The digitisation of our everyday lives not only enables anonymous participation, but at the same time bears the threat of undermining privacy, often without the user realizing it. The colloquium focuses on strategies of anonymization in different fields of society and economy. Organizer and PhD candidate Anna Henke (Institute of European Ethnology / Cultural Anthropology) has invited lecturers from fields ranging from IT to participatory community building in order to discuss potentials, impacts, practices and threats concerning online anonymity. The observation preceding the colloquium is that of an”ambivalent rise of anonymity due to increasingly ubiquitous digitalisation and inter-linking, that simultaneously and paradoxically might lead to heightened risk of limited or even impossible anonymity for a specific person.”. The understanding of anonymity discussed in this colloquium is not that of namelessness, but of ‘being untrackable’ (Matthews 2010).

Find the whole programme of the colloquium here.

picture: girl_onthe_les