My article, for Anthropology News, “Stop Yelling at the TV and Get Online!” has just been published. This is the first of a series of articles I am writing and co-editing about the role that online publishing can play in anthropology. In this first article I give a general introduction to the concept of “blogging”:
Do you gnash your teeth at news stories about African “tribalism,” or how some recently discovered gene “explains” human sexuality? Tired of yelling at the TV set? Newspapers won’t print your letters to the editor?
Until recently there was little an anthropologist could do to rail against the mainstream media. No longer! Self-publication on the Internet used to only be possible for the technologically savvy, but now a new type of software has revolutionized the web, making updating your own website as easy as sending an email. Unlike a traditional website, which often required learning how to manually encode text in HTML, a “blog” (short for “weblog”) automatically formats and displays each new entry as it is posted, archiving older entries by date and subject matter.
The folks at AN have given me permission to reprint the full article on my wiki. You can see it here.
We are still looking for articles for the series. If you are interested in submitting one, read on…
Online Publishing and Anthropology
Anthropology News invites news articles and commentaries to its series on online publishing and anthropology. The submissions should be based on the writer’s publishing experience and knowledge. They should be between 600-800 words for news articles and 800-1000 words for commentaries.
Invited topics for discussion include (but are not limited to):
- Online Access in the Developing World
- Politics and the Internet, a Global View
- Using Online Technology to Teach
- Reviews of New Software for Anthropological Research
- Online Communities
You can e-mail me if interested in submitting an article. (You don’t need to be an anthropologist!)
