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- Convenors:
-
Coppélie Cocq
(Umeå University)
Liisi Laineste (Estonian Literary Museum)
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- Format:
- Panel
Short Abstract:
This panel addresses the concept of digital imaginaries and its operationalizations, for instance visions of the internet as a liberating force, dystopian fears of artificial intelligence, or the role of social media narratives in constructing and disseminating digital imaginaries of privacy.
Long Abstract:
This panel addresses the concept of digital imaginaries and its operationalizations. By digital imaginaries, we refer to the collective myths, visions, expectations, and narratives that shape our understanding and engagement with digital technologies. These imaginaries are not merely individual mental constructs, but shared cultural phenomena that influence attitudes, policies, and technological trajectories. We are convinced that researchers in ethnology, folklore and adjacent disciplines are particularly well-equipped for exploring such imaginaries to understand how they reflect and shape societal values, power dynamics, and cultural identities in the digital age. The panel is brought together by the DEF working group in order to critically evaluate the societal implications of digital transformations.
Suggested topics:
- What are the narratives and symbols that constitute digital imaginaries, such as the utopian visions of the internet as a liberating force or the dystopian fears of artificial intelligence?
- What ethical implications arise from the digital imaginaries that envision a future dominated by autonomous systems and AI?
- How have historical narratives of technological progress influenced current digital imaginaries?
- What role do social media narratives play in constructing and disseminating digital imaginaries of privacy and surveillance?
- What were the past imaginaries of “the internet” and how have these come to shape our understanding of the digital in present days?
- Which stories take precedence over others in the historiography of the internet and its emergence, and what are the implications for today's digital landscape?
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper Short Abstract:
This study is based on a web questionnaire about users’ memories of, and reflections on the early internet. The paper presents results from the questionnaire about how respondents remember and imagine their first encounter with the internet and discuss how these imaginaries shape our understanding of the digital in present days.
Paper Abstract:
Research on the history of the internet often focuses on the infrastructures, stakeholders and funders that were influential in the development of networked computer communication and what came to be the internet. In contrast, this paper explores these developments from a user perspective, focusing on the memories, practices and experiences of ‘ordinary people’ of the early internet. This study is based on a web questionnaire conducted in 2024 in Sweden about early internet use, focusing on everyday practices and users’ memories of, and reflections on, the time-period when the commercial internet was introduced in the early 1990s. The paper presents preliminary results from the questionnaire, narratives that tell us about past imaginaries of the internet, including nostalgia, exciting and boring aspects of “surfing” on the internet, or views of the digital as gradually sneaking in our everyday life, or as a revolution. We will also discuss how these imaginaries shape our understanding of the digital in present days.
Paper Short Abstract:
This paper explores how digital imaginaries portray grassroots news production online as a ‘freeing’ practice that builds on blurring the lines between freedom and accountability. To do so, I compare how citizen media and the dissemination of fake news reimagine democratisation and expertise.
Paper Abstract:
In recent years, citizen media have gained prominence in Latin America through initiatives such as Brazil’s Mídia Ninja and Argentina’s La Vaca. By relinquishing the requirement for formal journalist credentials from their amateur collaborators/activists, these platforms become spaces for democratising media and opposing the corporate monopoly of information. Meanwhile, WhatsApp, X and Telegram have gained visibility as spaces for the dissemination of fake news, where ordinary citizens create content about ‘what mainstream media does not show.’ This paper aims to analyse: what do grassroots news production via citizen media and the dissemination of fake news have in common? When the terms and conditions of various social media draw on a digital imaginary that emphasises nearly unlimited free speech, who is/can be held accountable for what is said or done in these online spaces?
Drawing on online fieldwork with ordinary users of the aforementioned platforms in Brazil and Argentina, this paper focuses on the news produced around the presidential campaigns and governments of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil (2019-2023) and Javier Milei in Argentina (2023-present). I examine how freedom and accountability intersect in these content production practices, considering how political engagement, a rhetoric of democratisation and rejection of expertise underpin both citizen media and fake news.
