Informational data, we are told, are proliferating ever more rapidly and with increasing complexity. In an age of ‘big data’ we are seeing a broad reaching, and often uncritical fascination with data visualisation and its potential for knowledge generation. At its extreme this represents a fantasy of knowing, or total knowledge. Nonetheless, for those working in visual anthropology, big data and data visualisation offer significant extensions to our ways of knowing and our categories of knowledge. In this article we probe the fascination and potential of data visualisation and its relevance for understanding human experience, social relations and networks. First, we argue that the celebration of informational aesthetics can be understood as a version of the Kantian mathematical sublime. Extending this analysis, we argue that productive possibilities for thinking about data visualisation are to be found in Deleuze’s engagement with the diagram. The diagram, for Deleuze, does not represent but rather operates both as expression and problem resolution. It is incomplete in the dual sense of never capturing the totality of the object and in its dynamism. This approach points to the merits of this investment in data visualisation (the way it works as expression and problem resolution), but highlights the need to be cautious about fetishising the sublimity of ‘beautiful data’.

Digital platforms offer an important means for improving the reach, scale and accessibility of community-based support for those dealing with mental health issues. They enable new forms of health participation. A research gap remains in understanding the role of peer mentors in building effective digital environments for mental health support. This article presents part of a larger study centred on the digital interventions of prominent mental health organisation beyondblue. It combines qualitative content analysis and interviews with prominent peer mentors. The analysis presents insights into how some peer mentors are able to act as mental health influencers and examines their impact and role in activating supportive mental health publics. Effective mental health influencers build demonstrable non-professional expertise and authority and, through affective practices, play an active role in framing and re-framing mental health and recovery, stimulating cohesion-generating cycles of impact feedback among forum participants.

This article explores the productive role of provocation in YouTube publics in the context of two culturally and geographically situated visual events that took place in New Zealand throughout 2011. Through qualitative analysis of the extensive comments fields for the two videos, the article examines the nature of participatory acts associated with what has been called at different times flaming, hating or trolling. The article argues that such acts can only be properly understood within their cultural and geographic context and in their ability to affect and extend ‘agonistic’ publics. The analysis addresses online passion, conflict and vitriol through the notion of ‘acts of citizenship’, as productive forms of provocation.

Health services in high-income countries increasingly recognise the challenge of effectively serving and engaging with marginalised people. Effective engagement with marginalised people is essential to reduce health disparities these populations face. One solution is by tapping into the phenomenon of boundary-spanning people in the community—those who facilitate the flow of ideas, information, activities and relationships across organisation and socio-cultural boundaries. A scoping review methodology was applied to peer-reviewed articles to answer the question: “How do health services identify, recruit and use boundary spanners and what are the outcomes?” The review was conducted in seven databases with search terms based on community-based boundary spanning, marginalised people and health services. We identified 422 articles with the screening process resulting in a final set of 30 articles. We identified five types of community-based boundary spanning: navigators, community health workers, lay workers, peer supporters and community entities. These range from strong alignment to the organisation through to those embedded in the community. We found success in four domains for the organisation, the boundary spanner, the marginalised individuals and the broader community. Quantifiable outcomes related to cost-savings, improved disease management and high levels of clinical care. Outcomes for marginalised individuals related to improved health knowledge and behaviours, improved health, social benefits, reduced barriers to accessing services and increased participation in services. We identified potential organisational barriers to using boundary spanners based on organisational culture and staff beliefs. Community boundary spanners are a valuable adjunct to the health workforce. They enable access to hard to reach populations with beneficial health outcomes. Maintaining the balance of organisational and community alignment is key to ongoing success and diffusion of this approach.

Heavily used hashtags on Instagram and other platforms can indicate extensive public engagement with issues, events or collective experiences. This article extends existing research methods to paint a fuller picture of how people engage collectively with public issues online. Focussing on Instagram content often deemed ‘problematic’, we develop and test what we call a ‘hashtag practice’ approach. This approach targets the hashtag #depressed, and also moves beyond it to (a) incorporate the posts immediately preceding and following a root post, (b) more inclusively sample content associated with the hashtag to combat filtering bias, (c) consider collocated hashtags and (d) draw on contextual cues in the interplay between posts’ visual content, captions and profile management. The method shows the prevalence and significance of aesthetic and memetic practices, and caution in embodiment in mental health posts, revealing more diverse forms of engagement with mental health on Instagram than previous research suggests.

As a form of synthetic media built on the Internet’s extensive visual datasets with evolving machine learning techniques, deepfakes raise the specter of new types of informational harms and possibilities for image-based abuse. There are calls for three types of defensive response: regulation, technical controls, and improved digital or media literacy. Each is problematic by itself. This article asks what kind of literacy can address deepfake harms, proposing an artificial intelligence (AI) and data literacy framework to explore the potential for social learning with deepfakes and identify sites and methods for intervening in their cultures of production. The article applies contextual qualitative content analysis to explore the most popular GitHub repositories and YouTube accounts teaching “how to deepfake.” The analysis shows that these sites contribute to socializing AI and establishing cultures of social learning, offering potential sites of intervention and pointing to new methods for addressing AI and data harms.