Digital anthropology

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,[1] digital ethnography, cyberanthropology,[2] and virtual anthropology.[3]

Contents
Definition and scope
Methodology
Digital fieldwork
Digital technology as a tool of anthropology
Ethics
Prominent figures
See also
References
Notes
Bibliography
External links

Definition and scope

Digital technology uses binary codes of 0s and 1s to relay messages between machines. 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[4][5] 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 and Reddit and their respective
sub-sites, and politically motivated groups like Anonymous, WikiLeaks, or the Occupy movement.[6]
A number of academic anthropologists have conducted traditional ethnographies of virtual worlds, the
most prominent being Bonnie Nardi's study of World of Warcraft,[7] and Tom Boellstorff's study of
Second Life.[8] Academic Gabriella Coleman has done ethnographic work on the Debian software
community,[9] and the Anonymous hacktivist network.

Anthropological research can help designers adapt and improve technology. Australian anthropologist
Genevieve Bell did extensive user experience research at Intel, which informed the company's approach
to its technology, its users, and its market.[10]

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 up 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 and data mining companies like Acxiom. Anthropologist []
suggests that digital anthropologists avoid relying too heavily on big data in the first place.
Anthropology, he argues, has always been distinguished by its ability to the tell small, personal, and
nuanced narratives that data doesn't reflect.

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, who conducted a three-year research as an avatar in the virtual world Second
Life, 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 of the internet.

Researchers have also debated how best to describe the difference between the physical and the virtual.
[/] believes that the barrier between the physical and the virtual is fading fast with technological
advancement. [] disagrees, arguing that while the virtual has an influence on the physical world and vice
versa, the two will remain distinctive entities in society.

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 in order to store, share, and interpret it.
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 AAA'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 online communities and sifting
through public archives is ethical.[11]

The AAA 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.[12]

Prominent figures
Genevieve Bell
Tom Boellstorff
Gabriella Coleman
Diana E. Forsythe
Heather Horst
Mizuko Ito
Daniel Miller
Mike Wesch

See also
Sociology of the Internet
List of important publications in anthropology
Digital sociology

References

Notes
1. "Techno-Anthropology course guide" (http://www.studyguide.aau.dk/programmes/postgradu
ate/53203/). Aalborg University. Retrieved 14 March 2013.
2. Knorr, Alexander (August 2011). "Cyberanthropology" (http://xirdalium.net/category/anthrop
ology/cyberanthropology/). Peter Hammer Verlag Gmbh. ISBN 978-3779503590. Retrieved
March 14, 2013.
3. Weber, Gerhard; Bookstein, Fred (2011). Virtual Anthropology: A guide to a new
interdisciplinary field. Springer. ISBN 978-3211486474.
4. Word usage mirrors community structure in the online social network Twitter (http://www.epj
datascience.com/content/2/1/3), EPJ Data Science, 25 February 2013
5. Rodrigues, Jason (15 March 2013). "Twitter users forming tribes with own language, tweet
analysis shows" (https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/mar/15/twitter-users-trib
es-language-analysis-tweets). The Guardian.
6. "Abstract of 'The social construction of freedom in free and open source software: Hackers,
ethics, and the liberal tradition' " (https://web.archive.org/web/20171201131803/https://floss
hub.org/node/43). FlossHub. Archived from the original (http://flosshub.org/node/43) on 1
December 2017. Retrieved 11 March 2013.
 7. Nardi, Bonnie (2010). My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of
Warcraft. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 978-0472050987.
8. Boellstorff, Tom (2010). Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the
Virtually Human. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691146270.
9. http://codingfreedom.com/
10. http://money.cnn.com/2010/09/20/technology/intel_anthropologist.fortune/index.htm
11. Varis, Piia (2014). "Digital Ethnography". Tilburg Papers in Cultural Studies: 1–21 – via
Tilburg University.
12. "Digital Data Management - Cultural Module - Learn and Teach" (http://www.americananthr
o.org/LearnAndTeach/Content.aspx?ItemNumber=20671&navItemNumber=20708).
www.americananthro.org. Retrieved 2017-01-30.

Bibliography
Budka, Philipp and Manfred Kremser. 2004. "CyberAnthropology—Anthropology of
CyberCulture" (http://www.philbu.net/media-
anthropology/Budka_Kremser_Cyberanthro.pdf), 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
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. Getting the seats of your pants dirty: Strategies for
ethnographic research on virtual communities (http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol3/issue1/paccagne
lla.html). 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. Ethnography on the move: From field to net to Internet (http://www.q
ualitative-research.net/fqs-texte/1-00/1-00wittel-e.htm). Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung /
Forum: Qualitative Social Research 1(1).

External links
 Computer Mediated Anthropology (https://web.archive.org/web/20070628213024/http://web
3.cas.usf.edu/main/depts/ANT/cma/)
Cyber Studies WebRing (http://www2.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/CyberAnthropology.html)
Centre for Digital Anthropology (University College London) (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/digital-ant
hropology/centre-for-digital-anthropology)
Digital Ethnography Research Centre (RMIT University, Melbourne) (http://www.digital-ethn
ography.net)
Intel Science & Technology Centre (University of California, Irvine) (http://socialcomputing.u
ci.edu)

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