Livestreamed land

Scams and certainty in Myanmar's digital land market

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4476157
AutoresHilary Oliva Faxon (0000-0002-6977-8246, University of Montana, USA; University of Copenhagen, Denmark, autor correspondente), Courtney Wittekind (0000-0001-8442-3382, Purdue University, USA), Courtney T Wittekind
Ano2024
Volume42
Fascículo4
Páginas512-533
Data de publicação2024-08-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoEnvironment and Planning D Society and Space (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0263-7758 • E-ISSN: 1472-3433
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/02637758231205958
OpenAlexW4388508958
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas3
Referências citadas51

Scams are endemic to digital capitalism, whether they manifest as bitcoin bubbles or bullshit jobs. Drawing on two years of digital ethnography in Myanmar's Facebook land markets, this article explains what happens when the land scam migrates online. By unraveling warnings of trickery, interviewing wary participants, and inhabiting Facebook Live real estate tours, we argue that the scam is a vocation born of hope and desperation that targets land as the most-stable asset amidst crisis, one which operates through the networked and affective affordances of social media sites. Specifically, we highlight how Facebook enables brokers to 'crowd' transactions and amplify hype around sought-after plots, obscuring risk and responsibility while generating excitement and competition. Live video formats enable brokers to cultivate digital intimacy and authenticity from afar, creating a collective emotional investment in what we call the "virtual reality of land." Bringing together critical geography and media studies, our analysis situates the scam in particular histories of inequality while explaining how these relations are reformulated through social media sites' sensory, affective, and connective affordances

Advertising · Affordance · Asset (computer security · Business · Capitalism · Computer security · Digital media · Ethnography · Internet privacy · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Real estate · Social media · Sociology · Anthropology · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Computer Science · Law · Psychology · Sex work and related issues · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies