Digital Expressions of the Self(ie)

As you read this short course description there are approximately 3 billion people online across the globe. They may be checking their email, sending a Tweet, messaging on WhatsApp, reposting a news article on their Facebook page, talking on Skype, watching a video on YouTube, uploading a video they made on YouTube, participating in one of many multi-player gaming worlds, or simply shopping. In the last decade or so, anthropologists and media studies scholars have grown increasingly interested in the ways ‘the digital’ and its technologies of communication, production, circulation, consumption, and immersion have embedded themselves in our everyday lives. In this seven-day course, we will read ethnographic and selected theoretical texts as well as scrutinize our own practices to think through the impact of digital mediation on our own quotidian experiences. We will strive to engage with the macro-political and policy issues that govern digital media circulation, attend to the material consequences of digital expansion, and examine the ways in which the consumption and production of media reshapes how we come to imagine ourselves as subjects in the world.

To access the course outline and prescribed readings, please click here.

This course will explore theoretical, practical and ethical questions posed by doing research  into digital networks and the blend of on and off-line interactions that make up contemporary  social life. As people at all levels in society increasingly engage with digital platforms in their  social lives, and in their interactions with the state as citizens, it is necessary to think about the  possible ways in which qualitative academic projects to explore these networks produce, share,  and store data. Does working with digital data and methods change the ways in which  researchers are present in the “field” and negotiate consent from research participants? How  do ubiquitous digital platforms, for example WhatsApp, change the ways in which researchers  and their interlocutors interact and co-produce data? How does the materiality of the digital  affect the ways in which research is carried out? How do we negotiate consent and anonymity  when dealing with globally accessible networks? By engaging with practical questions in  workshop settings, and by drawing on and sharing their own experiences of digital culture and  research practice, students will gain a clearer understanding of the possibilities and pitfalls of  qualitative digital research.

To access the course outline and prescribed readings, please click here.