Research and Activities

Researchers at the Centre for Digital Anthropology explore the diverse ways in which digital technologies are affecting human experience.

Research Themes and Activities

Smart Phones, Social Media and Everyday Life

Theme Lead: Daniel Miller

1) SOCIAL MEDIA AND SMARTPHONES 

One part of this research theme is based on using comparative ethnography to assess the consequences of new digital media. The initial project – Why We Post, resulted in eleven Open Access volumes published by UCL Press examining the way populations have transformed social media across nine fieldsites. A further ten volumes were published as a result of the ASSA (The Anthropology of Smartphones and Smart Ageing) project is investigating the smartphone, based on its use by older people and in relation to their health and welfare. Fieldsites include Al Quds (East Jerusalem), Brazil, Cameroon, Chile, China, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Trinidad, Turkey and Uganda. These volumes are all open access and published by UCL Press. So far they have accumulated more than two million downloads and are amongst the most downloaded open access books across all academic disciplines. 

Recent volumes include The Global Smartphone and one looking at the more applied results of our work called An Anthropological Approach to mHealth. As part of the latter we have developed a game/quiz. This started with observation around the failure of covid vaccination messaging. We used ethnography to try and develop a more effective means of health dissemination. The game called Trini Food Quiz can be downloaded on your app store and teaches about the relationship between diet (salt) and hypertension.

Other work from this section includes a focus on China that has led to the volume Understanding China through Digital Anthropology which will be published by UCL Press and includes many of our recent and current PhD students. Chapters range from the production of algorithms to the use of period-tracking apps and the rise of WeChat entrepreneurship as well as covering work that so far has only been published in Chinese. Miller has a new project to study how digital technologies increase capacities for both care and surveillance and how we balance these two in relation to idea of fairness and unfairness. This is a comparison between Shanghai and London and is in collaboration with Xinyuan Wang. 

2) GAMES FOR WELFARE

A) TRINI FOOD QUIZ You can download this game/quiz from any app store. It was created by Daniel Miller and Sheba Mohammid. It followed the failure of campaigns to persuade people in Trinidad to take the Covid vaccination. We wanted to see if we could use ethnography to make more successful medical campaign to support public health. The main co-morbidity with Covid was hypertension and based on the ethnography we decided to focus on the links between salt and hypertension. The ethnography led us to embed this is a form that was fun, upbeat, appealing to local knowledge and idioms. The game has achieved 21k downloads and over 1,300 comments. 

B) A game called Move Quietly and Tend Things has been created by Kellynn Wee. This is a tabletop role-playing game. It invites you to explore the mysterious origins of a bittersweet utopia set in the ruins of a post climate collapse Southeast Asia. The game asks questions around community-making, more-than-human relations and culpability.

3) THE TIKTOK ETHNOGRAPHIC COLLECTIVE :

The TikTok Ethnography Collective www.tiktokethnography.com is a collaborative research project that brings together undergraduates, postgraduates, lecturers, professors, and non-university members, to conduct research on the social media, micro- vlogging platform TikTok. This research has two main aims: 1) Explore what an ethnographic approach can offer understandings of TikTok. 2) Experiment with the anthropological and pedagogical possibilities of collaboration.

As a collective, they run workshops, conduct interviews, engage in creative writing and drawing, and explore other ways in which we can ethnographically engage with TikTok. They are always open to new members and collaborators. If you are interested in getting involved with the work the collective is doing, please get in touch with Elena Liber (e.liber@ucl.ac.uk), Yathukulan Yogarajah (y.yogarajah@ucl.ac.uk), Toby Austin Locke (toby.locke@ucl.ac.uk)

Objects and Collections in a Digital Age

Theme Lead: Haidy Geismar

This theme covers research on museums, galleries and collections and the study of digital objects. Projects under this theme include Can you Wear a Digital Cloak, a collaboration with researchers in Massey University (Kura Puke and Stuart Foster) to experiment with the digitization of a Maori cloak in the UCL Ethnography Collections. The project has resulted in a number of presentations, exhibitions and publications as well as the first ever virtual marae, projecting Maori elders and customary authorities into UCL's Octagon Gallery. The theme also considers broader issues associated with the digitisation of collections as explored in Museum Object Lessons for the Digital Age which was published in 2018 with UCL press.

@haidygeismar

Data and Society

Theme Lead: Tone Walford

This theme addresses the social implications of emerging data worlds. Research under this theme has explored the cultural bases of data and its organisation, as explored in a recent edited collection in the journal Cultural Anthropology where we asked 'Is there an ontology to the digital?'. Other projects include the creation of an online museum of data and investigations into the relationship between digital data and ethnography as explored in a Ethnography for a Data Saturated World, published in October 2018.

PUTTING DATA JUSTICE IN CONTEXT

This website, which has just been launched and can be found at www.datajusticeincontext.com, examines the anthropological contribution to the meaning of data justice in different places, at different times, and for different people. An initiative in which Tone Walford has been deeply involved, It will provide information on seminars, publications and other events associated with this initiative.

Design and Experiment

Theme Lead: Jerome Lewis

This theme brings together research projects that are using anthropology in the design of digital artefacts. This includes projects like the ExCites Citizen Science project which has developed research applications to use with non-literate communities in forest communities, collaborative design-research focused on rethinking digital energy infrastructures in the UK, and investigations into the place of data in office design.

@ucl_ExCiteS

Engagement with UK Government

Follow the below link to see our engagement with UK government:

Using digital anthropology to shape engagement with UK government | Research Impact - UCL – University College London