Media Anthropology Workshop bei der 10. EASA Konferenz, 26.-30. Aug., Ljubljana, Slovenia

Auch wenn Papers nur von EASA (European Association of Social Anthropologists) Mitgliedern eingereicht werden können, ist die Information trotzdem interessant:

Workshop: MEDIA,TECHNOLOGY, AND KNOWLEDGE CULTURES: ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ISSUES OF DIVERSITY, MUTUALITY AND EXCLUSION

Convenors:
Cora Bender (University of Bremen)
Ian Dent (University of Cambridge)
Discussant:
Dorle Dracklé (University of Bremen)

Abstract

In the recent years, many scholars in the field of media anthropology have pointed out the necessity to study media as technology, in order to further decenter the textual content of media in favor of their social context. However, what do we mean by technology? This workshop intends to inspire the reception of recent debates in anthropology and related neighboring disciplines which have expanded the perspectives on technology vastly. Science and technology studies, material culture studies, ecology and environmentalism, medical anthropology, and anthropological studies of cyberspace and technoscience, contribute to a much better understanding of technologies not only as sets of material devices, but as complex, negotiated arrangements of agents, social practices, cultural imaginations, and circulating things. Abandoning older ‘ballistic’ concepts of technologies as physical tools having an ‘impact’ on cultures, research into the dynamics of technoscience suggests that much of what constitutes technology in a given situation is the outcome of politically interested media discourse producing models of diversity, mutuality and exclusion…

Mehr auf: http://media-anthropology.net/events.htm

Social Networks – akademisch relevant?

Die Mailingliste der Association of Internet Researchers steht in Bezug auf Quantität der guten alten nettime Mailingliste der späten 1990er um wenig nach. Aber heute bzw. gestern gings besonders rund. Auslöser war ein Artikel in der Washington Post: About Facebook! Forward March!. In dem Artikel geht es um die akademische Beforschung von Social Networks a la MySpace, Facebook, etc. Warum der Artikel so viel Aufregung auslöst ist wird gleich zu Beginn klar:

The race is on — to an extremely obscure wing of the ivory tower. Who will own the study of the social networking sites? Is it computer science or behavioral science? Is it neuropsychology or artificial intelligence? PhDs around the country are trying to figure out, in their esoteric and socially awkward way, how to get in while the getting’s good.

Viel Kritik muss danah boyd (über die ich bei mir schon geschrieben habe und die auch hier verlinkt ist) einstecken aber auch die AoIR gesamt: zu elfenbeinturm, zu schnelllebig, zu jung, zu unwissenschaftlich.

Was ist das Interweb?

Interweb (sometimes deliberately misspelled intarweb(s)) is a sarcastic term used to indicate inexperience by intentionally and incorrectly merging the Internet and the World Wide Web. The joke is that the correct casual name for the World Wide Web is „the Web,“ which is part of „the Internet,“ and content found on the Web can be said to be either „on the Web“ or „on the Internet.“ „Interweb“ implies a naive confusion of these two terms.

The term interweb originated as the hacker culture response to the ever-increasing influx of inexperienced users to the Internet’s forums and chat rooms. Whereas the Internet had previously been the exclusive domain of the tech-savvy, it was now attracting millions of newcomers (newbies) who were now participating in it (often with poor netiquette). Referring to the Internet as the interweb mocks the inexperience and ignorance of these newcomers, whose lack of understanding of the workings of the ‘net would often amuse or annoy the more experienced. The term interweb is also used in an ironic or post-modern manner by those who understand the full meaning and implications of the word.

von Wikipedia