10 Media and the Virtual

People produce and consume visual expressions of cultural identity in many ways. From what we wear to what we watch, media weave expressions that can range from the realistic to the aspirational or dystopian. The situations in which media and visual expressions are produced and consumed can vary just as much as the formats and channels in which these images circulate. Examples can range from photographs that appear in print to instantaneous global flows through digital communication channels.

Cultural critic Roland Barthes once observed, “You see the first thing we love is a scene. For love at first sight requires the very sign of its suddenness; and of all things, it is the scene which seems to be seen best for the first time: a curtain parts and what had not yet ever been seen is devoured by the eyes: the scene consecrates the object I am going to love.” While this is a romantic depiction of the scene as it is revealed, this sentiment underscores a key concept in understanding that the visual does not simply exist in the objective sense but is always framed and created for a particular kind of consumption. Whether that framing is highly produced and edited or more of a chance assemblage of factors, an image is an experience that is revealed and something that onlookers encounter with both cognition and emotion.

Decades later, scenes are captured in new ways that Barthes and his colleagues might never have imagined—from immersive virtual reality experiences to online search engines and social media. Yet, elements of what Barthes spoke about still resonate today. Understanding the scene allows us to see how visual expression captures the attention of viewers. At times, the audience is known and catered to as the scene is conceptualized and constructed and at other times, there is less control over how the images will be consumed and in what context. The staging of the scene beckons onlookers to be transported in ways that bring them into the moment while carrying with them all of the things that make them who they are up to this very moment. Such transportation may not always evoke feelings of love or admiration. For example, a scene might call up emotions of horror or disgust, prompting calls for action and change or reflection. But regardless of positive or negative emotion, scenes hold the ability to provoke.

As we have discussed elsewhere in this book, the four fields of anthropology in the US contain many subfields. Within the field of socio-cultural anthropology, we find a wide variety of subfields and applications. We have touched on medical anthropology as one example of a subfield within cultural anthropology; another example is visual anthropology. Across both examples, there are many ethnographies that advance theory and practice with important implications for application inside and outside of academia. In this chapter, we turn to visual anthropology and the study of a broad range of visual representations that can include everything from clothing and the performing arts to photography, media, and virtual worlds. While we will not be able to cover every type of visual representation and its historical trajectory within cultural anthropology, this chapter will highlight several realms where anthropological perspectives have shed light on the impact that visual representations have in societies around the world.

Photography

In print and digital formats, photography is one of the first places where the framing of a scene and its relationship-building power from picture-taker to picture-viewer has been deeply explored. In Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, Roland Barthes writes, “What the Photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once: the Photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially” (1980, 4). The technological advancement of photography, first as a means of capturing an image through light and film and later through digital technologies that allow for sharing in seconds through mobile devices, provides the opportunity to capture a moment and have it circulated ad infinitum. While the sun may set daily and be viewed from a multitude of locations around the world, the exact feeling or moment of that sunset from the photographer’s vantage point and framing is unique. And while such a moment can only take place once, its capturing in a photograph allows it to be repeated both for the photographer who might return to look at the photo any number of times as well as for others with whom the photographer shares the image.

When examined more closely, we see that the photograph is not an exact replica of the moment or experience. Susan Sontag reflects on this transformative nature of photography when she states, “Photographs tend to transform, whatever their subject; and as an image something may be beautiful—or terrifying, or unbearable, or quite bearable—as it is not in real life” (2004, 68). Initially, Sontag’s description of photography as transformative in making images beautiful stirred in circles where even images of war or tragedy could be consumed as art. For example, in his review of Sontag’s On Photography, Derral Cheatwood points out that Sontag does not take into account that photographing itself is a social act. Her focus skews toward “professional photography” which is inherently contextualized as a commercial act. Commercial or professional photography is linked to a job and the valuing of work that comes with professional products which means that those images are intended from inception to have an audience that will pay to consume (Cheatwood 1979). This emphasis is useful in some contexts but leaves out many other spaces where photographic images resonate. For example, it leaves unexplored or only superficially explored, forms of photo-activism.

Anthropological explorations of photography and visual media go beyond art and cultural critique though they can include those circles. Meanwhile, other ethnographic studies include photography as it appears in scientific contexts (e.g., PET scan imagery and how it influences a sense of selfhood and identity) and in everyday contexts. Participatory action research, for example, may include photography as part of its methodology wherein documenting experiences becomes part of action and mobilization rather than commercial consumption of beautiful artifacts.

