Digital anthropology is the anthropological study of the relationship between humans and digital-era technology. The field is new, and thus has a variety of names with a variety of emphases. These include techno-anthropology, digital ethnography, cyberanthropology, and virtual anthropology.
Definition and scope
Most anthropologists who use the phrase "digital anthropology" are specifically referring to online and Internet technology. The study of humans' relationship to a broader range of technology may fall under other subfields of anthropological study, such as cyborg anthropology.
The Digital Anthropology Group (DANG) is classified as an interest group in the American Anthropological Association. DANG's mission includes promoting the use of digital technology as a tool of anthropological research, encouraging anthropologists to share research using digital platforms, and outlining ways for anthropologists to study digital communities.
Cyberspace itself can serve as a "field" site for anthropologists, allowing the observation, analysis, and interpretation of the sociocultural phenomena springing up and taking place in any interactive space.
National and transnational communities, enabled by digital technology, establish a set of social norms, practices, traditions, storied history and associated collective memory, migration periods, internal and external conflicts, potentially subconscious language features and memetic dialects comparable to those of traditional, geographically confined communities. This includes the various communities built around free and open-source software, online platforms such as
4chan
4chan is an anonymous English-language imageboard website. Launched by Christopher "moot" Poole in October 2003, the site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from anime and manga to video games, cooking, weapons, television, ...
and
Reddit
Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") submit content to the site such as links, text posts, imag ...
and their respective sub-sites, and politically motivated groups like Anonymous,
WikiLeaks
WikiLeaks () is an international non-profit organisation that published news leaks and classified media provided by anonymous sources. Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist, is generally described as its founder and director and ...
, or the
Occupy movement
The Occupy movement was an international populist socio-political movement that expressed opposition to social and economic inequality and to the perceived lack of "real democracy" around the world. It aimed primarily to advance social and econo ...
.
A number of academic anthropologists have conducted traditional ethnographies of virtual worlds, such as Bonnie Nardi's study of
World of Warcraft
''World of Warcraft'' (''WoW'') is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) released in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment. Set in the ''Warcraft'' fantasy universe, ''World of Warcraft'' takes place within the world of Azeroth ...
or
Tom Boellstorff
Tom Boellstorff is an anthropologist based at the University of California, Irvine. In his career to date, his interests have included the anthropology of sexuality, the anthropology of globalization, digital anthropology, Southeast Asian studies ...
's study of
Second Life
''Second Life'' is an online multimedia platform that allows people to create an avatar for themselves and then interact with other users and user created content within a multi player online virtual world. Developed and owned by the San Fra ...
. Academic Gabriella Coleman has done ethnographic work on the Debian software community and the Anonymous hacktivist network. Theorist
Nancy Mauro-Flude
Nancy may refer to:
Places France
* Nancy, France, a city in the northeastern French department of Meurthe-et-Moselle and formerly the capital of the duchy of Lorraine
** Arrondissement of Nancy, surrounding and including the city of Nancy
...
conducts ethnographic field work on computing arts and computer subcultures such as systerserver.net a part of the communities of feminist web servers and the Feminist Internet network.
Anthropological research can help designers adapt and improve technology. Australian anthropologist Genevieve Bell did extensive user experience research at Intel that informed the company's approach to its technology, users, and market.
Methodology
Digital fieldwork
Many digital anthropologists who study online communities use traditional methods of anthropological research. They participate in online communities in order to learn about their customs and worldviews, and back their observations with private interviews, historical research, and quantitative data. Their product is an ethnography, a qualitative description of their experience and analyses.
Other anthropologists and social scientists have conducted research that emphasizes data gathered by websites and servers. However, academics often have trouble accessing user data on the same scale as social media corporations like
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...
and data mining companies like Acxiom.
In terms of method, there is a disagreement in whether it is possible to conduct research exclusively online or if research will only be complete when the subjects are studied holistically, both online and offline.
Tom Boellstorff
Tom Boellstorff is an anthropologist based at the University of California, Irvine. In his career to date, his interests have included the anthropology of sexuality, the anthropology of globalization, digital anthropology, Southeast Asian studies ...
, who conducted a three-year research as an avatar in the virtual world
Second Life
''Second Life'' is an online multimedia platform that allows people to create an avatar for themselves and then interact with other users and user created content within a multi player online virtual world. Developed and owned by the San Fra ...
, defends the first approach, stating that it is not just possible, but necessary to engage with subjects “in their own terms”. Others, such as Daniel Miller, have argued that an ethnographic research should not exclude learning about the subject's life outside the internet.
