Cellular Connections Project at the 15th Annual American University Public Anthropology Conference

On Saturday 27 October 2018, the Cellular Connections Project hosted a panel titled “Activism, Media Ideologies, and Digital Identity: Material and Cultural Aspects of Cell Phones” at the 15thAmerican University Public Anthropology Conference in Washington, DC. The conference was held at the Mary Graydon center.

The panel consisted of Project Manager Katelyn Schoenike, High School Intern Evie Wolfe, GW PhD Candidate Devin Proctor, and former research assistant for the project Nicole Merullo. I chaired and moderated the panel. Each of the four outstanding papers presented ongoing research from the Cellular Connections Project or personal research from the field of digital anthropology.

(left to right) Devin Proctor, Evie Wolfe, Nicole Merullo, Katelyn Schoenike, and Samuel Pfister at the Mary Graydon Center

Katelyn’s paper titled “You Can’t Sit With Us: Digital Dialogues Redefining Cafeteria Space” was based on countless hours of participant observation and work with interlocutors at Woodrow Wilson High School in Tenleytown. Evie’s paper emerged from her ongoing senior capstone project at School Without Walls High School that looks at the many ways that high school students in DC engage with the activist world around them through their devices, drawing astute connections to global movements for empowerment and emancipation. Nicole—now a Hall of Human Life Education Associate at the Museum of Science in Boston recounted and presented her pioneering development of an ethnographic method for observing and qualifying distraction in the classroom, “Towards a Typology for Distraction.” Finally, Devin’s paper,“Otherkin: Identity and Technology on the Periphery,” explored the peripheries of the Otherkin community on platforms such as Tumblr and YouTube and how Otherkin identity is misrepresented through the appropriation of the digital content they create.

Following the panel, the audience was engaged in an extended question-and-answer period that drew connections between the papers on the construction and deconstruction of digital social network boundaries, best practices for cell phones in classrooms, and the relationship between identity appropriation and alt-right politics.

The entire panel was recorded and will be transcribed. The full proceedings of the panel will be made available on our website.