Photovoice is a means of integrating photography in action research. Gaining traction in the 1990s as a result of the work of Caroline C. Wang and Mary Ann Burris (1997) who spoke about the power of the “photo novella” as a research methodology, photovoice (sometimes referred to as PhotoVoice) became a means of understanding experiences from the lens of people navigating life. Rather than separating the subjects of photographs from the photographer, photovoice in the context of action research centers people who are most impacted by life situations as the ones who are best positioned to document those experiences. Wang and Burris used the photo novella as part of an assessment conducted in rural China where women were asked to document images that expressed feelings like “worry” or “love.” Note that the prompts were not prescribed in ways that asked women to take portraits of family members they loved or of public infrastructures that caused them stress. Wang and Burris also realized that the images meant something evident to the photo-taker but not always explicit to others who would later look upon the image. They incorporated stories in written or oral format to accompany the photographs.

Photographs can serve as data antecedents (or for some, data itself) in that they elicit conversations through interviews or focus groups where photo-takers can explain the “why” behind their choice to capture a particular image. Photographs then immediately live in the context of other expressions that frame their scenes. The scene is framed in the mind of the person taking the photograph the minute they press a button, but additional framing of the scene takes place in writing a caption or recording a story that accompanies the image.

There are typically eight key steps in photovoice methodology: 1) identification, 2) invitation, 3) education, 4) documentation, 5) narration, 6) ideation, 7) presentation, and 8) confirmation (Latz 2017, 4). Identification refers to identifying who the researchers will work with, such as women in rural China in the case of Wang and Burris. Invitation refers to any initial outreach and recruitment followed by education which would include informed consent. The education phase might also include any capacity-building for skills-acquisition or technical orientation if participants are not familiar with the features of a particular type of camera. This might include workshops on how to take images that are in focus or to ensure that one’s fingers are out of frame (unless these are both intentions of the photographer). It may also include education into the ethics of the photo-taking process so that photographers are aware of consent not only for themselves as they participate in the study but also for others who might be depicted in the images. Documentation includes the act of taking the photographs. Narration refers to the description of those images, sharing stories and talking about what the meaning of the photograph and intention of its taking was from the perspective of the photographer. Ideation parallels a kind of group analysis and discussion, which can elucidate any recurring themes among the participants or between participant(s) and researcher(s). In the context of participatory action research where it is important for participants to be interlocutors and part of the research team, active along the entire trajectory of the research, it is recommended that these analyses take place collaboratively with researchers and participant-photographers. Presentation can take many shapes, ranging from a printed collection or a public exhibition as an interactive event or posting the photographs and stories online. Confirmation takes place after presentation to see if others understood the content or were moved by it. This step can be especially important in contexts where the sharing of the results is tied to some kind of “call to action” such as a proposal for policy change.

In one food advocacy campaign, community leaders—mostly mothers and grandmothers living in a particular catchment area within metropolitan Los Angeles—took photographs of food marketing in their neighborhood. They then discussed why they took those photos during a group meeting with the support of promotoras who facilitated the dialogue, and collectively voted on a curated set of photos. Their focus was on the impact that images and marketing had on residents, specifically focusing on its impact on children and their caregivers. They then crafted a list of invitees they wanted to attend their exhibit which was to take place at a community center at a local park. Invitees included representatives from community-based organizations and local schools as well as publicly elected officials and members of the private sector such as businesspeople and grocery store managers. The activity then connected to an action campaign aimed at advertising and encouraging healthier food options for children and families in the neighborhood (Nucho and Nahm 2018).

Art and Consumable Culture

As we have discussed in our section on photography as a visual expression of culture, images can exist for purposes that are not commercial. Art can also be made for both the sake of expression as well as source of income. For example, fashion and jewelry can be expressions of art and identity that are also sold for both aesthetic and functional purposes on the part of the consumer. Clothing can be expressions of identity and culture for artisans who make the objects themselves, be important lifelines for economies (on both the individual and community level), and in turn become expressions of culture for buyers who may or may not align with the initial intentions of the artist. Adrienne Keene writes about her ethnographic experiences at a Native American art show where she spent time at the booth of Kristen Dorsey, an enrolled citizen of the Chickasaw nation and metalsmith who designs and sells Southeastern-inspired jewelry. Keene writes:

