Digital Anthropology Essay

In our society today, anthropology plays a huge role. New cultures, ideas, and social tendencies are being created, and this is all happening due to this new media. Understanding new media and how it affects us as humans is one of the largest questions today. Daniel Miller and Michael Wesch are two professors that study this new media. They want to understand how it is affecting our society today, how we can use it to our advantage, and the consequences on the world. They are doing this ethnographic study in the field of Digital Anthropology.

Digital anthropology is defined as is the study of the relationship between humans and digital-era technology, and extends to various areas here anthropology and technology intersect. Digital anthropology

He is the first anthropologist to create a bachelors and masters program for digital anthropology. He is a professor at the University College of London. He first started looking into digital anthropology when social media was just coming into play. During his years as a professor, less and less students began studying anthropology. He started doing ethnographies about how society is changing due to things like cell phones, social media, and shopping. He wanted to have objects and ideas that we use every day in anthropology, in hope to grow the field, and to understand how society is changing. Prof. Miller wants his knowledge to be easily accessible, so he is trying to make all his ethnographies, research, and projects

High income families see new media as threat and distraction to traditional education. In areas with high social media access and usage, people are largely concerned with surveillance by their own peers. In Turkey, people’s fear is dominated by state surveillance. When looking at relationships they found that people in China have a tendency to befriend strangers on social media. Social media acts almost like a supplement for social engagement, as in southern Italy, where people reported to feeling sufficient social interaction, there is a large lack of social media. Research has shown that newly developed countries like Brazil have enhanced their gender equality because of the awareness brought to those issues by social media. When you look at inequality, Chile used social media to overcome differences in ethnicity and income. India, however, displays their hierarchy in the caste system with social media. Politics, unless it is the United Kingdom or Trinidad, is often not spoken on social media, for the fear and censorship of the government. Social media has vastly improved the visual communication, from Chinese factory worker to chefs from Turkey. Social media, while it may not make people happy, gives them a gloss to show to the public of themselves being happy. All this study showed was that