How is the newness of new media constructed? Rejecting technological determinism, linguistic anthropologists understand that newness emerges when previous strategies for coordinating social interactions are challenged by a communicative channel. People experience a communicative channel as new when it enables people to circulate knowledge in new…[Read more]

Media workers have always adopted branding tactics for themselves: creating and managing a certain persona, doing the emotional labour necessary in largely informal and reputation-driven working environments to suggest a persona, performing this identity dutifully in order to make it work. However, branding is not an inevitable practice — it is…[Read more]

Media workers have always adopted branding tactics for themselves: creating and managing a certain persona, doing the emotional labour necessary in largely informal and reputation-driven working environments to suggest a persona, performing this identity dutifully in order to make it work. However, branding is not an inevitable practice — it is…[Read more]

Social practices and contingencies always exceed the neoliberal models by which people currently try to contain
the inherent unpredictability of accomplishing social tasks with others, such as getting a job. Contradictions in
neoliberal logics emerge when people try to live according to neoliberal precepts, engaging with other social…[Read more]

Social practices and contingencies always exceed the neoliberal models by which people currently try to contain
the inherent unpredictability of accomplishing social tasks with others, such as getting a job. Contradictions in
neoliberal logics emerge when people try to live according to neoliberal precepts, engaging with other social…[Read more]

Launched in June 2007, the Honesty Box was a Facebook application that allows people
to write anonymously to a Facebook profile. The Honesty Box was a fad,
popular among some groups at the time of my research in 2007–2008, but
which is no longer available. At the time that some IU students were adopting
the Honesty Box with a degree of e…[Read more]

In the 1960s, the descent versus alliance debate dominated kinship studies-anthropologists wanted to determine
what relationship offered the best analytic lens for understanding how social groups were formed.
Those who favored descent felt that the most relevant question to ask was how groups constituted and reconstituted
themselves across…[Read more]

In the 1960s, the descent versus alliance debate dominated kinship studies-anthropologists wanted to determine
what relationship offered the best analytic lens for understanding how social groups were formed.
Those who favored descent felt that the most relevant question to ask was how groups constituted and reconstituted
themselves across…[Read more]

In the 1960s, the descent versus alliance debate dominated kinship studies-anthropologists wanted to determine
what relationship offered the best analytic lens for understanding how social groups were formed.
Those who favored descent felt that the most relevant question to ask was how groups constituted and reconstituted
themselves across…[Read more]

In the contemporary U.S. workplace, corporate personhood is increasingly becoming
the metaphor structuring how job seekers are supposed to present themselves as
employable. If one takes oneself to be a business, one should also take oneself to
be an entity that requires a brand. Some ethnographic questions arise when job
seekers try to embody…[Read more]

In the contemporary U.S. workplace, corporate personhood is increasingly becoming
the metaphor structuring how job seekers are supposed to present themselves as
employable. If one takes oneself to be a business, one should also take oneself to
be an entity that requires a brand. Some ethnographic questions arise when job
seekers try to embody…[Read more]

This volume began with the question: what analytical possibilities can scholarly
work on language ideologies offer the study of media? Studying media ideologies
is not new, but calling the metalanguage that emphasizes the technology or bodies
through which we communicate a “media ideology” is. By examining media ideologies,
the authors in thi…[Read more]