MEDIA ANTHROPOLOGY, DIGITAL AND AI STUDIES
At the institute, Prof Dr Udupa has initiated the research and teaching program in Media Anthropology, Digital and AI Studies. This program is steered by the “Center For Digital Dignity” research initiative. The key focus is on dissecting complex relationship between online media cultures and political participation, and advancing critical inquiry on the political impact of digital media, digitalization and artificial intelligence technologies.
It’s interventions in digital research have centered upon long-term ethnographic investigations, emphasis on historical awareness, collaborative mixed methods (data science and qualitative research), policy engagements and multimodal outreach. The program hosts a range of projects, from ethnographic explorations of online cultures in Brazil, Germany, Kenya, India and the UK, to global comparative studies of extreme speech, artificial intelligence, and content moderation.
The courses offered under this program include Politics of Artificial Intelligence; Digital Media Activism; Ethnographic and Mixed Methods for Social Media and AI Research; Hate Speech and Extreme Speech; Introduction to Digital Anthropology; and Nationalism, Populism and Media. The program welcomes doctoral applications on these topics.
At the core of our endeavour is the value of digital dignity – to study and advocate for spaces where political expression can expand in an enabling culture of interactions for prosocial ideals. Center for Digital Dignity is a global network of scholars, policy experts and civil society groups, bridging academic knowledge with policy and outreach. It is an effort to rescue digital cultures of contact from descending into exclusionary discourses based on gender, racist categories, caste, religion, nationality and ethnicity, among others.
The research stream of the program has received funding from the European Research Council (Grant Agreement Number 101122348, 714285 and 957442), the Henry Luce Foundation, Bavarian Institute for Digital Transformation, Bayerische Forschungsallianz, Social Science Research Council Network for Peace, Security and the United Nations, and Cambridge-LMU Strategic Partnership. More updates on the program are available here.