Anthropology

Against the background of a recent increase in social media-based dissent, both online and offline, the world has witnessed deeper polarization between camps: The empowered grassroots agency on one side, and the disturbing anchoring of disinformation among the radical right on the other. This calls for further anthropological observation of the formation of public morality shaped by the rapid transformation of mediatized pragmatic and emotional decisions. Over the last ten years, I have been observing such a transformation among Southeast Asian hackers-turned-netizens, Indonesian Jihadists-turned-buzzers, Canadian progressive students-turned-conspiracy theory supporters, and middle class workers-turned rural activists. A concerning commonality between these cases is the increasingly shared symbolism and terms used by the opposing camps to gain more followers, which creates a masked distinction of the respective camps’ values and ideologies. In such a mediatized arena, actors’ reflection on emerging values and morality becomes pragmatic and, to echo Debatin (2010), “begins only after damage has been done”. Reflecting on these findings, my presentation contends that in the age of mediatized exchanges, values are becoming more negotiable, intertwined with a temporal decision to engage in either resistance or conformity.

Contact: tscott@mun.ca for the webex link