ENDA Network events
Upcoming Events
Use and Misuse of Technologies
27th & 28th June 2025, Dora Allman Room, University College Cork, Ireland
Workshop Theme:
Social media platforms, websites, smartphone games and apps are all designed with specific design functions in mind. Facebook for example, was designed for social networking (as the story goes), websites were originally designed with the intention of sharing information but have since morphed into sites for commerce and streaming. More utilitarian technologies like ChatGPT, translation apps, cryptocurrency, NFTs, QR codes and even video meeting systems all have certain intended purposes that nestle within human everyday lives seeking accommodation and adoption. Yet the ways in which these software-based technologies are used by people often deviate from their envisioned purposes.
The intentional but also unintentional use and misuse of technologies holds a wide array of research possibilities for digital anthropologists. Lemonnier (1993) describes how technical actions and technical choices are encompassed by wider symbolic systems. Beyond the material functionality of a technological artifact there are social and symbolic dimensions ascribed to the technological objects embedded in our cultural landscape. As Lemonnier argues, our social representations of technological objects are not a one-to-one match with any intended function. Meanings bleed across artifact boundaries through our use and social positioning of adopted technologies. With the emergence of so-called artificial intelligences and other newly complex technologies Simondon’s margin of indeterminacy provides a lens through which we might explore use and misuse of new platforms (2017). For Simondon, successful technologies need to be open in order to connect to other systems, and thereby gain broad appeal; thus potential for misuse of technologies might be understood as an inherent affordance of successful technologies rather than something simply a posteriori. Where the intended utility morphs as it coalesces within existing social representations, the relationship between technics and culture needs to be examined. What does it mean for human values, what does it mean for human experience, what does it mean for cultural resilience? What does resistance look like when algorithms segment, surveil and discipline?
Register Your Interest:
This inaugural ENDA workshop acts as a forum for discussions on digital technologies, broadly defined, and the misuse, abuse, and failure or refusal to use them. Potential themes include research on crypto, the dark web, hacking, trolling, misinformation and radicalisation online and digital activism. We invite perspectives from art and design communities in addition to perspectives on everyday practices around technologies that subvert the original designers’ intentions. Please submit a brief motivational statement between 150 and 250 words outlining how your research speaks to the topic using the online form here. Priority is given to PhDs and ECRs. There are limited spaces and some funding is available to help with costs for unfunded scholars who are members of EASA.
Application Form: here
Closing Date: 14th March 2025
Confirmation of Acceptance: 31st March 2025
Network Convenors: Rebekah Cupitt, Jolynna Sinanan, James Cuffe
Workshop Facilitation: Isla Francis, Sam Rumé
For queries, please email Isla: ifran001(at)gold.ac.uk
Past Events
Network Meeting
24 July 2024 15:00 CEST, Barcellona
The meeting took place at the EASA2024 Conference
ENDA bi-annual workshop
Started in 2022 at UCL, London, the Digital Anthropology Day is a 1 day workshop held with anthropologists researching digital cultures and technologies, and/or using digital ethnographic methods. The workshops include students, PhD candidates, post-doctoral researchers, and faculty and provide a forum for discussion and knowledge exchange across geographic specialisations, media technologies and theoretical approaches.
The next workshop will be held in 2024 and hosted by Goldsmiths. Find out more by signing up for our mail list or reaching out to our network convenors.
