What the Hell is Digital Anthropology?
Title: What the Hell is Digital Anthropology?
When: Thu, 16 Mar 2023 3:30 PM – 4:30 PM AEDT
Speaker: Dr Joanne Byrne
Format: 30 minute presentation & 30 minute open discussion via Zoom
Abstract: Digital technologies are a fixture of contemporary life: checking social media on the tram, alt+tabbing between slack, your emails, and work tasks throughout the day, skimming this abstract to see if you should come to this month’s talk, etc. From mobile devices to virtual offices to social media, we constantly interact with ‘the digital’ in ways that shape our worldviews, social norms, and personal relationships. To anthropologists, whose primary concern is the study of human culture, the impact of the digital is immense.
This talk will explore the field of digital anthropology and, through the examination of various case studies, discuss how anthropologists conduct ethnographic research in digital spaces. Digital Anthropology’s methodological toolkit is geared towards tackling the ever-shifting technological landscape, enabling researchers to gain insight into how people actually use digital technologies, the social meanings they ascribe to them, and the impacts of these technologies on society as a whole. An emerging field, Digital Anthropology seeks to understand how people build, use, and are shaped by the digital technologies that constitute our everyday lives.
About the speaker: Joanne Byrne is a digital anthropologist interested in the complex interplay between technology and culture. Her research interests include: gender, identity and digital social spaces as well as identifying intersections between quantitative ‘Big Data’ projects and qualitative social research. Her work is situated in digital ethnography, cross-disciplinary social media analysis, and investigations into the use, construction, and meaning of digital spaces. Her PhD research explored digital social spaces as used in the work- and home-lives of entrepreneurial mothers.
HADES Seminar Series: Humanities in the Digital Age
From the Humanities and Diverse eResearch Scholars group (HADES), this series brings together a wide range of interdisciplinary research at the intersection of Humanities and digital scholarship. We will hear from speakers on topics ranging from digital ethics and machine learning through to architecture and literary studies, but always with a focus on the crucial role that the Humanities play in helping to explain and shape complex human experiences. The series aims to challenge and extend understandings of digital research in the Humanities and present new and emerging work by scholars working across and between disciplines.
Seminars will usually be held monthly on the third Thursday of every month at 3:30pm.
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