Kristen’s work doesn’t fit the stereotypes of Native jewelry, which tend to be built off Navajo, Pueblo, and other southwestern aesthetics—such as silverwork that feature turquoise or stone and shell inlays; Navajo squash blossom necklaces with their characteristic horseshoe-shaped center designs; or designs featuring stampwork, where small images are hammered into silver using metal “stamps.” For most non-Natives, if they think of “Indian jewelry,” and aren’t thinking of beadwork, they’re thinking of this type of design. Kristen instead relies on her Chickasaw culture and her knowledge built through an undergraduate degree in Native American Studies and a BFA. Each of her pieces is deeply researched, tells a story, and is grounded in some aspect of her people (Keene 2019).

Dorsey describes how she is often rejected by cultural gatekeepers from shows because her art does not fall neatly into expected markers of Native culture and even at shows like the one that Keene describes, conversations from potential buyers circle back to questions about her identity—both due to the appearance of the artist and the art itself.

In the world of high fashion and the performing arts, we also find explorations of what beauty and identity might mean. Dorinne Kondo articulates some of the ways in which performative art set on stages such as fashion shows or theater can be a space for conveying messages about racial identity. In About Face (2014), Kondo traverses sites that range from Parisian runways to California theater stages to understand how Asian and Asian American identities are communicated and consumed particularly because all of these settings are interactive moments between viewers and consumers as well as producers and artists. She describes opportunities of political intervention in “commodity capitalism.” On the catwalk and in the world of fashion, Kondo examines the impact that designers like Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto, and Rei Kawakubo (Comme des Garçons) made when they introduced new shapes and textures which many embraced as revolutionary, and others criticized for its aesthetics that defied what beautiful clothing ought to look like. Aesthetic spaces where racial identities among other intersectional identities are “performed” create openings to de-essentialize and challenge stereotypes. Kondo writes, “De-essentializing moves such as these historicize and politicize identity formation, and open up the processes of subject formation—themselves inseparable from gendering, racialization, sexualization, class formation—to potentially change within the discursive possibilities present at a given historical moment” (2014, 7).

At times, visual expressions of culture are not neatly situated in categories that are or are not divorced from financial stakes related to culture. For example, dance can be a means of cultural expression within a community gathering but also a space where prizes and money can be won in competitive spheres. The short documentary film, Sweetheart Dancers, follows the journey of Sean Snyder and Adrian Stevens. In preparing matching regalia and fusing different stylistic backgrounds for sweetheart dances at pow-wows, the couple underscore the importance of Two-Spirit people within their communities while also crafting new ways to perform identity in spaces to challenge some of the established norms of dance and dress (Allaire 2020).

Media and Cultural Production

Attention to infrastructures and the contexts in which visual media are produced and consumed are nothing new to anthropologists who have long been invested in the social practices that form and shape image-making endeavors (Ginsburg 1991, Appadurai 1996). In studying both film and television, audiences often come to see themselves and their identities as part of local, national or global stories. Lila Abu-Lughod writes about television serials in Egypt, a blend of soap opera-like melodrama and political themes, as a means of understanding shifts in religion, gender, and daily life. The consumption of these television serials becomes a critical means by which Egyptians see themselves as part of the nation, as she documents in Dramas of Nationhood: The Politics of Television in Egypt (2004).

As with other visual formats we are describing in this chapter, film can also be a vital space for understanding cultural production, representation, interpretation, and exchange. This invokes close examination of the content of what is portrayed in these moving images as well as the structures and systems in which the content is made and consumed.

In Orientalism, Edward Said outlines how Western attitudes toward the Middle East developed over time, leading to perceptions that often construct exotic images as well as perceptions of villains and terrorists. These caricatures lead to the erasure of complex and diverse regions. Said defines orientalism as “a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient’s special place in the European Western experience” and adds:

The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe’s greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other. In addition, the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience. Yet none of this is merely imaginative. The Orient is an integral part of European material civilization and culture. Orientalism expresses and represents that part culturally and even ideologically as a mode of discourse with supporting institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, doctrines, and even colonial bureaucracies and colonial styles (1978, 1-2).

