Normativity and Materiality: A View from Digital Anthropology

2012 ◽  
Vol 145 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Horst ◽  
Daniel Miller
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Digital Content ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
Digital Infrastructure ◽  
Constant Change ◽  
The Face ◽  
Media And Technology

As with all material culture, the digital is a constitutive part of what makes us human. Social order is itself premised on a material order, making it impossible to become human other than through socialising within a material world of cultural artefacts, and includes the order, agency and relationships between things, and not just their relationship to persons. This article considers the consequences of the digital culture for our understanding of what it is to be human. Drawing upon recent debates concerning materiality in the sub-field of digital anthropology, we focus upon four forms of materiality – the materiality of digital infrastructure and technology; the materiality of mediation; the materiality of digital content; and the materiality of digital contexts – to make the case that digital media and technology are far more than mere expressions of human intention. Rather than rendering us less human, less authentic or more mediated, we argue that attention should turn to the human capacity to create or impose normativity in the face of constant change. We believe these debates around materiality and normativity, while rooted in the discipline of anthropology, have broader implications for understanding everyday practices in the digital age.

Reversal, Disconnect, and Proposition

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Kevin Day
Keyword(s):  
Data Mining ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Interactive Media ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Critical Theories ◽  
Ubiquitous Systems ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
User Data ◽  
Media And Technology ◽  
Interactive Media Art

This paper examines the potential countertactics of contemporary interactive media art to interrogate the data-mining practices that encode the everyday and exploit user data in the big data economy. It argues that noise is the "other" of information, a way to counter the operation of turning the world into data commodities. Through a Brechtian methodology informed by philosophy and critical theories of media and technology, the paper suggests that amplifying the "noise" of the digital media assemblages deviates from their everyday normative functions and estranges our relationship to them, inviting critical ways of understanding, relating to, and engaging these ubiquitous systems. All three noted artworks destabilize the protocols of data-mining to examine data politics. Specifically, the paper looks at three different tactics that amplify the "noise" of digital culture in different ways: reversing roles, disconnecting, and proposing viable alternatives.

scholarly journals Disruption Faces, Inequality, and Its Appearance in Religion: An Integrated Paradigm

Teosofia ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-206
Author(s):  
Syukron Jazila
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Disruptive Innovation ◽  
Material Technology ◽  
Cultural Lag ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
The Face ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
Culture Education

Since the industrial revolution in England around the 18thcentury, the world changed in very fast motion. Sequentially steam engine was found, printing machines, computers, and finally the internet network—a forerunner of the digital era. These all affect without exception, including Indonesia. We live in a world connected one another through communication technology. Departing from this issue, this study focused on the face of religious thought, educational patterns, and culture—especially in Muslims society. Trying to integrate William F. Ogburn's Cultural Lag theory and Disruptive Innovation of Clayton Cristensen, this study found the symptom connection between them. Civilization which consists of two elements: material (technology) and non-material (culture; education) are clearly separated by the abyss. One element flies very fast, and the other crawls slowly. These two things ultimately influence the Muslim religious thinking today. Overlapping the information in digital media every day made religious people did not have time to digest or analyze it. In fact, we found unilateral truth claims from certain groups—in the name of a complete understanding of religion, which is deeply turned out to be ahistorical. Here; disruption is caused by the movement of information that coming so fast—unstoppable and created a shallow, instant and hasty knowledge.

Effects of Image Upload on Social Media as Media Promotion in Journal Publishers

CCIT Journal ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-31
Author(s):  
Untung Rahardja ◽  
Ani Wulandari ◽  
Marviola Hardini
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Digital Content ◽  
Three Solutions ◽  
Conventional Process ◽  
Promotion System

Digital content is content in various formats, whether written, image, video, audio or combination so that it can be read, displayed or played by a computer and easily sent or hared through digital media. Digital content has abundant benefits, especially in the field of promotion. Where when a place of business or a body wants to introduce a product or service that is owned, it definitely requires content such as images as a promotional media. However, if you have to distribute posters to everyone you meet, it is not in line with current technological advancements because you are still using a conventional process. Therefore, to overcome this problem, social media can be used to process digital content easily and quickly. In this study, there are 3 (three) problems that will be overcome by 2 (two) methods, and 3 (three) solutions are produced. The advantage of digital content in social media is that it can be accessed anytime and anywhere, so it is concluded that the use of digital content in social media is able to overcome problems and is a creativepreneur effort found in the promotion system of a journal publisher.   Keywords—Digital Content, Creativepreneur, ATT Journal, Social Media

Education with Digital Culture: Shifting the Paradigms of Prospective Knowledge by Mediatization

MedienJournal ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-17
Author(s):  
Gudrun Marci-Boehncke ◽  
Matthias Rath
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
School Education ◽  
Media Education ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Selection Mechanism ◽  
Competency Frameworks

This article presents the paradigm shift, especially in school education, under the conditions of current mediatization, whereby we understand education initially as a communicative system that is dedicated to the acquisition of new and future relevant knowledge in lifelong processes of appropriation. To this end, educational institutions demand an educational language that screens out those who cannot serve that linguistic register. Arguing with regard to Rawls and Nussbaum, we present this selection mechanism under the conditions of current mediatization as both ideologically outdated and practically reducible and refer to current models of professionalization of teachers and international competency frameworks for digital media education.

