As part of his research into Digital Ethnography, Michael Wesch, a cultural anthropologist at Kansas State University created a short video called “Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us“, posted it to the online video sharing site YouTube, and sent the link to a handful of friends and colleages. Within days, the video had spread throughout the blogosphere – a viral video.
The rapid spread of this video nicely illustrates the power of Web 2.0, one of the focuses of Wesch’s class on Digital Ethnography, where students have been researching the social and cultural power of the web alongside related topics such as what makes a viral video.
Wesch’s work was recently profiled in an article on the website Inside Higher Ed. The article also profiles his work with the Digital Ethnography working group at Kansas State University, which examines the impacts of digital technology on human interaction.