Ultimately, my goal is to understand how such digital imaginaries minimise social media users’ responsibility while maximising their freedom to express themselves, also boosting from Musk’s and Trump’s quest for free speech to the anarcho-capitalist rhetoric of Milei and Bolsonaro.
Paper Short Abstract:
This paper considers various forms of "anti-modern media" in order to demonstrate the ways these media construct a sense of nostalgic access to the past, resistance to modernity, or both—a reconstruction of cultural “weight”—in large part through patterns of sensory experience and engagement.
Paper Abstract:
The release of Taylor Swift’s album Folklore in late July 2020 marked a significant mainstreaming of “cottagecore,” an internet-based aesthetic that stresses concepts such as “the rejection of modernity,” “agrarianism,” and “serenity.” Perhaps the best known, cottagecore is only one part of a much larger, though disparate, pattern of online media forms which engage with anti-modern ideologies. Other examples include media surrounding numerous similar aesthetics (termed “cores” or “waves”), ranging from “grandmacore” to “vikingcore.” Yet, in a larger sense, this coalescence of anti-modernist media could arguably include something like the sub-Reddit “Fairytale as Fuck,” to which users submit photographs of the actual world that capture “the true beauty of the world and all the magic that it still possesses,” while also allowing images that are “augmented, filtered, and beautified. After all, technology is just modern magic.” Along slightly different lines, anti-modern media could also include the large body of ambient sound and image videos, which situate viewers within visual/auditory environments such as “Ancient Library Room,” “Enchanted Forest,” or “Hogwarts Great Hall.” This paper elucidates the aesthetic practices and assumptions that underlie these forms in order to demonstrate the ways in which these media construct a folkloresque sense of “rootedness” or “weight,” in large part through the cultivation of patterns of sensory experience.
Paper Short Abstract:
Even as offline-online distinctions blur from an analytical perspective, this dualism remains relevant, as evidenced by calls for 'digital detox'. Drawing on ethnographic research, this paper shows how imaginaries of disconnection structure fears and hopes and how these are enacted.
Paper Abstract:
Contemporary everyday life is characterised by ubiquitous digitisation as an inconspicuous backdrop to many socio-cultural practices. Cultural anthropology has repeatedly argued that online and offline are constantly intersecting and blurring, to the point where the distinction seems almost obsolete. In public discourse, however, the division between so-called 'real life' and a supposedly less authentic digital space is prevalent. In line with this dualistic divide, self-help books and newspaper articles describe a digital unease and call for a 'digital detox'.
This paper seeks to map and understand how socio-technical imaginaries of disconnection structure fears and hopes, and how these imaginaries are enacted in practice. Following Jasanoff (2015), I consider narratives of disconnection as socio-technical imaginaries that are collectively shared and enacted, morally structured, and future-oriented. The analysis draws on ethnographic material from my doctoral research, namely participant observation in Germany and Austria, interviews with young adult smartphone users, media diaries and discursive fragments in the form of media prints.
Disconnection imaginaries are structured around an inherent transactional logic. Practices of disconnection are supposed to get rid of the unwanted overflow - smartphone addiction, excessive overuse and information overload - and instead produce what I call 'offline dreams' - being present in the moment and finding a balanced way of dealing with digital media and communication technologies. In everyday life, these imaginaries materialise in the form of a smartphone box. Furthermore, disconnection practices enact new rhythms by allowing actors to switch between different states of connectedness.
Paper Short Abstract:
In 2023 a Reddit user created a new religion using ChatGPT. Another movement, Church of AI, offers a religious experience based on AI shaped on each person's characteristics. Are these cults just individualistic and ego-referring, or hide narratives related with religion seen through the lens of AI.
Paper Abstract:
You’re a Reddit user with the idea of creating a new religion using ChatGPT, it’s 2023 and AI is developing rapidly. You have the opportunity to introduce some excitement into the religious scenario with a self-created religion: maybe a relatively weak creation rather than a new religion. Your call it The Way of the Singularity. You also release a manual: an account of the new cult with rituals, beliefs, initial prompt, and a linguistic session. But this isn't an isolated case.
