“Knowledge is a practical assemblage, a ‘mechanism’ of statements and visibilities.” — Deleuze People often ask why I bother learning the algorithms and technologies that drive today’s AI innovations – I am a digital anthropologist after all and not a hard-baked computer scientist. Should I just not focus on the bread-and-butter of qualitative research – thick description, deep contextual knowledge of cultures, in-depth understanding of the nuances of language –
Emma Jacobs explores competing discourses of identity on two Jewish websites. Emma did a module on Transnational Communities and Diasporic media in 2018/19 academic year. Image credit: “Birthright Israel: Bus 423” by HRYMX is licensed under CC BY 2.0 As a genre of travel, Birthright Israel—a free ten-day trip to Israel for Jewish young adults, funded by the Israeli government, Zionist organizations, and private donors—sits at a strange point of
I am glad to announce the publication of a Special Issue on Global Digital Cultures and Extreme Speech published in the International Journal of Communication. This is the outcome of a five-year collaboration with colleagues across the world committed to advancing a more comparative perspective to ongoing debates on online hate speech and violent online political extremism — and most notably collaboration with Professor Sahana Udupa at the Digital Dignity Project, at LMU
For somebody who has been following digital politics globally for more than a decade now, it is sometimes uncanny how hateful, violent and misleading communication – or at least the public and political controversies and moral panics around them – now dominates the global political landscape. Digital media, it seems, is imagined in mostly terms of the dangers it poses: violent extremist propaganda run amok; democratic processes corrupted by disinformation
As a part of the course work at the Centre for Global Media and Communication, we encourage students to explore old academic debates in new and creative ways. For instance, in the Global Digital Cultures MA degree that I convene, this option has been built into the digital assignments that students engage with throughout the year. Such assignments allow the students both a breather from more rigid classical form of academic
When I boldly announce to people that I am starting new research on artificial intelligence (AI) in Ethiopia, a common response to this has been: “Ethiopia? AI? But why there?” My response to this has usually been: “Oh, exactly because this question gets asked!” Indeed, breakthrough advancement in AI technology is predicted to transform every aspect of how people live, work and communicate globally. These debates about what the digital
Is there a role social media can play in shifting perspectives on security challenges and approaches to migrant smuggling and human-trafficking in North Africa? Such a question, I suggest, is becoming more relevant because security perspectives and policies, particularly in the context of migration, are taking shape in a climate of anti-immigration sentiment, racism and xenophobia, which feeds into the securitisation of the humanitarian crisis around North African migration. So
Recent attacks in Christchurch and Sri Lanka have added fuel to the debate about how to resolve what has been described as one of the most intractable problems of the contemporary world – the spread of hate/hateful speech online. However, as some of our recent research shows, what perhaps is a more intractable (and often overlooked) problem than merely removing aggressive or hateful comments from social media is the challenge of
