For this week’s post, I’d like to briefly address some observations and connections that emerged when I was preparing for our discussions on data “exhaust trails” and electoral data visualizations. While conducting some extracurricular research to further inform my analysis of Greenfield (2016)’s “pixelated person”, I stumbled across an Eric Snowden interview from earlier this year in which he described the unique circumstances that enabled him to identify the American government’s unconstitutional surveillance against their own citizens. According to Snowden, the CIA’s internal management system typically maintains a high level of insulation between its employees through heavy encryption, compartmentalization, and the continuous distribution of temporary personal passcodes, meaning that access to information is severely restricted across departments. As a contractor in the CIA’s Office of Information Sharing, Snowden served as the system’s sole auditor, enabling him to inspect the federal government’s data and examine these capillary structures from an outside perspective. It was only through this privileged access that Snowden was able to recognize and distinguish the Foucauldian controls limiting other individuals’ understanding, which in turn led to his discovery of the infamous “Stellarwind” documents. I found this to be a surprisingly appropriate analogy for our study of data and a powerful encapsulation of what we have been attempting to accomplish anthropologically over the course of the semester. Although I understand that it is not a perfect metaphor, I thought it really captured the importance of accounting for context while underscoring the value of embracing an external positionality.

Memes are also a good example of the importance of recognizing one’s context and the confounding influence of situationality on an individual’s interpretation of their environment. As I briefly mentioned in class, I’ve recently become intrigued by the purpose and function of memes in larger society. Memes are traveling allegories, a means of interpreting one’s surroundings and establishing solidarity through satire. Accordingly, operating under Rettberg (2020)’s broad definition of data visualizations as “a form of communication that emphasizes data”, I decided to examine the role of memes in the presidential election as partial preparation for Thursday’s class (p 44). Despite their negative cultural association, many of these memes demonstrated a shocking complexity and sophistication in terms of their messaging. For example, the meme I provided emphasizes the contextuality of the individual not only through its explicit content, but also through the medium itself. In this, the meme is not only directly referring to the subliminal, restrictive effect contextualization can have on one’s understanding, but it is also unintentionally demonstrating the phenomenon to its audience. Stripped of contextualization and rationalization, these memes evolve and take on new meaning. Thus, someone a year, month or even a week from now might have a very different interpretation, as they imbue their own values, perceived knowledge and convictions into their analysis. In many ways, this is reflective of the socially imbedded nature of media, which in turn helps elucidate the Geertzian web of culture we are inextricably immersed in. As such, memes are valuable, yet limited, sources of insight into the nuances of current public discourse. I truly believe that an anthropological study of memes would be significant and interesting, and I hope that more members of the academic community will begin to recognize the merit of their analysis. Thanks guys! Looking forward to seeing you all next week!