Skippable Ads: Interactive Advertising on Digital Media Platforms

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Dukes ◽  
Qihong Liu ◽  
Jie Shuai
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Digital Content ◽  
Interactive Advertising

The growth of YouTube and other digital content platforms in the prior decade may have been aided by their utilization of the skippable ad format, but as that growth tapers, this format may become less valuable to their ad revenue.

scholarly journals Profiles, Identities, Data: Making Abundant and Anchored Selves in a Platform Society

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 169-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lukasz Szulc
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Internet Users ◽  
Social Media Platforms

AbstractThe practice of profile making has become ubiquitous in digital culture. Internet users are regularly invited, and usually required, to create a profile for a plethora of digital media, including mega social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Understanding profiles as a set of identity performances, I argue that the platforms employ profiles to enable and incentivize particular ways and foreclose other ways of self-performance. Drawing on research into digital media and identities, combined with mediatization theories, I show how the platforms: (a) embrace datafication logic (gathering as much data as possible and pinpointing the data to a particular unit); (b) translate the logic into design and governance of profiles (update stream and profile core); and (c) coax—at times coerce—their users into making of abundant but anchored selves, that is, performing identities which are capacious, complex, and volatile but singular and coherent at the same time.

scholarly journals PENINGKATAN PROFESIONALITAS PENGAJAR AGAMA DI ERA DIGITAL MENYONGSONG REVOLUSI 4.0 (Suatu Tinjauan PAK dalam Perspektif Pedagogik Kritis)

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wem. David. Rindengan
Keyword(s):  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Social Facts ◽  
Global Responsibility ◽  
The Face ◽  
Information And Communication ◽  
Contemporary Education ◽  
New Social Order

This paper is a critique of the traditional pedagogic in education using the critical pedagogic concept formulated by George. S. Counts. Critical pedagogic seeks to view the need for a new social society that can cope with various distributions and regulatory needs through education. In the educational world the teacher's role in the school is an active cultural bearer instead of teaching a passive culture. In the context of religious teachers in this regard, will deal with methods of educating that must conform to the development of science and technology. Teacher/lecturer is the creator of the learning process is required to further improve professionalism so as to create a learning society that thinks past the boundaries of kinship, thinking to create a better future. A critical pedagogic concept formulated by George. S. Counts, referred to as "the necessity of a new social order" in the context of the contemporary education are religious teachers/lecturers need to get out of the face of the slave mentality, and consciously raise strength to gain the influence of reaching for power to Can do great goals in caring for mankind, and increase the sense of global responsibility. The authors realize that the learning process based on information and communication technology in Indonesia is not optimal but religious teachers should not only stop the understanding on social facts but then on social actions that can change Social reality becomes a new social order, which is professional religious teachers in the use of information and communication technologies. Keywords: traditional pedagogic, critical pedagogic, professionality, new Social Society order, Global

scholarly journals Social Order and Practical Wisdom of Walking in a Crowd

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 8-29
Author(s):  
Andrei M. Korbut
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Practical Wisdom ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Joint Production ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
Sociological Approach ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
Phenomenal Field ◽  
Almost All

The article suggests returning to the “crowd” as an object of sociological analysis. Crowds have attracted early sociologists because crowds were visual embodiments of social forces that surpass individuals and also served as a symbol of the profound social transformations which were taking place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Analyzing crowds allowed for the first sociologists (G. Simmel, R. Park, M. Weber, E. Durkheim) to oppose the psychological interpretation of mass social phenomena with a purely sociological approach. However, in the second half of the 20th century sociologists had lost almost all interest in the crowd, as it did not meet the interests of researchers of “large” social structures, nor the interests of the proponents of interactionist approaches. This article shows that the crowd can again be made interesting for sociology if we were to consider it from the point of view of the everyday practices of the participants. In these everyday practices a specific form of phronesis, i.e. practical wisdom, technical skill coupled with moral judgment about which action is good and which is not, is implemented. It is shown here that the study of the practical wisdom of walking in a crowd requires special concepts and methods that can be found in phenomenology and ethnomethodology. The article suggests using three such concepts for the analysis of crowds: phenomenal field, oriented object, and figuration of details. With the help of these concepts, the methods of the crowd’s situated social order production are analyzed in relation to the management of speed and trajectories of movement, following one another, walkers’ stopping and slowing down, and joining the crowd. This analysis shows that the joint production of the crowd’s social order by its participants is a situated practice, i.e. it consists of making the local scenes of everyday life familiar and accountable, and of assessing the local adequacy of the actions performed.

scholarly journals Digital culture

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto Acerbi
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Future Directions

Cultural evolution can provide a useful framework to understand how information is produced, transmitted, and selected in contemporary online, digital, media. The diffusion of digital technologies triggered a radical departure from previous modalities of cultural transmission but, at the same time, general characteristics of human cultural evolution and cognition influence these developments. In this chapter, I will explore some areas where the links between cultural evolution research and digital media seem more promising. As cultural evolution-inspired research on internet phenomena is still in its infancy, these areas represent suggestions and links with works in other disciplines more than reviews of past research in cultural evolution. These include topics such as how to characterise the online effects of social influence and the spread of information; the possibility that digital, online, media could enhance cumulative culture; and the differences between online and offline cultural transmission. In the last section I will consider other possible future directions: the influences of different affordances in different media supporting cultural transmission; the role of producers of cultural traits; and, finally, some considerations on the effects on cultural dynamics of algorithms selecting information.

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