Overview

For a long time, anthropologists studied “remote” tribes. Digital Anthropology argues that the most exotic and complex tribe today is the one online. It treats the internet not as a tool, but as a place—a field site where culture happens. It studies World of Warcraft guilds, Twitter subcultures, and how smartphones change family dinners.

Core Idea

The core idea is that the digital is real. Online interactions are not “virtual” in the sense of being fake; they have real-world consequences. A flame war on Facebook causes real stress. A GoFundMe campaign saves a real life. Digital anthropology rejects the “digital dualism” that separates the online from the offline. They are deeply enmeshed.

Formal Definition

The anthropological study of the relationship between humans and digital technologies, focusing on how these technologies mediate social interaction, cultural expression, and the formation of the self.

Intuition

Think of a teenager’s Instagram profile. It is a carefully curated mask, a performance of identity. An anthropologist studies this just like they would study a tribal mask. What are the rules? What happens if you break them? How does the “like” button function as a currency of social status (like shells in the Kula ring)?

Examples

  • Daniel Miller’s “Why We Post”: A global study of social media use. He found that people in different countries use Facebook differently. In Trinidad, it’s for gossip and visibility. In the UK, it’s more private. Technology is not universal; it is culturally specific.
  • Second Life: Tom Boellstorff conducted fieldwork entirely inside the virtual world of Second Life, studying how avatars build houses, fall in love, and create laws.
  • Memes: The folklore of the digital age. They are shared symbols that create in-group solidarity and transmit cultural values (or irony) rapidly.

Common Misconceptions

  • It makes us less human: Anthropologists argue that digital tech often makes us more human—more social, more expressive. We are “natural born cyborgs” (Andy Clark).
  • It isolates us: While it changes how we socialize, studies show that heavy internet users often have larger social networks than non-users.
  • Cyborg Anthropology: A subfield that focuses specifically on the blurring line between human and machine (e.g., pacemakers, smartphones as external brains).
  • Algorithmic Bias: How the code itself contains cultural values (often racist or sexist) because it is written by humans.
  • Networked Individualism: The shift from tight-knit groups (villages) to loose, shifting networks of individuals connected by technology.

Applications

  • Tech Design: Companies like Intel and Microsoft hire anthropologists to understand what people actually need (not just what they say they want) to design better devices.
  • Politics: Understanding how fake news and echo chambers spread is a crucial anthropological problem of our time.

Criticism / Limitations

  • Speed: The internet changes so fast that by the time an ethnography is published (which takes years), the platform (e.g., MySpace) might be dead.
  • Ethics: Is a public tweet “public data”? Can you quote it without permission? The ethics of online privacy are messy.

Further Reading

  • Miller, Daniel. Tales from Facebook. 2011.
  • Boellstorff, Tom. Coming of Age in Second Life. 2008.
  • Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together. 2011. (A more critical/psychological view).