Daniel Miller

Nell Haynes

Elisabetta Costa

Tom McDonald

Shriram Venkatraman

Razvan Nicolescu

Jolynna Sinanan

Juliano Spyer

Xinyuan Wang

How the World Changed Social Media is the first book in Why We Post, a book series that investigates the findings of anthropologists who each spent 15 months living in communities across the world. This book offers a comparative analysis summarising the results of the research and explores the impact of social media on politics and gender, education and commerce. What is the result of the increased emphasis on visual communication? Are we becoming more individual or more social? Why is public social media so conservative? Why does equality online fail to shift inequality offline? How did memes become the moral police of the internet? Supported by an introduction to the project’s academic framework and theoretical terms that help to account for the findings, the book argues that the only way to appreciate and understand something as intimate and ubiquitous as social media is to be immersed in the lives of the people who post. Only then can we discover how people all around the world have already transformed social media in such unexpected ways and assess the consequences

How the World Changed Social Media

Since the growth of social media, human communication has become much more visual. This book presents a scholarly analysis of the images people post on a regular basis to Facebook. By including hundreds of examples, readers can see for themselves the differences between postings from a village north of London, and those from a small town in Trinidad. Why do women respond so differently to becoming a mother in England from the way they do in Trinidad? How are values such as carnival and suburbia expressed visually? Based on an examination of over 20,000 images, the authors argue that phenomena such as selfies and memes must be analysed in their local context. The book aims to highlight the importance of visual images today in patrolling and controlling the moral values of populations, and explores the changing role of photography from that of recording and representation, to that of communication, where an image not only documents an experience but also enhances it, making the moment itself more exciting.

A Comparative Perspective

Visualising Facebook

Patricia G. Lange

The Routledge Companion to Media Anthropology provides a broad overview of the widening and flourishing area of media anthropology, and outlines key themes, debates, and emerging directions. The Routledge Companion to Media Anthropology draws together the work of scholars from across the globe, with rich ethnographic studies that address a wide range of media practices and forms. Comprising 41 chapters by a team of international contributors, the Companion is divided into three parts: Histories Approaches Thematic Considerations. The chapters offer wide-ranging explorations of how forms of mediation influence communication, social relationships, cultural practices, participation, and social change, as well as production and access to information and knowledge. This volume considers new developments, and highlights the ways in which anthropology can contribute to the study of the human condition and the social processes in which media are entangled. This is an indispensable teaching resource for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students and an essential text for scholars working across the areas that media anthropology engages with, including anthropology, sociology, media and cultural studies, internet and communication studies, and science and technology studies.

The Routledge Companion to Media Anthropology

Drawing on 15 months of ethnographic research in one of the most under-developed regions in the Caribbean island of Trinidad, this book describes the uses and consequences of social media for its residents. Jolynna Sinanan argues that this semi-urban town is a place in-between: somewhere city dwellers look down on and villagers look up to. The complex identity of the town is expressed through uses of social media, with significant results for understanding social media more generally. Not elevating oneself above others is one of the core values of the town, and social media becomes a tool for social visibility; that is, the process of how social norms come to be and how they are negotiated. Carnival logic and high-impact visuality is pervasive in uses of social media, even if Carnival is not embraced by all Trinidadians in the town and results in presenting oneself and association with different groups in varying ways. The study also has surprising results in how residents are explicitly non-activist and align themselves with everyday values of maintaining good relationships in a small town, rather than espousing more worldly or cosmopolitan values.

Values and Visibility

Social Media in Trinidad

दुनिया ने जैसे सामाजिक मीडिया को बदल दिया, हम क्यों पोस्ट करते हैं ग्रन्थ श्रृंखला का पहला ग्रन्थ है जो उन नौ मानवविज्ञानियों के निष्कर्षों पर जाँच करता है जिन्होंने दुनिया भर के समूहों में १५ महीने तक बिताया जिसमे शामिल है ब्राज़ील, चिली, चीन, इंग्लैंड, भारत, इटली, ट्रिनिडाड और टर्की. यह ग्रन्थ एक तुलनात्मक विश्लेषण को प्रदान करता है जो अनुसंधान के परिणाम को संक्षेप में प्रस्तुत करता है और राजनीति और लिंग, शिक्षा और व्यापार पर सामाजिक मीडिया के प्रभाव का पता लगाता है. दृश्य संचार पर बढ़ते हुए ज़ोर का परिणाम क्या है? क्या हम अधिक व्यक्तिगत या सामाजिक बनते हैं? क्यों सार्वजनिक सामाजिक मीडिया अधिक रूढ़िवादी होता है? क्यों ऑनलाइन समानता ऑफलाइन असमानता को बदलने में असफल होता है? कैसे मिमी इंटरनेट के नैतिक पुलिस बन गए? परियोजना के शैक्षिक ढाँचा और सैद्धांतिक शर्तों, जो निष्कर्षों के उत्तरदायी होने में मदद करते हैं, के परिचय से समर्थित होकर यह ग्रन्थ तर्क करता है कि सामाजिक मीडिया जैसे अन्तरंग और सर्वव्यापक वास्तु को समझने और मूल्यांकन करने का एक ही रास्ता पोस्ट करनेवाले लोगों के जीवन में तल्लीन होकर रहना है. तभी हम पता लगा सकते हैं कि दुनिया भर के लोगों ने जैसे सामाजिक मीडिया को अभी तक अप्रत्याशित तरीकों से बदल दिया हैं और उनके परिणाम पर आकलन कर सकते हैं.

A Hindi Translation of How the World Changed Social Media

दुनिया ने जैसे सामाजिक मीडिया को बदल दिया

 Daniel Miller

Come il mondo ha cambiato i social media è il volume complessivo di comparazione dei risultati di un’ampia indagine etnografica, coordinata da Daniel Miller, dall’eloquente titolo “Why We Post”. Nove ricercatori, incluso Miller, hanno trascorso 15 mesi sul campo, in diversi paesi del mondo (Italia del sud, Turchia sudorientale, due siti in Cina, area rurale e area industriale, Trinidad, Inghilterra, India del sud, Cile settentrionale e Brasile) a osservare e studiare, con un approccio etnografico, i modi in cui le persone usano i social media. È un fatto indiscutibile che i social sono entrati nella nostra vita con prepotenza, in modo capillare, per certi aspetti invasivo. Con un linguaggio fluido, talvolta anche colloquiale, il lettore è condotto all’interno di un ambito che gli sembra di conoscere, se non altro perché ne siamo tutti, più o meno, utenti, scoprendo però quanto di valori, di comportamenti culturalmente codificati, di ‘polizia morale’ ci sia dentro i social media. L’approccio qui presentato parte infatti da un’idea un po’ diversa rispetto a quelle più diffuse, e avvalorata nel corso della ricerca: se è indubbio che i social media hanno cambiato il mondo, la questione più interessante riguarda però il modo in cui il mondo li ha cambiati.

Come il mondo ha cambiato i social media

The use of webcam, especially through Skype, has recently become established as one more standard media technology, but so far there has been no attempt to assess its fundamental nature and consequences. Yet webcam has profound implications for many facets of human life, from self-consciousness and intimacy to the sustaining of long-distance relationships and the place of the visual within social communications. Based on research in London and Trinidad, this book shows how 'always-on' webcam is becoming an entirely different phenomenon from the initial use of webcam as a videophone. Webcam is examined within the framework of 'polymedia' - that is, the new environments created by the simultaneous presence of a multiplicity of communication technologies - and used to exemplify a theory of attainment that accepts media technologies as aspects of, rather than detracting from, our basic humanity.

Jolynna Sinanan

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