via Tomorrow Culture By Samuel Gerald Collins and Matthew Slover Durington
Samuel Collins and Matthew Durington are anthropology professors at Towson University and this is a part of their larger project “Anthropology by The Wire" (These guys are brilliant humans)
Coming to Terms with Networked Anthropology
"…To us, this looks more and more like the emergence of a different kind of anthropology. It’s where the academy meets the community, not in the style of the well-choreographed, collaborative anthropology that is one of the triumphs of applied anthropology, but something altogether messier: a networked anthropology. What is a networked anthropology? An anthropology undertaken in the age of multimedia social networks, one in which all of the stakeholders—ethnographers, interlocutors, community, audience—are all networked together in various (albeit powerful and unequal) ways.
Networked anthropology generates ethnographic data in multiple media. Here it overlaps with similar advances in different subdisciplines, including visual anthropology, public anthropology and action research. The difference is that a networked anthropology produces data that is simultaneously media to be appropriated and utilized by the communities with whom anthropologists work in order to connect to others (other communities, potential grantors, friends and family). And the opposite is also true—anthropologists are only generating data for their research in the space of their engaged commitments to communities to assist in their efforts to network to different audiences. We firmly believe that a networked anthropology is not appropriate for many fieldsites anthropologists might encounter. But whether or not we engage it as a distinct methodology, networked anthropology is lurching forward with or without us—with students and para-ethnographers stepping in to represent communities, and people in communities stepping in to represent themselves…”
Social TV companies have to better serve the academic and anthropology fields. Are there any companies (other than Bluefin) active in academics? Let me know @Stottle