Dhibla Mahamud

MSC DIGITAL ANTHROPOLOGY, UCL SHS

Digital anthropology can be considered to be the study of cultures and communities in relation to the digital world.

I am deeply interested in this subject matter as I wish to tackle online harm, which so impacts our communities. I was drawn to this topic after learning of Facebook’s complicity in the Rohingya genocide among others. I feel that social media companies exercise an unprecedented, undemocratic and quite unlawful amount of power.

Due to the profitability of the disinformation economy and the lack of accountability of these mega corporates, working within these systems to undermine these practices was something that did not appeal to me. I would rather like to understand the spread of disinformation and its appeal, envisaging methods to tackle this from a community perspective.