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20 - Internet Sociality

from Part II - Applications

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2020

By
Moriah Stendel ,
Maxwell J. D. Ramstead  and
Samuel P. L. Veissière
Edited by
Laurence J. Kirmayer ,
Carol M. Worthman ,
Shinobu Kitayama ,
Robert Lemelson  and
Constance A. Cummings
Laurence J. Kirmayer
Affiliation:
McGill University, Montréal
Carol M. Worthman
Affiliation:
Emory University, Atlanta
Shinobu Kitayama
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Robert Lemelson
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
Constance A. Cummings
Affiliation:
The Foundation for Psychocultural Research
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Summary

This chapter offers a cultural epidemiology of digital communities, describing how these groups emerge, bond, and come to develop shared embodied experiences. We argue that online communities, while seemingly novel and often “strange," can offer insights into fundamental mechanisms of human sociality albeit on an unprecedented speed and scale due to specific affordances of cyberspace. After framing this argument, we outline a noncomprehensive anthropological survey of online communities of interest. Our hope is to provide a model for how online communities grow to share interphenomenal experiences despite lack of face-to-face interaction, and how this might inform our understanding of ordinary social cognition.

Keywords

Internethuman socialityembodimentjoint-attentionaffordancescultural epidemiologytechnology
Type
Chapter
Information
Culture, Mind, and Brain
Emerging Concepts, Models, and Applications
 , pp. 461 - 476
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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