Digital technology as a tool of anthropology
The American Anthropological Association offers an online guide for students using digital technology to store and share data. Data can be uploaded to digital databases to be stored, shared, and interpreted. Text and numerical analysis software can help produce metadata, while a codebook may help organize data.
Ethics
Online fieldwork offers new ethical challenges. According to the American Anthropological Association's ethics guidelines, anthropologists researching a community must make sure that all members of that community know they are being studied and have access to data the anthropologist produces. However, many online communities' interactions are publicly available for anyone to read, and may be preserved online for years. Digital anthropologists debate the extent to which
lurking
In Internet culture, a lurker is typically a member of an online community who observes, but does not participate. The exact definition depends on context. Lurkers make up a large proportion of all users in online communities. Lurking allows use ...
in online communities and sifting through public archives is ethical.
The Association also asserts that anthropologists' ability to collect and store data at all is "a privilege", and researchers have an ethical duty to store digital data responsibly. This means protecting the identity of participants, sharing data with other anthropologists, and making backup copies of all data.
Tom Boellstorff
Tom Boellstorff is an anthropologist based at the University of California, Irvine. In his career to date, his interests have included the anthropology of sexuality, the anthropology of globalization, digital anthropology, Southeast Asian studies ...
Heather Horst
Heather A. Horst is a social anthropologist and media studies academic and author who writes on material culture, mobility, and the mediation of social relations. In 2020 she became the Director of the Institute for Culture and Society at Western ...
Nancy Mauro-Flude
Nancy may refer to:
Places France
* Nancy, France, a city in the northeastern French department of Meurthe-et-Moselle and formerly the capital of the duchy of Lorraine
** Arrondissement of Nancy, surrounding and including the city of Nancy
...
List of important publications in anthropology
This bibliography of anthropology lists some notable publications in the field of anthropology, including its various subfields. It is not comprehensive and continues to be developed. It also includes a number of works that are not by anthropolog ...
*
Digital sociology
The sociology of the Internet involves the application of sociological theory and method to the Internet as a source of information and communication. The overlapping field of digital sociology focuses on understanding the use of digital media a ...
References
Notes
Bibliography
* Budka, Philipp and
Manfred Kremser
Manfred Kremser (30 July 1950 – 3 March 2013) was an Austrian ethnologist and researcher of the human consciousness."CyberAnthropology—Anthropology of CyberCulture" in ''Contemporary issues in socio-cultural anthropology: Perspectives and research activities from Austria'' edited by S. Khittel, B. Plankensteiner and M. Six-Hohenbalken, pp. 213–226. Vienna: Loecker.
* Escobar, Arturo. 1994. "Welcome to Cyberia: notes on the anthropology of cyberculture." ''Current Anthropology'' 35(3): 211–231.
* Fabian, Johannes. 2002. Virtual archives and ethnographic writing: "Commentary" as a new genre? ''Current Anthropology'' 43(5): 775–786.
* Gershon, Ilana. 2010. ''The Break-up 2.0: Disconnecting over new media''. Cornell University Press
* Ginsburg, Faye. 2008. Rethinking the Digital Age. In ''The Media and Social Theory''. Edited by Desmond Hesmondhalgh and Jason Toynbee. New York: Routledge
* Hine, Christine. 2000. ''Virtual ethnography''. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage.
* Horst, Heather and Daniel Miller. 2012. ''Digital Anthropology.'' London and New York: Berg
*Jarzombek, Mark (2016). ''Digital Stockholm Syndrome in the Post-Ontological Age''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
* Kremser, Manfred. 1999. CyberAnthropology und die neuen Räume des Wissens. ''Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien'' 129: 275–290.
* Ito, Mizuko, Sonja Baumer, Matteo Bittanti, danah boyd, Rachel Cody, Rebecca Herr-Stephenson, Heather A. Horst, Patricia G. Lange, Dilan Mahendran, Katynka Z. Martinez, C.J. Pascoe, Dan Perkel, Laura Robinson, Christo Sims and Lisa Tripp. (2010) Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press.
* Paccagnella, Luciano. 1997 . ''Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication'' 3(1).
* Sugita, Shigeharu. 1987. "Computers in ethnological studies: As a tool and an object," in ''Toward a computer ethnology: Proceedings of the 8th International Symposium at the Japan National Museum of Ethnology'' edited by Joseph Raben, Shigeharu Sugita, and Masatoshi Kubo, pp. 9–40. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology. (Senri Ethnological Studies 20)
* Wittel, Andreas. 2000 ''Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research'' 1(1).