Anthropology of Social Networking

Anthropology of social networking

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  • A New Public Order: Network Politics and the Tea Party Movement
  • Doing social network sites: the case of Cibervalle
  • Facebook in Trinidad
  • Mobile Berlin: Social Media and the New Europe
  • Occupying Cyberspace: Indonesian Cyberactivism and Occupy Wall Street
  • 'Online togetherness' of Brazilian migrants on social network sites
  • Secret communication systems in Facebook
  • Shifting Fields: Social Media, Religion and Popular Culture in Brazil and the Diaspora
  • Social networking and social science
  • The social experience of ageing in a technologically connected world
  • What 'friends' on the screen may mean: social networking shaping the Filipino diaspora
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ERC/UCL Social networking and social science research project

This program is funded by the European Research Council and is based at the UCL Department of Anthropology. The funding lasts for five years starting from May 2012 with the group work due to begin in September 2012. The core to this study is the tightly integrated comparative work represented by seven simultaneous ethnographies each taking place in a small town environment in their respective countries. These consist of the following:

We consider this to be a very high level team with even the two PhD participants having already published on the topic of social networking sites. In most cases the ethnography is due to start in March 2013 with one year of fieldwork, the team then meet in London for one month and return to the field for a further three months. The arrangements for Trinidad and the UK are slightly different in their logistics. It is possible that we may be joined by other researchers who are not funded from this grant, for example, Amber Wang may provide a second ethnography in China.

As is usually the case for ethnography we will remain open-minded as to what exactly we cover, but there is a core study of 150 informants intended in each place within which some will become closer to the researcher as is typical of ethnographic research. The grant proposal highlights certain issues including a welfare orientation with a concern for the impact on the more impoverished, elderly or housebound populations that this muse be matched by the demographics of usage. We are interested in many other issues such as transnational migration, and the context of Polymedia (see Miller and Madianou 2012) linking social networking with other communicative media. 

We envisage this as a highly collective endeavour, unusual given the tendency towards individuality in anthropology. So we cannot be more specific about our foci of research until the group starts working together and collectively determine the more precise agenda. At this stage we also envisage a wide range of subsequent publications which include issues of theory, challenges to the nature of anthropology, popular writing, multi-media and interactive online dissemination and applied writing concerned with carers and welfare issues. Each project will have also something of its own particular concerns for example Miller, working near London is hoping to work closely with a Hospice and people in end of life situations. In addition to our presence on this site we hope to work with others to create further more interactive blog like sites to exchange ideas and findings in the future.

Image by Johan Larsson.