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Certificate of Achievement
has completed the following course:
An Anthropology of Smartphones: Communication, Ageing and Health
UCL (University College London)
There has never been a device in history as intimate as the smartphone, and this course provides a thorough grounding in understanding it through comparative anthropological research and examples from different fieldsites around the world, including original theories such as ‘the transportal home’. The course focused specifically on older users and looked at how smartphones are used in different social contexts, providing an insight into mobile health, the process of ageing, and much more.
3 weeks, 4 hours per week
Daniel Miller
Professor of Anthropology, UCL
UCL (University College London)
Transcript
Learning outcomes
- Explore how smartphones affect everything in people’s lives from their relationships to participation in cultural life through an anthropological lens.
- Engage with and evaluate the cultural and social contexts of mobile health through ethnography.
- Discuss how discourses about ageing manifest in different global contexts, as well as how ageing is being redefined in the digital era
- Investigate different anthropological methodologies such as participant observation and holistic contextualisation, especially from a collaborative and comparative perspective.
Syllabus
Week 1 - What are smartphones and how have they changed our lives?
- Smartphone use: the wider context
- The smartphone as an object
- Material issues that affect smartphone use
- The smartphone as a ‘transportal home’
- From apps to everyday life
- Screen and social ecology.
Week 2 - Ageing
- Age and the new digital divide
- Ageing today
- What do smartphones do for older people?
- Intergenerational relations
- Learning to use smartphones
Week 3 - Smartphones and health
- An alternative approach to mHealth
- Use of mHealth in different fieldsites
- Smartphones and health services
- Smartphones and access to health information
- Adapting ordinary apps for health purposes
Issued on 12th January 2023
The person named on this certificate has completed the activities in the transcript above. For more information about Certificates of Achievement and the effort required to become eligible, visit futurelearn.com/proof-of-learning/certificate-of-achievement.
This certificate represents proof of learning. It is not a formal qualification, degree, or part of a degree.