Orientalism thus goes beyond how another culture or other cultures are represented; it itself becomes a reflection of the world in which the perceiver lives. More recent and contemporary versions of Orientalism have been described as neo-Orientalism, sharing some of the original characteristics of essentializing cultures and peoples in ways that reify stereotypes and erase diversity. Neo-Orientalism also makes explicit political stakes as with narratives couched in Islamophobia particularly post 9/11. Anthropologists have found these concepts useful in thinking through hegemonic Western narratives about other regions, including India and other parts of Asia. For example, music videos are formats where images can be spliced together and in doing so, be a space where versions of Orientalism play out in popular culture.

In addition to the content of what we see depicted in various forms of media, anthropological approaches allow us to closely examine the infrastructures and institutions in which media are produced and consumed. When a film, song, show, or piece of art are produced, what supports and barriers helped or hurt its production along the way? What is the social context in which the artist and producer emerged? Is the artist or creator the same as the producer or production engine? When the product is complete, whether intended for cultural or commercial purposes (or both), how and where is it consumed?

Brian Larkin explores these very questions in his ethnography Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure, and Urban Culture in Nigeria (2008). Larkin digs deep into the social context of film infrastructures in norther Nigeria, with attention to the social space of cinema among Hausa people. He unpacks the cultural logics of media technologies which emerge as part of city life in colonial and postcolonial Nigeria, writing:

Media technologies are more than transmitters of content, they represent cultural ambitions, political machineries, modes of leisure, relations between technology and the body, and, in certain ways, the economy and spirit of an age. Yet at the same time, media such as television, cassettes, and cinema provide the infrastructure to facilitate and direct transnational flows of cultural good and the modes of affect, desire, fantasy, and devotion these goods provoke (Larking 2008, 2).

Larkin draws from the works of Walter Benjamin who provided theoretical framing that helped many people understand cinema as a part of a greater movement of change and transformation (Benjamin 2008, Benjamin 2019). An anthropological lens that pays attention to the particularities of place and culture pushes back on any grand, sweeping narratives that Nigerian media is adopting Western styles or formats and instead, focuses on the production and consumption of media within its own unique historical trajectory. For example, some films emerged as part of the project of the nation-state by blending documentary-style news footage with fictional films and aimed to land messages in the hearts and minds of “citizens” rather than “consumers.” In contrast, other films that emerged in the heart of entertainment and consumer-driven styles aimed to make money and live outside of the realm of government control. Larkin expands, “As illicit moral spaces, commercial cinemas repelled respectable people, attracting only the marginal, the young, or the rebellious. Commercial cinema, as a social space and a mode of leisure, was neither universalizing nor standardizing in any simple way but emerged, over time, as a result of the interaction of the material qualities of the apparatus and its mode of exhibition and the particular social context in which they evolved” (2008, 138). Since the writing and publication of his ethnography, the impact and presence of Nigerian film has only grown in global consumption (whereas his focus was on local consumption of both Nigerian film and other film influences from India, Hong Kong, or the West). Though the phrase “Nollywood” was coined in the early 2000s in reference to blended terms such as Bollywood, Nigerian film and the industry that supports it continued to grow and expand. Rebecca Moudio noted this when describing how the industry served as the second largest employer in the country, employing over a million people and generating $590 million annually in 2013 (Moudio 2013).

Cultural production vis-à-vis media comes from political and economic structures and also points us to the impact those social structures as well as to other major influencers that live in more marginalized spaces. Marginalized spaces may refer to players outside of legal functions or natural realms, but they certainly do not live outside of mainstream impact and imaginaries. In “Of Ghosts and Gangsters: Capitalist Cultural Production and the Hong Kong Film Industry,” Sylvia J. Martin writes about her experience conducting participant observation on films sets in Hong Kong and themes from interviewing film personnel. She draws out the influences that ghosts and gangsters have played in the film industry, arguing against purely rational analyses of the film industry (e.g., solely economic perspectives) to include the concept of “enchantment” wherein film personnel respond and perform in the context of other key factors that live beyond investors or industry drivers in legitimized public and private sectors.

For example, during one filming, Martin notes how stunt workers burn paper money and incense during a Buddhist and Daoist ritual to appease ghosts who might cause accidents on sets. This belief draws from traditions within Cantonese opera where it was thought that ghosts were also members of the viewing audience and caused accidents during the performance. Another ritual that mitigates the risk of spirit possession among actors playing dead or dying characters is the use of red envelopes paid to personnel as a token of respect; money for these payments is included within the producer or director’s film budget (Martin 2012, 32). In addition to the role that ghosts play in film budgets and production practices, Martin also hones in on the role that organized crime or triads have played in backing the film industry, coercing production of particular films, or managing which sites are permitted for filming or not. For example, in some rural areas of Hong Kong, organized crime may demand payment for filming on location or “donations” to local village temples; if payments are not made, personnel may be forcibly blocked from proceeding with filming.