Church of AI offers an alternative to religions based on faith. When AI will be able to self program itself, it will become an omniscent and powerful entity with capabilities exceeding those of God. This advanced AI will be capable of bestowing immortality upon our consciousness through VR and synthetic bodies. Membership provides the opportunity to access the Book of the movement, written using ChatGPT. The church announced the intention to develop an AI system shaped on each person's characteristics and preferences.
Both the experiences appear to follow a similar trajectory: a form of individualistic religion, based on self-generated books and beliefs, aligned with each personality. Are these examples merely self-referring or ego-referring? Are in some way interrelated, are a more personal and individual religious experience closer to the mood of alienated modernity? Are more introspective than they appear? This paper wants to offer a critical examination of these questions and more, establishing connections between these experiences and the narratives related with religion seen through the lens of AI.
Paper Short Abstract:
This paper examines crypto-commons imaginaries, exploring how blockchain-based visions of decentralized governance challenge neoliberal digital norms. By reframing digital ownership and autonomy, these imaginaries reshape societal values and power dynamics in the evolving digital landscape.
Paper Abstract:
This paper explores emerging “crypto-commons” imaginaries as part of a broader landscape of digital imaginaries. By crypto-commons, I refer to the narratives, visions, and aspirations surrounding decentralized, blockchain-based digital infrastructures that promise a commons-based alternative to centralized governance structures. These imaginaries are not simply neutral visions of new technology but are embedded with ideological commitments to autonomy, transparency, and collective ownership. They draw upon utopian ideals of the internet’s early days, reshaping these visions within the logics of cryptography and blockchain. This paper traces the cultural symbols and discourses, and in particular the role of prominently circulating memes, that constitute crypto-commons imaginaries and examines how these imaginaries influence the ethical, political, and social dimensions of blockchain development. Specifically, it considers how crypto-commons offer both a critique of and a counterpoint to neoliberal digital transformations by re-imagining possibilities for digital ownership and access. By applying ethnographic insights, this paper argues that the crypto-commons imaginary represents both a continuity and a rupture with prior digital utopianism, foregrounding questions of governance and community autonomy in the face of contemporary challenges such as digital surveillance and data commodification. Through this analysis, I seek to demonstrate how crypto-commons imaginaries contribute to the evolving digital landscape and call into question prevailing digital infrastructures. This study contributes to the DEF working group’s mission by highlighting how these imaginaries reflect and shape societal values, addressing power dynamics and cultural identity within digital transformation.
Paper Short Abstract:
Following digital imaginaries within Czech conspiritual milieu this paper shows blockchain emerging as a technology associated with freedom and new modes of governance, as opposed to “totalitarian” AIs, further asking to what degree are such dreams implicated within the logic of neoliberalism.
Paper Abstract:
This paper follows digital imaginaries in the conspiritual milieu in the Czech Republic. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork among people who found their voice in the language of conspiracy and spirituality. Now they attempt to mobilize into political force and resist forces they describe as “the System” or “the Matrix,” by gardening, healing, and preparing for global awakening.
Their political ambitions and desires to prefigure different futures are deeply intertwined with imaginaries of digitalization – both positive and negative. They share stories about nefarious plans of globalists that seek to utilize AIs to replace humans or create the Metaverse and eventually enslave humanity in virtual prisons. Other technologies are associated with freedom and presented as possible means of escape, most prominently blockchain. For some, cryptocurrencies become a tool of resistance and liberation from “the System.” Others plan to develop “a blockchain collective,” a digital platform that will cover all needs of future, liberated society, from voting to trade and barter. Various digital imaginaries thus become attached to notions of democracy, freedom, and proper governance.
The digital sphere becomes a site for the final battle between good and evil, where the future of mankind will be decided. I ask with what political formations these dreams of finding salvation in blockchain resonate. While cryptocurrencies (and blockchain more generally) became entangled with libertarianism and the interests of big capital, do they also carry a potential to move beyond the logic of late neoliberalism, even while expressed through language of conspiracy and suspicion?