2010/09/23 by E. Gabriella Coleman · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Computer Science · #Social Media and Politics #Digital Communication and Language #Digital Games and Media
paper · doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.012809.104945
openalex publication_date 2010/09/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
This review surveys and divides the ethnographic corpus on digital media into three broad but overlapping categories: the cultural politics of digital media, the vernacular cultures of digital media, and the prosaics of digital media. Engaging these three categories of scholarship on digital media, I consider how ethnographers are exploring the complex relationships between the local practices and global implications of digital media, their materiality and politics, and their banal, as well as profound, presence in cultural life and modes of communication. I consider the way these media have become central to the articulation of cherished beliefs, ritual practices, and modes of being in the world; the fact that digital media culturally matters is undeniable but showing how, where, and why it matters is necessary to push against peculiarly narrow presumptions about the universality of digital experience.