To decipher consumers' needs, corporate ethnographers review countless Youtube clips and read scads of blogs. "Viewing a film about the Yanomamo tribe in the Amazon rain forest in Anthropology 101 is like seeing a Youtube clip where a little kid in Peoria is sticking marshmallows in his face," Robbie business anthropologist Blinkoff says in The Baltimore Sun.
And by following Flickr an anthropologist can "see what tools people use on a daily level," as well as how their living arrangements in the same room may change over the course of several years, our fellow anthro-blogger Kambiz Kamrani says:
As consumers around the world proactively post to their blogs, stream if not lead parts of their lives online, virtual anthropologists now vicariously 'live' amongst them, at home, at work, out on the streets.
>> read the whole article in The Baltimore Sun
UPDATE: Kambiz Kamrani has blogged about this in the meanwhile: I've been quoted in the Baltimore Sun's "Common realities"
SEE ALSO:
Virtual Armchair Anthropology: Trend Watching Fieldwork Online
Rise of armchair anthropology? More and more scientists do online research
Ethnographic Flickr
Ethnographic Skype
Cyberanthropology news archive
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