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Online Gods

Online Gods is part theoretical exploration into some of the key concepts in the anthropology of media, and part research into how increased online interaction is changing the public sphere. Taking India and the India diaspora as its focal point, the podcast continues in the great anthropological tradition of bringing the global and the specific into conversation with one another as it analyses what online discussions do to political participation, displays of faith and feelings of national belonging. We are also intrigued as to whether a podcast can produce ethnographic theory. We believe It is possible to be both sophisticated and yet comprehensible, and that the spoken form can bring forth an accessibility that is sometimes missing from the written form. We even wonder whether academic podcasting might herald a technologically-enabled return to the centrality of oral traditions in intellectual exploration – can podcasting weaken reading’s hegemonic hold on consumption of academic knowledge? Online Gods is a key initiative of the project ONLINERPOL and is cohosted with HAU Network for Ethnographic Theory. This podcast is hosted by Ian Cook.

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  2. News Images and Surveillance: Online Gods #15

News Images and Surveillance: Online Gods #15

Apr 9, 2019

This month we’re talking about digital news images with Zeynep Gürsel and online surveillance with Nayantara Ranganathan.

What is it that allows certain things to circulate through digital networks and others not? What sort of labour goes into moving certain things along and holding certain things up? How aware are we of the digital architectures through which data – our data – flows?

In this episode of Online Gods we explore these questions and related questions across two different topics – news images and online surveillance.

In the first half of the podcast, we discuss digital news images with anthropologist Zeynep Gürsel, who has undertaken ethnography with those she calls image brokers, the individuals who help turn photographs and other images into news by selecting and circulating them.

Then, in the second half of the podcast we’ll speak with Nayantara Ranganathan a Programme Manager at the Internet Democracy Project about their organisation’s work specifically in regards to research and workshops relating to online surveillance.