TY - JOUR
T1 - Livestreamed land
T2 - Scams and certainty in Myanmar’s digital land market
AU - Faxon, Hilary Oliva
AU - Wittekind, Courtney T.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2023.
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - Digital geography
KW - Myanmar
KW - platform capitalism
KW - property
KW - scams
KW - social media
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85176336144&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/bfe2bf15-d985-31f3-9e2e-a98909ae5bd0/
U2 - 10.1177/02637758231205958
DO - 10.1177/02637758231205958
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85176336144
SN - 0263-7758
VL - 42
SP - 512
EP - 533
JO - Environment and Planning D: Society and Space
JF - Environment and Planning D: Society and Space
IS - 4
ER -