Why we post: the anthropology of social media
Beschreibung
The College of Social Sciences is delighted to announce the Distinguished Lecture of Professor Daniel Miller.
Professor Miller is Professor of Anthropology at University College
London, specialising in digital anthropology and social media.
Every day we read items in the newspapers about the impact of social
media on our lives. Have we lost even the possibility of privacy? Is our
attention span diminished? Are young people obsessed by selfies? This
lecture will provide an overview of an extensive research project on the
use and consequences of social media around the world that is resulting
in 11 open access books that try and provides a more authoritative
guide to the impact of social media on society.
The project saw nine anthropologists each spend 15 months living in
eight countries in communities as varied as an English village, a
factory town in China, and a community on the Turkish-Syrian border, an
IT complex set in villages within south India, a low income settlement
in Brazil, as well as sites in Chile, Italy and Trinidad. We were able
to address questions such as - has social media made us more similar or
more different from each other? How has it changed human communication?
Does it make us more individualist and what impacts has it had on areas
such as commerce, education, gender and politics? In conclusion, the
talk will indicate how this comparative global project can also be
turned into new forms of global education.
