Digital Anthropology & Public Affairs
Recently I conducted some research for a national industry association, concerned about how citizens would feel and what their opinions were regarding incoming legislation as well as a series of secondary issues that might influence their industry, perhaps negatively. They needed a response plan, but to do that, they needed to understand what the public dialogue was.
Their first instinct to garner public opinion was the usual, a telephone and email survey and joining an omnibus survey about to be conducted. They did join the omnibus, but rather than do the phone survey, they chose to do a netnographic analysis. In other words, what were citizens saying, across the country, in digital spaces. From social media to news media. The insights we delivered were faster and far more insightful than a phone survey.
They passed along the deeper cultural insights to their national PR firm, who were then able to craft messages that were far more targeted and meaningful.
Traditional methods such as these are still valuable and netnographic research can't replace them, but instead can augment them with another layer of cultural insight they can't deliver.
While some are still a bit confused by the title of Digital Anthropologist, it's a subset of cultural anthropology, it is slowly gaining traction as we realise how much of our lives are spent in digital spaces today.
As a digital anthropologist, I am able to move between digital and real-world spaces, to see how people form a "collective consciousness" as sociologist Emile Durkheim would call it. I can see how ideas spread and evolve across digital communities. How an idea or myth becomes a story, which can then become the narrative. And once a story becomes a narrative, as any public relations practitioner will tell you, it becomes incredibly challenging to change.
Researching and analysing these communities and the public dialogue in the digital world can provide unique insights. Especially when one understands how different cultures can work and how they shift in the digital world.
Whether a social media crisis has started or whether it might start, brands, governments and non-profits can, before an announcement or policy launch, gain some deeper insights that can help them avoid an issue before it becomes one.
Most countries today have multicultural societies and those cultures are reflected in digital spaces. Often, issues can arise quickly online and translate to real-world actions, from protests to activism with politicians to influence public policy.
For PR firms, brands and large organisations, bringing in a digital anthropologist can provide cultural insights and nuanced understandings that traditional public opinion research can't provide. One of the biggest challenges for traditional, analog research firms is that they take a long time to design a survey, deploy it, collect the data and then write the report findings.
Digital anthropology, using the netnography methodology established by Canadian anthropologist Dr. Robert Kozinets, means research work can move faster and at lower cost while respecting privacy and being ethical.
For agencies planning PR campaigns, the work of a digital anthropologist can provide unique insights to help with campaign messaging creative and avoiding any cultural faux-pas that could result in a PR nightmare.