At first glance, understanding ghosts and gangsters in contrast to so-called rational modes of production might be framed as illegitimate. However, Martin argues that “members of these cosmological and criminal underworlds emerge as legitimate participants in the production process. They influence financial, creative, and logistical resources and decisions. They play an uneven yet undeniable role in film production, alternately hampering and helping film personnel. The Hong Kong film industry has had to seek protection and render payments and propitiation to these underworlds,” adding that, “the diverse social worlds of Hong Kong itself are threaded not just into representations of Hong Kong cinema but the very conditions in which filmmaking occurs” (33).

Across these examples from critical theory and drawing from the ethnographic practices of Larkin and Martin in Nigeria and Hong Kong, respectively, we see how anthropology can help us understand how media-making endeavors are nested within broader social and political factors. Whether media-making fall into acts of nation-making and collective identity, acts of stereotyping and marginalizing, or acts that are fluid channels between legitimate and enchanted worlds, it is clear that content does not just exist but rather, they come into being through a myriad of infrastructures, resources, and sentiments that all affect how images are captured and disseminated.

Documentary Films

Documentary filmmaking is an area where we see research taking on new shapes. John L. Jackson is an anthropologist who has deeply explored these cross-sections from specific communities in Harlem to global Black Hebrewism in his film, Bad Friday: Rastafari after Coral Gardens (Thomas, Jackson, and Wedderburn 2011). Across his studies, Jackson shares how film can be a means of connecting worlds and making meaning together.

One place where theory and practice come together in concrete terms is in the ability to film and edit for and with interlocutors while conducting field research. As someone who has the technical skills along with the equipment to support such endeavors, anthropologists in the field can find themselves engaging with interlocutors by offering their practical services (or getting asked to provide such services). Recall our earlier chapter on economics and the discussion of gift giving as a means of strengthening bonds and relationships between people. Practical skills like filming itself becomes a kind of gift exchange for ethnographers immersed in the field. Jackson refers to this as “ethnographic filmflam.”

Jackon reflects on this in “An Ethnographic Filmflam: Giving Gifts, Doing Research, and Videotaping the Native Subject/Object” (2004) as he notes his role as insider/outsider. The term flimflam can refer to a swindle or scam; by using a play on that phrase and converting flim to film, Jackson underscores his questioning of what it means to be considered a “native anthropologist” in visual studies. He opens his reflections while dining at Sylvia’s, a well-known restaurant in Harlem where tourists can be spotted outside taking photographs but also a place he frequents to meet with community activists. One activist states that she can easily film some of her activist work but would like Jackson’s assistance in editing the images into a short documentary film. Later in the piece, Jackson recalls the many other instances where he captured images, from film meant for just himself as a kind of visual field notebook and other times as a kind of gift exchange with interlocutors who asked him to film baptisms or other family milestones. He writes:

Walking the street with my video camera, I am conspicuously the tourist or, even worse, the carpetbagger: still phenotypically Black but not assumed to unproblematically or preternaturally belong. In the context of contemporary gentrifying forces (and with the Black gentry leading a multiracial residential charge that Nellie and others equate with low-income tenant dislocation), being a tourist of any kind links one to that incoming thread. Hostile questions abound, suspicious stares: “What’cha taking pictures for? Looking to buy something around here?” (39)

In this instance, the anthropologist who, through shared experiences as a Black American and someone living in New York shifts from insider status to possible outsider by virtue of the filming of everyday life and archiving of field notes in visual format. In other instances, Jackson is fully immersed as a collaborator. Building on Jean Rouch’s concepts around shared anthropology, Jackson thinks about coproduction of film across both the activist documentary request and requests to videotape social events for some of his interlocutors. The purpose and the circulation shift the nature of film into a gift, one that will not further the ethnography in its final product but in many ways is vital to the real work of anthropological meaning making in contemporary terms as a breakdown of outsider-researcher and insider-informant to interlocutors who develop subjectivities with one another. This is a concrete way in which Marcel Mauss’ concept of the gift can be seen in visual anthropology; the documenting of moments and its offering for purposes and audiences entirely scoped by “subjects” allows for social bonds to be built, strengthened, or continuously defined. In this way, the documenting of anthropological notes and its implications as final ethnographic product can take on many shapes and forms from a parallel process of conveying cultural concepts in visual rather than written format to the continuation of conversation and discourse through the circulation of a documentary film and the additional social contexts in which the film is consumed and critiqued.

