Digital Anthropology

Catalog description

There are approximately three billion people online across the globe. They may be checking their email, sending a Tweet, messaging on WhatsApp, reposting a news article on their Facebook page, talking on Zoom, watching or uploading a video on YouTube or TikTok, participating in one of many multi-player gaming worlds, or simply shopping. In the last decade or so anthropologists and media studies scholars have grown increasingly interested in the ways the internet and its participatory promise has embedded itself in our everyday lives. In this course we will read ethnographic and selected theoretical texts as well as scrutinize our own practices to engage with ongoing debates in anthropology and cognate disciplines around the growing global significance of the internet and its mediating technologies.