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Key points
- The media landscape is becoming more and more fragmented, which has a significant, complex and unintuitive impact on culture.
- Cultural anthropology differs from classic psychological market research in that it attempts to understand consumers on their own terms.
- Consumer segments may not reflect reality because culture is porous and organic.
Applying anthropology to business means asking the big questions. How does communication influence culture? How does language continue to evolve? And what are the hidden assumptions that shape our consumer behavior and attitudes towards food?
These are the questions that design anthropologist Adam Gamwell explores on a daily basis. They are also among the many questions he explores on his popular podcast, This Anthro Life. In this two-part interview, Adam shares this anthropological perspective. In Part 1, he connected the dots between culture, language, social taboos, and food. In Part 2, below, we explore the atomization of communication and culture, and what it takes to have a consistent platform within the current media landscape.
Matt Johnson: The media landscape continues to shift, becoming more and more fragmented. Compared to previous eras, people now have a much wider range of sources for news, information, and content—all of which shape their worldview. How do you think changing the media landscape is influencing culture? Is it a problem that we’re increasingly getting our “news” from different, oftentimes niche sources?
Adam Gamwell: The changing media landscape is a double-edged sword. As you noted, we have unprecedented access to more sources of information, ideas, and commentaries on current events. However, more options don’t mean we’re each reading more or more diverse sources. In this sense, culture is fragmenting. It is becoming more complex as we generate new and more diverse meanings. There are more niche groups that can become increasingly insulated from others. And within each of our bubbles, we tend to seek out information and ideas that reinforce our own.
Our worldviews are increasingly shaped by niche and different news and content sources. This creates a challenge for building consensus because there isn’t an agreed-upon source of truth.
As an anthropologist, I like to think about culture as a guidebook for how to make sense of the world. It’s a guidebook that gets read to us as kids, that we then interpret and write for ourselves and then pass on to our kids. Culture is how we tell stories. It’s storytelling design. The trick is culture is often like water is to a fish. It’s invisible and difficult to detect without something to contrast it, like air. And even when a fish is in the air, they may not realize it, they just don’t feel good.
In the same way, we may see a news story or source or perspective and not like it, yet we can’t necessarily articulate why. And that’s how different meanings end up becoming more visible to us. Culture helps us decode why we don’t agree on news or information sources. The media landscape does influence culture. But culture also influences how we react to the media landscape.
Matt Johnson: From the standpoint of market research, what would you say is unique about the anthropological/ethnographic approach? What is it able to deliver that other methodologies don’t?
Adam Gamwell: Traditionally, market research puts consumers into segments like millennial moms who want to stay fit or climate-forward spend-thrift, Gen-Z students. This entails grafting industry perspectives and terminology onto people, rather than meeting people where they are at.
Anthropology is intensely curious about how people label themselves, others, and their world. Market labels say more about marketers than they do about consumers, while anthropology aims to understand the world from the consumer’s cultural perspective.
Consumer segments may not reflect reality because culture is porous and organic. Younger people influence older people and vice versa, as the emoji debate or “OK Boomer” memes show us. Anthropology aims to capture this porousness by studying people on their own terms and by continually moving between the forest (culture) and the trees (individuals).
Matt Johnson: You have a prolific podcast, This Anthro Life, which has been delivering incredible episodes for now over eight years! How has podcasting changed in the time you’ve been involved? Is there anything you know now that you wish you would have known when you first started?
Adam Gamwell: I started This Anthro Life in the fall of 2013 before podcasting was a household word. Around that time Serial from This American Life came out. Podcasting had—and to some extent still has—an indie, DIY element. Anyone can make one and put it out to the world. But there’s also been this incredible flourishing professionalization of the medium, which has upped the game of many shows. This also has made it increasingly hard to compete without editorial or financial backing.
First came large public radio companies like NPR and PRX converting some of their most popular radio shows for the on-demand format of podcasting. Then they started creating podcast-first content. As podcasting has become ever more popular, celebrities and Hollywood have gotten into the game, bringing in ever larger audiences and interest from advertisers. Today podcasting is on track to become a billion-dollar industry within the next year.
I wish I knew just how rich, sophisticated, and lively the podcast industry would become. The opportunities, avenues, and infrastructures for professional podcasting available today didn’t really exist eight years ago. So, while we have more tools and services at our disposal today, you’re also competing with a lot more noise.
Podcasting for me has always been a mix of occupational therapy, professional exploration, an exercise in making anthropology mainstream, and personal branding.
This is Part 2 of a two-part interview series with Adam Gamwell. Part 1 can be found here.
This post also appears on the consumerism blog MJISME