New Media and Virtual Worlds

Ethnographic approaches to digital media abound. Some themes and categories to consider in visual media and anthropological scholarship have been outlined by E. Gabriella Coleman (2010) and include the following: 1) cultural politics; 2) vernacular cultures; and 3) prosaics of digital media or how digital media feed into and reflect other types of social practices like trade or faith-based rituals.

On a basic level, the ability to store and house information online provides new digital infrastructures for conducting ethnographic research. In Digital Ethnography: Anthropology, Narrative, and New Media, Natalie Underberg-Goode and Elayne Zorn (2013) share examples from their own work on websites like Folkvine.org and PeruDigital where they house collaborations with artists and collaborators in Peru. They also point to the ways in which digital worlds produce means for curating documents for ethnographic purposes. XML and the ability to use metatags to improve searching capabilities for end-users is one such example.

With the growing development of interactive visual formats online, anthropologists have been exploring more forms of “new” media and virtual worlds that provide opportunities for collaborative meaning-making. New media and virtual worlds can refer to everything from online forums to video games and interactive virtual spaces where one can live and exist through chosen customized avatars. While these formats may have emerged at the forefront as 21st century cultural spaces, theoretical framing around images and their place in simulating the “real” have long been foundational in anthropology and critical theory. For example, in his introduction to Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings (2001), Mark Poster summarizes:

The distinctions between object and representation, thing and idea are no longer valid. In their place Baudrillard fathoms a strange new world constructed out of models or simulacra which have no referent or ground in any “reality” except their own. Simulations are different from fictions or lies in that the former not only present an absence as a presence, the imaginary as the real. They also undermine any contrast to the real, absorbing the real within itself. Instead of a “real” economy of commodities that is somehow bypassed by an “unreal” myriad of advertising images, Baudrillard now discerns only a hyperreality, a world of self-referential signs (6).

Baudrillard challenged the stark differentiation between the real and the unreal through his concept of the hyperreal in Simulacra and Simulations (1981) focusing on popular culture at the time which included advertising images and television formats but his assertion that visual worlds create their own spaces of reference rather than being unreal versions of the actual or real world that our physical bodies inhabit still resonates today.

Second Life is one such space where these themes are explored. Tom Boellstorff writes about this in Coming of Age in Second Life (2008) as he applies classic methods like participant-observation in a field site that is a virtual world. “Being there” is a trope often leveraged in anthropology to demonstrate deep immersion in the worlds we attempt to better understand and conducting field research in Second Life is no exception. However, it does present new factors that come with understanding formal and informal codes of behavior. Though visiting spaces across Second Life might entail flying for a few hours a day each day versus transit on foot, bus, or subway in crowded city streets or on the smaller paths and roads winding through rural villages, the concept of being in the place where things are happening remains the same. Furthermore, chats akin to focus groups are primary sources of data so that weekly digital chats held within Second Life itself is part of the methodology of taking the virtual world as its own referent space. Boellstorff underscores the need to approach virtual worlds on their own terms (the place of study and the methods all aligning to the conducting of research online) rather than toggling between online and offline worlds, noting that meeting interlocutors offline is legitimate but not necessary because “actual world sociality cannot explain virtual world sociality” (2008, 63).  He points to the fallacy of often equating things that happen in the virtual world as not real in contrast to the physical world, noting that things learned online are actual things being learned as part of human experience.

One example of crossing back and forth from virtual to physical worlds includes the real-world impacts of online gambling as demonstrated in a case study of global poker (Farnsworth and Austrin 2010). Farnsworth and Austrin argue that this new media world demonstrates emerging issues in ethnographic practice. They examine global poker through the lens of actor network theory (Latour 2005), a lens through which researchers examine how worlds are brought together and stabilized through actors, objects, technologies, and networks. It distinguishes itself from more traditional ethnographic methods in the ways it emphasizes how sites are made or come into being rather than taking the site for granted. Global poker as a phenomenon is not only a highly profitable enterprise. It is also a “site” that can be found across media formats ranging from television programming, online sites, world tours localizing tournaments in casinos, and apps and sites that can be accessed using mobile devices, laptops, desktops, and a variety of platforms. Technologies that support global poker showcase how media in its various formats can bring together players and viewers who create a new collective group producing and consuming gaming as entertainment.

