Chapter 16

• Media - Set of technologies that connect multiple people at one time to shared content
• Media Anthropology - a subfield of anthropology that studies mass communication and digital media with a particular interest in the ways in which media are designed or adapted for use by specific communities or cultural groups.
• Media Practices - habits or behaviors of the people who produce media, the audiences who interact with media, and everyone in between.

Meaningful Media

• Mass communication - One-to-many communication that privileges the sender and/or owner of the technology that transmits the media.
• Mediation Anthropology - Reframes the focus of study from media to perception through the senses
• Cultural Identity - the shared sense of identity based on cultural, social, and historical factors that define a group or community.
• Mail-order bride - a woman who advertises her availability for marriage through catalogs or websites, where men can communicate with them, often from different countries.
• Virtual reality software - computer software that creates a simulated environment where users can interact with computer-generated objects and other users.
• Ethnographic fieldwork - a research method used in anthropology where researchers immerse themselves in a particular culture or community for an extended period of time to study their practices, beliefs, and values.
• Cultural relativism - the principle that cultural practices, beliefs, and values should be understood within the context of that culture and not judged by the standards of another culture.
• Mass culture - The ideas and values that are shared by a large number of people through mass media.
• Media studies - The academic field that focuses on the study of media and communication
• American and British cultural studies - Disciplines that focus on interpreting media as "texts" that can reveal cultural values.
• Human Centered Computing - A field that combines anthropology and computer science to study how technology impacts human behavior.
• Diasporic communities - Communities of people who are dispersed from their original homelands.

What makes media possible

• Media infrastructure - Apparatuses that bring networks of technology into existence
• Mechanical infrastructure - Includes the apparatuses that bring networks of technology into existence.
• Cultural infrastructure - Refers to the values and beliefs of communities, states, and/or societies that make the imagining of a particular type of network possible.
• Entangled infrastructures - Various infrastructures that are implicated in the forms of taboo, desire, and fantasy shared by members of a society in locations like the movie theater.
• Participatory media - The use of media to empower individuals and communities to participate in the creation, distribution, and consumption of media content.
• Media activism - The use of media as a tool for social and political change.
• Global media industries - Refers to the global network of media companies, organizations, and institutions involved in the production, distribution, and consumption of media content.
• Mechanical infrastructure - Includes the apparatuses that bring networks of technology into existence.
• Cultural infrastructure - Refers to the values and beliefs of communities, states, and/or societies that make the imagining of a particular type of network possible.
• Fabrication - A technique for reporting on research data that involves mixing information provided by various people into a narrative account that demonstrates the point of focus for researchers.
• Photovoice - A research method that puts cameras into people’s hands so they can make their own representations of their lives and the activities.
• Indigenous media - produced by and for indigenous communities
• Kayapo Video project - Empowered local Kayapo leaders to create a repository of Kayapo culture
• Australian Aboriginal and Indigenous filmmakers - To give a creative voice to people who experience massive culture disruption
• Nura Gili Indigenous Programs Unit - Designed software that allows Australian Indigenous and Aboriginal communities to share culture knowledge about astronomy