Glad to be part of this book project: “Routledge Companion to Media Anthropology”

I am moving to other research topics, but political trolling has been my long-term concern. In this edited volume, I had the opportunity to discuss the issue through more methodological and historical aspects. I am thankful to the editors for their patience with me.

The book info can be found here, and I believe it will gradually be available in online bookstores soon.

Book Description

The Routledge Companion to Media Anthropology provides a broad overview of the widening and flourishing area of media anthropology, and outlines key themes, debates, and emerging directions.

The Routledge Companion to Media Anthropology draws together the work of scholars from across the globe, with rich ethnographic studies that address a wide range of media practices and forms. Comprising 41 chapters by a team of international contributors, the Companion is divided into three parts:

• Histories
• Approaches
• Thematic Considerations.

The chapters offer wide-ranging explorations of how forms of mediation influence communication, social relationships, cultural practices, participation, and social change, as well as production and access to information and knowledge. This volume considers new developments, and highlights the ways in which anthropology can contribute to the study of the human condition and the social processes in which media are entangled.

This is an indispensable teaching resource for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students and an essential text for scholars working across the areas that media anthropology engages with, including anthropology, sociology, media and cultural studies, internet and communication studies, and science and technology studies.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Elisabetta Costa, Patricia G. Lange, Nell Haynes, Jolynna Sinanan

PART I: Histories

1. Media Anthropology and the Digital Challenge

Mark Allen Peterson

1. Indigenous Media: Anthropological Perspectives and Historical Notes

Philipp Budka

1. A Longitudinal Study of Media in Brazil

Conrad Phillip Kottak and Richard Pace

PART II: Approaches

A. Media as Infrastructure

1. “Here, Listen to My CD-R”: Music Transactions and Infrastructures in Underground Hip-Hop Touring

Anthony Kwame Harrison

1. “Technology is Wonderful Until It Isn’t”: Community-Based Research and the Precarity of Digital Infrastructure

Jerome Crowder, Peggy Determeyer, and Sara Rogers

1. Media Migration

Patricia G. Lange

1. The Digitally Natural: Hypomediacy and the “Really Real” in Game Design

Thomas M. Malaby

B. Media as Practice

1. Media Practices and Their Social Effects

John Postill

1. Television is Not a Democracy: The Limits of Interactive Broadcast in Japan

Elizabeth A. Rodwell

1. Producing Place through Play: An Ethnography of Location-based Gaming

Kyle Moore

1. PhotoMedia as Anthropology: Towards a Speculative Research Method

Edgar Gómez Cruz

1. Content-as-Practice: Studying Digital Content with a Media Practice Approach

Christoph Bareither

C. Media as Materiality

1. The Materiality of the Virtual in Urban Space

Jordan Kraemer

1. Anthropology and Digitial Media: Multivocal Materialities of Video Meetings and Deafness

Rebekah Cupitt

1. Cloudwork: Data Centre Labour and the Maintenance of Media Infrastructure

A.R.E. Taylor

1. Media Anthropology and Emerging Technologies: Re-working Media Presence

Sarah Pink, Yolande Strengers, Melisa Duque, Larissa Nichols, and Rex Martin

D. Media as Representation

1. #Everest: Visual Economies of Leisure and Labour in the Tourist Encounter

Jolynna Sinanan

1. Postcolonial Digital Collections: Instruments, Mirrors, Agents

Haidy Geismar and Katja Müller

1. Ethnographies of the Digitally Dispossessed

Heather Ford

PART III: Thematic Considerations

A. Relationships

1. “Friends from WeChat Groups”: The Practice of Friendship via Social Media among Older People in China

Xinyuan Wang

1. Mediated Money and Social Relationships among Hong Kong Cross-boundary Students

Tom McDonald, Holy Hoi Ki Shum and Kwok Cheung Wong

1. Narratives of Digital Intimacy: Romanian Migration and Mediated Transnational Life

Donya Alinejad and Laura Candidatu

B. Social Inequality and Marginalisation

1. Mediating Hopes: Social Media and Crisis in Northern Italy

Elisabetta Costa

1. Digital Inequality and Relatedness in India after Access

Sirpa Tenhunen

1. In This Together: Black Women, Collective Screening Experiences, and Space-Making as Meaning-Making

Marlaina Martin

1. Black Gamer’s Refuge: Finding Community within the Magic Circle of Whiteness

Akil Fletcher

C. Identities and Social Change

1. Inking Identity: Indigenous Nationalism in Bolivian Tattoo Art

Nell Haynes

1. Being Known and Becoming Famous in Kampala, Uganda

Brooke Schwartz Bocast

1. The Hall of Mirrors: Negotiating Gender on Chilean Social Media

Baird Campbell

D. Political Conservatism

1. Media Anthropology and the Crisis of Facts

Peter Hervik

1. Conspiracy Media Ecologies and the Case for Guerilla Anthropology

Leighton C. Peterson and Jeb J. Card

1. Researching Political Trolls as Instruments of Political Conservatism in Turkey: A Historical Framework and Methodological Reflections on a Discourse Community

Erkan Saka

1. Performing Conservatism: A Study of Emerging Political Mobilisations in Latin America using “Social Media Drama” Analysis

Raúl Castro-Pérez

E. Surveillance

1. Algorithmic Violence in Everyday Life and the Role of Media Anthropology

Veronica Barassi

1. Queer and Muslim? Social Surveillance and Islamic Sexual Ethics on Twitter

Benjamin Ale-Ebrahim

1. Queer Sousveillance: Publics, Politics, and Social Media in South Korea

Alex Wolff

F. Emerging Technologies and Contemporary Challenges: Data, AI and VR

1. The Algorithmic Silhouette: New Technologies and the Fashionable Body

Heather A. Horst and Sheba Mohammid

1. Unlocking Heritage In Situ: Tourist Places and Augmented Reality in Estonia

Christian S. Ritter

1. Precarity, Discriminiation and (In)Visibility: An Ethnography of “The Algorithm” in the YouTube Influencer Industry

Zoë Glatt

1. AI Design and Everyday Logics in the Kalahari

Nicola J. Bidwell, Helen Arnold, Alan F. Blackwell, Charlie Nqeisji, |Kun Kunta, and Martin Ujakpa

1. Ethnography of/and Virtual Reality

Lisa Messeri

Afterword

Eric W. Rothenbuhler