Another world where players come together from different cities, countries, and socioeconomic classes is the massively multiplayer online game (MMO) of which World of Warcraft (WoW) is one of the most popular. In her ethnography, My Life as Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft (2010), Bonnie A. Nardi shares insights from three years of research conducting participant observation while playing the game in California, attending BlizzCon (an annual gaming convention), and in Internet cafes in China. Video games not only constitute a virtual world that provides new media formats for understanding how culture and community are formed but also challenges popular criticisms of entertainment worlds as frivolous when we see industries taking notice and themselves investing resources into the potential and power of video games. Nardi writes, “Play links us to the upper reaches of the animal kingdom while at the same time generating distinctive cultural constructs. Sports, gambling, and a multitude of games, from mah-jong to Monopoly to World of Warcraft, are some of Homo sapiens’ most curious productions” (2010, 7). She argues that video games are a new visual and performative medium that orient “human activity in a simulating visual environment that makes possible a release of creativity and a sense of empowerment in conditions of autonomy, sociality, and positive reward” (Nardi 2010, 7).

When Nardi first began this research, she knew little about how to engage and over the course of time, learned how to develop her character and “level up.” Leveling up can be achieved through tackling challenges which can help with overall character development in that a more developed character is able to perform more difficult challenges. She also found that players can have more than one character, though they will favor one as their main character. Nardi also shares how she was eventually invited to join a guild but had to try multiple guilds before finding one that she stayed with for the remainder of her study because it was where she most felt a sense of belonging. Even in joining this new world and “being there” as an ethnographer entering the field, Nardi also shines a light on the impact of choosing where an anthropologist will situate their experiences, data collection, and knowledge.

Nardi blends sites from inside WoW to offline spaces to understand how people traverse sites. For example, people can access WoW through specific places that might reference their own class or the societies in which they leave, noting she herself is logging on from her own computer inside her home in the US while other players in China are in public Internet cafes. At conventions, she notes how parents and children will play online together in order to have shared activities and one couple met in WoW, got to chatting, eventually decided to meet offline, got married and started a family. This layering of social relationship challenges any narratives that might depict gamers as loners. Nardi writes, “My data, and that of others, suggest the fundamental wrongheadedness of the stereotype; instead of a withdrawal into fantasy worlds, we see the extrusion of the worlds into ordinary life as family and friends play together, as players gather in Internet cafes, and as they meet and socialize with others online” (2010, 26).

Though the world is a new media format, MMOs and videogames provide an important space for anthropologists in the 21st century to attend to and revisit classic areas of interest and methods. Nardi points out how fieldwork often hangs on logistical complications or barriers such as finding the financial resources or funding for travel to the “site,” coping with adjustment to a new place which might require a combination of vaccinations, medicines, and homesickness. Meanwhile, she notes how she could transport to this world for the one time, relatively lower cost, of the cost of software and monthly subscriptions that allowed her to log in from her home computer. At the same time, some of these differences and perhaps conveniences of marking a virtual world as a site of study also underscore the same level of commitment to field immersion as one might expect for other field sites in the physical world. Nardi writes, “And yet this fieldwork was nearly as immersive as the fieldwork I conducted for my postdoctoral research in Western Samoa or Papua New Guinea, where I accompanied my husband for his doctoral research. I typically played about 20 hours a week. I read fewer novels and slept a bit less. In addition to game play, I read my guild’s website nearly every day and spent considerable time reading about World of Warcraft on the Internet” (2010, 29).

These explorations of digital worlds illustrate how visual media can be spaces for understanding how people build and find communities and cultures. Engagement in these worlds allows players and people to perform complex identities and the ways in which anthropologists themselves enter these worlds and glean insights provides opportunities to understand how cultural analyses of and with media can adapt to new formats that include digital and virtual worlds.

From its earliest inception to its newest iterations, media provides a world of content and process to examine cultural beliefs and practices more closely. While it is just one subfield among many within cultural anthropology, we see how deep and broad examples from visual anthropology can be in surfacing how we think about culture today.