption shift

Discussion of readings for this week:

§  Are internet addictions really about a larger addiction for newness, akin to fast fashion?

o   Planned obsolescence of both apple products and Forever 21clothes

§  What divides people who do and don’t keep up with tech innovation? Age?

o   Within the same “age” cohort, cultures on social media platform can be radically different based on race, class, geography, etc

§  Social presentation of self bleeds into the professional; twitter/instagram can become part of resume. Especially with companies talking about company ‘culture’ and people who are good ‘cultural fits’

§  How do apps structure our lives?

o   Apps like headspace capitalize on anxiety produced by apps and are designed to counter the psychological effects of apps

o   Language like social media ‘detox’ indicates that we think of social media as a toxin

o   In shabbat/orthodox jew communities, technology is work

§  Is there an “afterlife” to social media/stuff on internet?

Ephemerality not just the best word when we talk about the internet because things get archived all the time—tension: everything you post is forever but there is selective access to archives;

Waybackmachine caches website since 1994

o   2040, no political candidate will be able to run without answering for videos on the internet shameful; future consultation services for deleting as much as possible from the internet

o   What does rescuing government data mean? Even deleted data is stored on a server, who owns/controls that server? controls the server it is stored on

§  Facebook used to be a little bit like linkedin, a literal index/book of faces. Then it evolved into being a social media platform and became increasingly accessible to diverse users

Media ideologies:

§  Medium of communication structures communication itself

§  What does virtuality mean? Opposite of virtual is not ‘real life;’ what dichotomies are used to structure this

§  What is social media?

o   Email? Group gaming? Yik yak? Forums vs instagram/snapchat?

o   Is social media defined by subject matter that is discussed?

o    Used to be inculcated with norms of anonymity, are we still? How much of this is due to the physical infrastructure of platforms? There are technical components that make up and connect the platforms, then media ideologies layered on top of that, mediated by infrastructures

§  UCL researchers propose idea of scalable sociality; degree of privacy, numbers, how many people you are communicating with

o   Social media allows this in between, a medium size that wasn’t allowed by platforms before the internet like radio/newspapers

o   Evolutionary anthro that says we only have the capacity to “know” 150 people? The size of one’s social network normally exceeds this number; people begin to think of other people according to their social media names, might forget “actual” name

·      NIH is now reconsidering how they can better do diversity/better representation, rules and regulations for research and how to include non-white males better

o   Good opportunity for people in class with ideas/opinions about ^^

o   Important to remember that who has access to the media/internet channels through which comments are solicited will affect what comments they get and how they change their policy

o   Frustrating—we can all agree we shouldn’t just study white male subjects, but how do you diversify that? Devil is in the details; lack of foresight; they’re not thinking about media ideologies and the related structural issues, they are thinking about content

o   Difference between inviting comment and debate. Monsanto is happy to invite debate but unlikely to change things. Public comment can be a valve to diffuse anger/a legal covering of bases

o   Nature article: use of microbes in indigenous people, seemed like incident of “how do we ward off critique that is going to come?” rather than sincere

Gershon Article:

·      Lots of critique of methodology

·      Savannah skeptical of fixation that “it was striking the fact that people would always point out which medium people used to breakup”

o   Nothing unusual about mentioning medium, a natural part of storytelling; People also knew what Gershon’s research was about so might have been catering to her.

o   But maybe they mention medium because it’s still sufficiently new? You would say “I went to school” rather than “I drove to school” because cars are so commonplace/uninteresting. Professor Song adds that in China people mention having a hard time parking to signal car ownership/status/a range meanings associated with the newness or significance of cars

o   “I went to school” vs “I drove to school” might not be an analogous situation to breakups. In discussing breakups it’s important to know how the conversation happened so I can understand social/emotional dynamics of breakup.

o   Gershon dismisses how the medium functions and how the design affects how much information can be communicated. When Trump tweets, we can’t get any idea of how/where he is getting the info he puts out because of 140 character limit; The structure of twitter facilitates the spread of misinformation

·      Gershon is trained in anthropology but is based in media studies, how does that affect her research?

·      General consensus that Gershon was too reductive in analysis, but she does anticipate it being dated and talks about the rapidly changing nature of platforms in other parts that we weren’t assigned to read

Difference between virtual and lab ethnographers:

·      Is it the degree of reflexivity required?

·      If you don’t participate in the project is it journalism or ethnography?

o   Might be totally legitimate to do virtual research without participating; you lurk and find etiquette; similar to literature review so that your own research isn’t responded to with: ‘noob.’

o   Lurking vs. participating is a strategic choice. To what degree do you want to follow online and offline? Depends on community but how do you define community? Is a series of linked twitter accounts a community?

o   Journalism has different set of ethics than ethnography; ethno is focused on describing social/cultural norms, practices/expectations; ethnography is journalism and lots of journalism is ethnographic.

·      Balstroff is helpful about ethnographic approaches, very different from UCL, a little dated, focused on virtual worlds whereas UCL rejects dichotomy of virtual world interested in online/offline; take what you can from each of them

·      Dick recommends Bella Coleman (whose “Ethnographic approaches to digital media”  is on Ares) and someone else who did ethnography of World of Warcraft and writes about how to deal with getting sucked into media during research, the cultural politics of media, and how social media feeds into other forms of social practice.

·      Citations increase by large amount if you upload things to academia.edu/research gate

Nutrition virtual worlds:  

·      Part of broader movement of biohacking

·      Bulletproof coffee—make hot coffee put it in blender with butter and 2 tablespoons of triglyceride oil

·      Facebook groups for Ketogenic diet/quitting carbs.

o   Low carb, moderate protein, high fat—goes against long tradition of research; interesting to see how people follow this advice in the face of discouragement from friends, families, doctors

§  People talking about ketogenic diet online are normally citing papers (but you can always selectively find a paper to support a claim);

§  These online communities are like a peer reviewed echo chamber; What new forms of peer review are developing and what forms of evidence are they using? Are people producing their own data, leveraging data produced by ordinary people to challenge and short-circuit ‘science?’

§  Established academia has tended not to think outside the box; Do anecdotes in plural constitute data?

§  Trend of anti-medicalization in a lot of online communities

·      Gluten free movement/subculture feels like they are countering what the medical establishment has ignored for so long; mistrust in scientific authorities for not validating how they are feeling/how gluten negatively impacts their lives

§  Margaret has been tracking pro-ana communities and has websites if people are interested in learning more

o   Online community has allowed people to find each other and a support base for physical/bodily practice that goes against norms, but it can also provide support for people to develop eating disorders

·      Examples like the ketogenic Facebook groups, which are highly moderated, should prompt us to think about issues of expertise in community support and creation; how do dissidents get treated, marginalized, exiled? how they challenge or produce new forms of evidence?

Cultural differences to social media:

·      Can affect family relations; In UAE social media profiles aren’t just  a virtual ‘you’ but represents your whole family; legacy looming/hanging over you.

·      In Senegal memes are overly inspirational

o   Also, when World Health/Unicef left, Senegal people stepped up themselves to continue campaigns using hashtag on twitter; were very successful on social media

·      UCL study’s comparative methodology allowed them, somewhat, to parse culturally specific elements of social media usage from more universal engagements with various platforms