Digital Visibility and Active Ignoring: Insights from Minoritized Norwegians of Asian Descent

ABSTRACT:

This study examines the entanglements of digital and analog sociality, focusing on the processes of inclusion and exclusion among minoritized Norwegians of East and Southeast Asian descent. It does so by delving into mediated visibility and its cultural contextual complexities, exploring the risks and potentials of becoming visible in Norway. While these platforms magnify brutal online harassment, they also facilitate the formation of supportive networks and resilience. Through its ethnographic, non-digital-centric methodology, the study offers nuanced insights into the complexities of digitally embedded sociality. It argues that the risk of mediated visibility for minoritized Norwegians does not only lie in the digital infrastructures themselves, such as monopolized corporate algorithms, surveillance, and datafication, but also in cultural patterns of sociality. These patterns are apparent by the reactions towards the denunciation of racism such as ignoring, denial, trivialization, silence, and blame-shifting. Combining the analytical framework of Norwegian anthropologist Marianne Gullestad with Ann Stoler’s concept of «imperial dispositions of disregard,» and Jacques Rancière’s concept of noise, the study reaffirms the significance of pre-digital social theories in the digital age regarding dynamics of othering.

Cecilia G. Salinas

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