A new people has emerged in the digital age, that of ‘internet famous’ celebrities. And that new people has a class of social scientist focused on studying them, the digital anthropologist. Crystal Abidin, a professor at Australia’s Curtin University and founding director of the Influencer Ethnography Research Lab there, is such as digital anthropologist. Her research covers influencers – both adult and child and the general pop culture centered on social media, especially in the Asia Pacific region.

In this Social Science Bites podcast, Abidin offers interviewer David Edmonds a metaphor to understand how her cyber-ethnography and digital anthropology work in practice. “I often think of anthropologists as Mars rovers that you throw into these unknown planets, and slowly but surely, we roll around the planet looking for bits of data, bits of material that might be new or novel. We're not going for quantity and volume at this scale. We're looking for what's neglected, unseen, sidelined by the margins, not yet mainstream. And we're measuring how much of these things are characteristic of the planet and worthy of study. … [A]s an anthropologist, given that my fidelity is to people and their cultures, I don't always only go for the shiniest, most mainstream thing. I often look for what's left behind.”

In this conversation, though, Abidin talks about something very shiny indeed – those professional internet celebrities known collectively as “influencers.” She explains how while the top influencers do generate the paydays seen in popular media, the ecosystem extends down to individuals who are spending their own money in hopes of someday making it big. She also draws a distinction between influencers and creators, and also between influencers and memes.

Abidin also dives into regional differences in influencer culture, using her own detailed analysis of Asia Pacific influencer cultures, to explore regional differences that should be understood when assessing content on global platforms. “[I]f we were to discount the hegemony of American popular culture and their stronghold and a lot of social media, the palette is so diverse, the markets are so varied, that trends go in many different directions. So we need to sometimes think about who we are speaking about, what the superpower of the day is, and whenever we make these generalizations, what are the limitations? Who's not included in them?”

In addition to her role at Curtin, Abidin founded the TikTok Cultures Research Network and is an affiliate researcher with the Media Management and Transformation Centre at Jönköping University. She was named an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow for 2019 to 2024. Currently the editor-in-chief of Media International Australia, she has written or edited a number of books that bridge popular concerns with academic rigor, including 2018’s Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame Online and this year’s Influencer Marketing: Interdisciplinary and Socio-Cultural Perspectives (co-edited with Lauren Gurrieri and Jenna Drenten),

Everyone, we assume, wants to be their best person. Few of us, perhaps, none, hits all their marks in this pursuit even if the way toward the goal is generally apparent. If you want to know how to do a better job hitting those marks, whether its walking 10,000 steps, learning Esperanto, or quitting smoking, a good person to consult would be Katy Milkman. Working at the nexus of economics and psychology, Milkman – the James G. Dinan Professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and co-founder of the Behavior Change for Good Initiative at Penn – studies the almost alchemical process of turning good intentions into solid actions.

In this Social Science Bites podcast, she details for interviewer David Edmonds some of the biases and some of the critical thinking processes that both define and then overcome the obstacles to changing our behavior. These range from concepts with such academic names as present bias and temptation bundling to the more colloquial ‘what the hell effect’ and its antidote, the emergency reserve. But the point of her research – especially as it gets translated to the public through her podcast Choiceology or her 2021 book How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be – is to find practical ways to change yourself.

For example, she explains that “it's important for goals to be measurable and achievable, although they should be a stretch. You know, if your goal is ‘exercise more,’ how can you measure that? How could you even set a commitment device, for instance? … It's also important to have a plan of, sort of, when will I do it, where will I do it, how will I get there. These are called “implementation intentions.” I think the most important part of them is they associate a cue with the action. So just like an actor needs a cue to know when to say their lines, we need to not forget to take action on our goals.”

Her influence in turn is felt practically. Choiceology, for example, is sponsored by the brokerage house Charles Schwab, and Milkman has been a consultant for organizations ranging from the U.S. government and Walmart to 24 Hour Fitness and the American Red Cross. She is a former president of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making and a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science.

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There is a natural desire on the part of governments to ensure that their future citizens -- i.e. their nation's children -- are happy, healthy and productive, and that therefore governments have policies that work to achieve that. But good intentions never guarantee good policies.

Here's where economist Janet Currie steps in. Currie is the Henry Putnam Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University, where she co-directs, with Kate Ho, the Center for Health and Wellbeing. In this Social Science Bites podcast, the pioneer in assessing the nexus of policy and parenting explains to interviewer David Edmonds how programs like Head Start in the United States and Sure Start in the United Kingdom provide real benefits over time to both their young clients as youths and later on in life.

After looking at a variety of programs and interventions, she details that "the general conclusion [is] that the programs that were spending more money directly on the children tended to have better outcomes."

Her findings suggest this holds true even when similar approaches don't have the same effect on adults. "[I]n the United States," she says, "if you give health insurance to adults who didn't have health insurance, they use more services, and they are happier about that, that they get to use services. But it doesn't actually seem to save very much money. On the other hand, when you cover children from a young age, that is cost effective, that does save money, and in fact, the costs of the program probably pay for themselves in terms of the reduction in illness and disability going forward."

In addition to her work at Princeton, Currie is also co-director of the National Bureau of Economic Research's Program on Families and Children. She has been president of the American Economic Association for 2024 and has also served as president of the American Society of Health Economics, the Society of Labor Economics, the Eastern Economic Association, and the Western Economic Association. Two years ago, she received the Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize "for her foundational work on the influence of context such as policy decisions, environment, or health systems on child development."