Anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...

of media (also anthropology of mass media, media anthropology) is an area of study within social or cultural anthropology that emphasizes ethnographic studies as a means of understanding producers, audiences, and other cultural and social aspects of mass media.

Methodology

The use of qualitative methods, particularly ethnography, distinguishes media anthropology from other disciplinary approaches to mass media. Within

media studies Media studies is a discipline and field of study that deals with the content, history, and effects of various media; in particular, the mass media. Media Studies may draw on traditions from both the social sciences and the humanities, but mostly ...

, media ethnographies have been of increasing interest since the 1980s. However, as Stephen Putnam Hughes remarks in a recent review, these studies often do not engage in rigorous ethnographic fieldwork, ignoring or misapplying such landmark anthropological techniques as

participant observation Participant observation is one type of data collection method by practitioner-scholars typically used in qualitative research and ethnography. This type of methodology is employed in many disciplines, particularly anthropology (incl. cultural an ...

or long-term fieldwork. Given such differences, anthropologists who take an interest in the media see themselves as forming a distinct subfield from ethnographic approaches to

and

cultural studies Cultural studies is an interdisciplinary field that examines the political dynamics of contemporary culture (including popular culture) and its historical foundations. Cultural studies researchers generally investigate how cultural practices r ...

Theory

The anthropology of media is a fairly inter-disciplinary area, with a wide range of other influences. The theories used in the anthropology of media range from practice approaches, associated with theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu, as well as discussions of the appropriation and adaptation of new technologies and practices. Theoretical approaches have also been adopted from

visual anthropology Visual anthropology is a subfield of social anthropology that is concerned, in part, with the study and production of ethnographic photography, film and, since the mid-1990s, new media. More recently it has been used by historians of science ...

and from film theory, as well as from studies of ritual and performance studies (e.g. dance and theatre), studies of

consumption Consumption may refer to: *Resource consumption *Tuberculosis, an infectious disease, historically * Consumption (ecology), receipt of energy by consuming other organisms * Consumption (economics), the purchasing of newly produced goods for curren ...

, audience reception in media studies,

new media New media describes communication technologies that enable or enhance interaction between users as well as interaction between users and content. In the middle of the 1990s, the phrase "new media" became widely used as part of a sales pitch for ...

and network theories, theories of globalisation, theories of international

civil society Civil society can be understood as the "third sector" of society, distinct from government and business, and including the family and the private sphere.governance in

development studies Development studies is an interdisciplinary branch of social science. Development studies is offered as a specialized master's degree in a number of reputed universities around the world. It has grown in popularity as a subject of study since the e ...

Ethnographic contexts

The types of ethnographic contexts explored in the anthropology of media range from contexts of media production (e.g., ethnographies of newsrooms in newspapers, journalists in the field, film production) to contexts of media reception, following audiences in their everyday responses to media such as newspaper cartoons (Khanduri 2014). Other types include

cyber anthropology Digital anthropology is the anthropological study of the relationship between humans and digital-era technology. The field is new, and thus has a variety of names with a variety of emphases. These include techno-anthropology, digital ethnograp ...

, a relatively new area of

internet research Internet research is the practice of using Internet information, especially free information on the World Wide Web, or Internet-based resources (like Internet discussion forum) in research. Internet research has had a profound impact on the way i ...

, as well as ethnographies of other areas of research which happen to involve media, such as development work, social movements, human rights or health education. This is in addition to many classic ethnographic contexts, where media such as radio,

the press ''The Press'' is a daily newspaper published in Christchurch, New Zealand owned by media business Stuff Ltd. First published in 1861, the newspaper is the largest circulating daily in the South Island and publishes Monday to Saturday. One comm ...

and television (Mankekar 1999, Abu-Lughod 2005) have started to make their presences felt since the early 1990s.Lila Abu-Lughod. (1997) 'The Interpretation of Cultures after Television', ''Representations'', 59: 109-133

Bibliography

*Powdermaker, Hortense. (1950). ''Hollywood, the Dream Factory: An Anthropologist Looks at the Movie-Makers''. Boston: Little, Brown *Spitulnik, Deborah. (1993). ‘Anthropology and Mass Media’, ''Annual Review of Anthropology'', 22: 293-315 * Banks, Marcus & Howard Morphy. (1997). ''Rethinking Visual Anthropology''. New Haven: Yale University Press *Dickey, Sara. (1997). ‘Anthropology and Its Contributions to the Study of Mass Media’, ''International Social Science Journal'', 153 : 413-427 *Mankekar, Purnima. (1999). Screening Culture, Viewing Politics: An Ethnography of Television, Womanhood, and Nation in Postcolonial India. Durham: Duke University Press. *Askew, Kelly & Richard R. Wilk. (2002). ''The Anthropology of Media: A Reader''. Malden: Blackwell Publishers *Ginsburg, Faye, Abu-Lughod, Lila & Brian Larkin (eds.). (2002). ''Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain''. Berkeley: University of California Press *Peterson, Mark Allen. (2003). ''Anthropology and Mass Communication: Media and Myth in the New Millennium''. New York: Berghahn Books *Born, Georgina. (2004). ''Uncertain Vision: Birt, Dyke, and the Reinvention of the BBC''. London: Secker & Warburg *Rothenbuhler, Eric & Mihai Coman. (2005). ''Media Anthropology''. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications *Larkin, Brian. (2008). ''Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure and Urban Culture in Nigeria''. Durham: Duke University Press *Ganti, Tejaswini. (2012). ''Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry''. Durham & London: Duke University Press *Wortham, Erica. (2013)."Indigenous Media in Mexico: Culture, Community and the State". Duke University Press *Khanduri, Ritu (2014). Caricaturing Culture in India: Cartoons and History of the Modern World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. *Martin, Sylvia J. (2017). Haunted: An Ethnography of the Hollywood and Hong Kong Media Industries. New York: Oxford University Press.

References

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